Category: Part 3

Project Idea and Planning

As in our presentation, we’re planning to make an FPS game, like Superhot. We’re planning to use the time-moves-as-you-move function and use hotspots to travel. Our idea is: you’re a virus in a computer that has to steal an important file. You must first work your way through other files (or levels). I’m the first level, Vee is the second and Muhammad is the third. As mentioned in our project idea presentation, I’m planning to have a sphere shaped terrain. We’ve decided to have platforms to change height levels and I think this is a good idea for variety. I imagine this will create some difficulties for my level but I’m excited to start.

ENTRY 1

Since my environment is a sphere, I need to figure out how gravity will work- objects need to be attrracted to the centre of the sphere, not just downwards.

I found some code to make the gravity work properly, but so far the objects just fall through the environment, but the direction of gravity is correct. I’ve also found some assets that I can use for my environment, such as buildings. These seem easily customisable to my colour scheme etc, so I’m pretty happy with them so far, though I might have to model some on my own as well.

ENTRY 2

I managed to get the gravity working on my project.

Now I’m working on designing the environment in the colour scheme (blue, purple, grey) and the hotspots for travelling. I’m still looking for proper assets and might have to make some on my own, but I’ve found a couple that I might like.

I think I’ll add hotspots at the top of buildings to get a good vantage point and also have a bridge for variety. I’m also thinking of having rain (using a particle system) but I’m not sure if it’ll help with creating the atmosphere I want.

I plan to figure out my environment and then make it a prefab so I can add it to our Unity Collab project.

ENTRY 3

I started making the environment, with a blue-purple color scheme. I used a metallic material for the planet so it looks a bit like hardware. Inspired by the statues in Lord of the Rings, I added statues to the starting point of my level.

They help indicate the starting point as well as direct the user about which way to go- between them. I thought this would intuitive since you start right behind them, and the most obvious path is forward, the way they are facing.

I also figured out how to make the player walk on the planet, since I couldn’t use the Walk on World script we had for our previous projects. I’m glad I got this sorted out because it’s one of the most important parts of navigating my world, apart from hotspots, and it really gives the effect of being on a curved surface. I also added rain, but I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.

I added rain and all the other assets as well. My project has shifted away from data visualisation as a theme, and is now more like a jumble of different structures. I like it. Since Nav Mesh doesn’t work on a sphere, I need more hotspots.

I didn’t add the bridge since it seemed too “complete”. I’ve picked assets that look broken, so it looks like a folder on a computer that contains a lot of random things- a Recycle Bin.

I have a bunch of random buildings, modern and ancient. I feel like this kind of ties in with the other levels as well, since Vee’s is medieval Chinese and Muhammad’s looks super futuristic.

ENTRY 4

link to user test video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rOk5pjJiaoTYBDxFcxys4s2djYN0Rbwd/view?usp=sharing

User Test Feedback:

Kind of stressful getting shot at in the first few seconds.

• Reduced enemy sphere collider so don’t get shot at just as you arrive. I don’t have as many enemies as the others since I’m the first level, and more hotspots so users can explore more.

Add sound, seems kind of jarring with only bullet sounds’

• Added sound for suspense

Background is plain, doesn’t look good.

• Added Skybox for lights and sky effect.

Teleporting was fun- I added more hotspots.

I think hotspots are the most important for me so I need to make the experience as interesting as possible. So I’m adding various assets which look interesting and are sort of interactable- like buildings I can go into.

Related to this, the terrain itself as an element is super important so I need to make that as varied as possible- I’m going to have as many platforms as possible.

Shooting enemies is fun and watching them get destroyed is cool, though it’s not the most fun thing for me- but I have to keep in mind not to overlook it too much since it’s an important factor.

I need to use the above factors to make people feel tension and also maybe some wonder because I want people to enjoy the environment as well as finish the level. The sound is suspenseful so that helps.

ENTRY 5 (after submission)

I’m pretty happy with the way my level turned out. I like how jumbled it looks, and how you can go beneath the metal structures and explore a bit. I’ve added a lot of platforms, to vary height so you can get agood view of the entire terrain.

I’ve toggled the sphere colliders on the enemies so they have varying ranges and they are concentrated at different points to increase and decrease tension.

There are multiple ways to get to the final hotspot and you can use one or more of them. I have a total of 40 hotspots and maybe 15 enemies.

