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We are looking for an AI Programmer to join the team, working on our exciting and recently announced publisher-backed Unreal Engine 4 project. You'll ideally relish the challenge of crafting believable NPC animals and creatures that are realistic, dynamic and compelling in their behaviour, and feel right at home in our rich and expansive game world. This is an important role central to the game's identity, so your work will be prominent and rewarding and directly influence the end product.
Location: The role is fully remote. Relocation packages are available for the right candidate if working locally is desirable.
Level/Experience: Mid to senior role with direct or similar experiences in crafting believable creatures/animals in games.
The Role: You will be working alongside designers and programmers to build and maintain the believability of our animals and their behaviour sets. You will be working with behaviour trees and pathfinding, and making use of solid C++ development skills. You'll be surrounded by a friendly, supportive and passionate team and be a key stakeholder in forming the player experience.
What the Job Entails
- Distilling the vision statement of what our animals mean in our game into functional AI actors which exhibit interesting and dynamic interactive behaviour
- Work alongside game designers and animators to craft the player experience as far as interaction with AI agents is concerned, which may include combat interactions
- Responsible for the look and feel of our animal behaviours, removing bugs, jank and immersion-breaking situations in general
- Creating prototypes to help build suitable frameworks that can support and inform the design team
- Suggest improvements if necessary by designing and implementing new systems
- Collaborate with designers and animators in discussing constraints and establish the technical possibilities of AI behaviours
- Suggest innovations based on other industry-leading games and techniques
- Program in C++ in a clear and structured way, taking into account simplicity, readability, maintainability, and performance
- Validate and verify that the newly developed systems meet project AI requirements
- Document the work so as to transfer knowledge and enable team members of other disciplines to understand how to use the new AI systems and functionality
Requirements
- Solid C++ programming and Blueprint skills
- Strong understanding of AI principles; knowledge of behaviour trees, blackboards, tasks, etc.
- Excellent problem-solving ability
- Great team communication skills, especially in remote contexts
- Passion for playing and creating cutting-edge, single-player video game experiences
Plusses
- Involvement in a shipped game using Unreal Engine 4
- Worked at a AAA or AA studio
- Experience working on pathfinding or AI movement/behaviours for characters, preferably bipedal and quadrupedal animals and/or creatures
- Experience solving complex AI problems (navigation, turning, route planning, multiple agent interaction, etc)
- Strong mathematical ability; knowledge of vectors, matrices, and linear algebra
- Experience working with complex animation graphs, procedural animation, and/or foot and spine IK
- Knowledge and interest in mentoring and coaching junior roles
- Excited to be a part of an indie studio with big ambitions!
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