Exnihilo is a tactical, stealth-oriented third-person game inspired by the Commandos series. The player’s goal is to traverse the map without alerting enemy guards. The project was written in C# using the XNA 3.1 framework and developed in cooperation with Michał Niewiadomski, who was responsible for designing the gameplay rules.
From an implementation perspective, the main focus was on player–enemy interactions. Enemy behavior is modeled using a finite state machine (FSM), while pathfinding is based on a static node graph. To support rapid iteration and level design, the game also includes a built-in map editor.
A few years later, I revisited the project and reimplemented several components using XNA 4.0. This iteration introduced a more intuitive character controller, a snow particle system with ground accumulation, and a new lighting solution. I implemented dual-paraboloid shadow maps to support point lights, replacing the earlier plane-projected shadow technique.
Unfortunately, not long after these improvements, Microsoft discontinued XNA, which ultimately put the project on hold. I’m leaving Exnihilo here as a small tribute to a technology that I had so much joy to work with.