I had a lot of issues because of my level being a sphere but I’m glad I stuck with it- it’s almost like a roller coaster, and I like how you can’t always see very far away because the terrain curves away from you. The nav mesh didn’t work but we fixed the user experience by explaining it in cutscenes, so it worked out. I wish I could have had rain all over the place but it looked a bit too confusing, and made the whole thing heavy. So now it’s only over the statues- still looks cool. I made my level a little easier than the others since it’s the first, and it’s better for the user to get used to the medium. We had problems with building to Unity, but with professor’s help we managed. I had a lot of fun with this project.

Project 3
Title: TBD
Group: Alex and Sree

03/28
The first week of developing the project idea started out slow. We have met to discuss the potential narratives for our world and brainstormed different ideas. We have decided on the general structure of the world which consists of 2 scenes connected by a portal. I have sketched this general structure layout.

03/31
I have downloaded a bunch of different low poly asset packs (plants, rocks, etc) for the project file but haven’t yet started populated the scene with them. I have continued looking for visual references for the world’s aesthetic and assets style. I keep collecting images for our mood board (some examples below).

04/03
I wanted to start modeling a few objects for the scene because the low poly assets are all very pointy and edgy, while I wanted World 1 to consist of smooth rounded shapes. However, I have a problem with accessing Maya. My 1-year license has recently expired, and I was not able to renew it because Autodesk was not accepting my school documentation to get a free educational subscription. I am hoping I can get that fixed soon.

04/05
Good news is that I got my Autodesk license back! Submitting a school transcript had worked for me. Bad news is that the program itself does not open at all on my computer and keeps crashing, I will try to reinstall. I am hoping to start modeling assets this weekend. I think the next important step is to finalize the details with Sree. We still do not have an exact storyline for the world except its general structure, and I would like to design characters for both worlds soon.
I have also started to populate the scene with some assets, and so far it is definitely far from I would like World 1 to look like. I think it is more of a draft to see where I want objects to be and how they could look like. As I mentioned earlier, Asset Store downloads are not exactly the style I want (not the smooth geometry as in the examples above). I am generally stuck with what I want to do, and we haven’t met with Sree yet to polish our ideas and decide next steps. I hope next week we will be able to catch up with this project, because lately I have just been really busy finishing up my capstone that is due Tuesday.

04/14

I have played around with modeling rounded geometry and created a new scene to place it on. I think this has potential to fit the style I originally envisioned. However, I do feel stuck a bit with what I am doing 😀

04/21

On my side, I have continued designing World 1. I was able to create more models in Cinema 4D, a few animated characters and adjust materials and lights for a lighter and more pleasant look. I also converted the project file to AR and tested it on my phone. You can see on the video below that it is working well and looking cute. Next step would be to implement interactions with creatures and maybe UI things from the last lab. We are still behind on the schedule, but hoping to keep up. I will also move on to laying out World 2 to stick to our original idea of exploring duality. There, the aesthetics will take an opposite look, colors will be cooler, geometry will be sharp and pointy, etc.

04/28

In the past week, both worlds of our project grew. I have continued polishing the layout design and adding various other effects in World 1 and, finally, created the “opposing” World 2. Although earlier I wanted it to have pointer and sharper geometry, I decided to compromise on that use the same set of models (so that I do not waste time modeling new ones) with a few additional downloaded low poly assets. Similarly to World 1, it is also surrounded by walls in shape of cartoonish mountains with 2D backdrops for an additional artistic touch. The videos at the end of the this entry show updates in layout, design, lighting, navigation, a few animated special effects, etc.

Based on user feedback, World 2 is obviously missing characters as of now but also it needs more contrasting features compared to World 1. So far, the key differences are in the color palette and brightness. The second scene is visibly colder and a little darker (although I could not yet achieve a better night time look). Sadly, I could not perform user testing because the main interactivity feature of our project (the portal) is still in development. On my side, I would also like to add simple interactions with the characters in World 1 (bounce the around with sound effects in response), and populate World 2 with “grumpy” characters that follow the player with their eyes but do not move.

Other next steps for our project include finishing the portal function and adding sound. I believe the latter could help us achieve a better contrast between the worlds.

Group members: Tala, Pangna, Alyazia

02/05 – User test and final screenshots from the app.

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User test video:

Based on the user test, there were some issues with the consistency of the elements as some of the spiders and beetles weren’t functioning properly. The user liked the use of the hotspots and stated that it made their navigation easier and more interesting. There was also one interaction that the user couldn’t get to because they kept losing, which is turning wrath into a flower.

