Karn Bianco

Project Maternity

A 2010 Imagine Cup entry themed around the United Nation's Millennium Goals.

Project Maternity was a 2010 Imagine Cup entry from Ninja Vikings with Claws’ (Dominic Bodman, Catarina Barros, Daniel Dexter, and myself). It made it to the second round of the competition – an non-trivial feat for first year students who had only a few weeks of development time..

The United Nation’s Millennium Goals were the theme of the 2010 Imagine Cup. The MGs aim to reduce poverty around the globe, ensure gender equality, and so on. Project Maternity was based on the 5th Millennium Goal – improving maternal health.

The game takes inspiration from Diner Dash in terms of mechanics – as a maternity nurse it’s your job to rush around busy hospital environments helping pregnant mothers from when they arrive right up until they give birth.

As you progress you can enlist AI-controlled nurses to help perform most tasks, including: greeting patients, taking them to their beds, and cleaning empty beds. The only thing they cannot do is resolve medical complications, which falls to you and you alone.

My role was lead gameplay and AI programmer. I was primarily responsible for authoring the behavioural system for the artificially intelligent nurses which assist the player. I ensured that each nurse always had a task to do, and never hindered with the player’s progress.

Project Maternity was developed by Dominic Bodman, Catarina Barros, Daniel Dexter, and Karn Bianco using C# and the XNA Framework.