29/04 – My main focus after completing the interactions (adding all the layers, tags, box colliders and rigid bodies) was to code the final interaction that will move the user to the next level. The final interaction was the wrath monster that is placed at the end of the level surrounded by smaller insect monsters that are protecting him by attacking the user. I didn’t want the interaction to just be killing the monster or making him disappear. So I thought why not turn the monster in to a flower? If the user made it this far into the level, that means that they succeeded at not becoming too wrathful, thus getting a flower instead of a monster seemed like a nice symbol for rewarding victory.

Also, there were two last minute additions I made to the world. One of them was the little flames made with a particle system, that are placed everywhere around the islands, in order to make the user’s experience a bit harder. The flames are also draggable, so from a safe distance the user can click on them and drag them away from the path.

The second addition was a little sign at the beginning of the scene:

26/04 – I began populating the world with the monsters, and I also decided on my hotspots. The hotspots are meant to make the navigation of the world a bit easier and faster, since walking through it takes a lot of time. We added code that would make the user able to click on a hotspot and be transported to the nearest one. I wanted the hotspot to be within my theme for the sake of consistency, so I decided on using a glowing fire crystal.

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The final world with all the assets:

19/04 – This week I focused on finalizing the layout of my level, by constructing the final island and settling on the assets and interactions. My scene consists of three main islands that the user is able to walk on. I wanted to have three levels within my level in some way, so I plan on using different assets on each island. For example, the first one is smaller so I want to populate it with spiders that attack the user and make it harder to pass through the bridge. For the second island, I plan to throw in some dragons that are either flying up and down to attack the user, or on the ground walking around. For the final island, that’s where I will have the wrath monster that I found on SketchFab, and this is the final interaction that the user has to do before moving on to the next level.

There was also the opening scene that will appear on all of our screens when the user moves to each of our levels, and we used a scene list to include the hierarchy of all the scenes. The first level is Wrath, then it will move to Gluttony then to Greed. We also coded the transition between scenes and added it to the AR camera.

We also all started adapting Alyazia’s health system into our levels to ensure that there is consistency for the entire game and used or statements so that the system applies to all of our scenes. We also decided to give the user 8 hearts in total, since there are a lot of interactions, and we kept losing when we only had 4 heart in the beginning :p

12/04 – I started building my level after choosing the theme of “Wrath”. I initially just started testing out the assets, as well as collecting more assets depending on what monsters and and elements I wanted to have the user interact with. i went on SketchFab and searched for models of monsters like dragons and spiders, and the reason behind that is the fact that I began to think what would suit the theme of Wrath. I reached the conclusion that I should include things that personally make me angry

06/04 – We started a Unity project and decided to use Unity Collab in order to collaborate more easily. We then began looking for assets that would help us create out world according to our vision for the aesthetics. We found great low poly style assets and added them to the project file, and found cool monsters on SketchFab that we could use to portray the sins. The monsters were monochrome, which we though was great as we could customize the material for each one according to what looks better with out theme.

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30/03 – Sketched out our visualization of the world in order to make it easier for planning the project in Unity. Made a mood-board combining different elements and/or aesthetics we would like our project to contain. Discussed character POV, and scripting elements for the project. Made presentation to pitch idea to the class.

29/03 – Our group discussed all the ideas we had for project 3, and while it was very difficult to narrow it down to one concept to make it more focused, we managed to settle on the overall narrative and aesthetic of the world. We initially wanted to create a world depicting different versions of the afterlife, and to an extent that is still the case. Hence, we decided to go in the direction of creating am environment where the user is in limbo, or purgatory, and are unaware of their own death. We also decided to go for a low poly style, and started looking into making assets in that aesthetic, as well as finding them in the asset store.

Everyone creates one blog post as the development journal. Think of it as a diary for your project. It serves as a personal documentation and also a way for me to see what’s your contribution to the project.

You can have an analog journal, and add photos of the content in the post (highly recommended!).

The journal can include (but not limited to):
– Sketches, doodles, and handwriting texts
– Reflection on what worked and the difficulties
– Share discoveries
– Decision making process
– User feedback
– Any other thoughts and media

You should append the journal on top based on dates, for example:

4/2
I discovered an very interesting thing while I was doing ____
etcetera etcetera etcetera 

3/24
Our group discussed about the ideas and found it was challenging to ____ so we decided to ____
etcetera etcetera etcetera