Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Ryan Crim, Week 5 Journal PPJ, Blog post 5, GMAP 378



Content with Hours (Examples included):

To start the week, I made it a point to update the art in both Abducktion and Draw at Noon, whether I had the final assets or needed to pull from existing assets to fill in.

For Abducktion, this included adding the existing tent texture to the walls and sand texture to the floor of the game to simulate the inside of a tent for the environment. Next, I took an existing bucket model made for the Mech game and added it in place of the cylinders I had been using as cups. This is turn required a few modifications of the code to handle changing the appropriate texture when entering/exiting X-Ray mode. Lastly, I updated the dashboard UI with the new two-screen art and the corresponding control icons that Angela had created as shown in Figure 1. (0.75 hrs)

 Figure 1. Abducktion with updated art

For Draw at Noon, I started by repurposing the skybox textures originally for Crazy Ball to create the environment as well as removed the default directional light for a point light instead as shown in Figure 2. Next, I added in an existing 2D-cutout model for the buff alien to represent the alien, however, the art team is supposedly working on a 3D alien model, so I will add that if and when it is completed. Furthermore, Corey has created a couple of different gun models so I added one into the game for both the aliens and humans. There are a few issues with the normals and they are not textured, but I am leaving them in the game while those issues are worked through. Similarly to Abducktion, the last visual changes made consisted of adding the two-screen dashboard and controls. (0.75 hrs)

 
Figure 2. Draw at Noon with updated art

After all of the art was added to the other two games, my focus fell on finishing the greybox for G-Switch. This consisted of adding alien interaction into the game and better conveying what the humans should be doing to progress to the goal by making platforms not in the middle zone semi-transparent and not solid as shown in Figure 3. In terms of alien interaction, I added a spinner (black line in pink circle) that the aliens try to stop in the appropriate zone (white block in pink circle) and, if they are successful, it causes the section of platforms between the spinner panel and humans to decrease in width. In addition to gameplay modifications, I also updated the G-Switch scene with the two-screened dashboard and well as added sounds for when gravity is switched and the spinner is stopped successfully. (5.00 hrs)

 Figure 3. Finished G-Switch greybox with spinner

The last couple of things I did this week include updating the InputManager with more consistent controls and creating a custom prefab based on Unity’s RigidBodyFirstPersonController. Starting with the InputManager, I noticed that there were a few cases of multiple inputs being defined for the same button as well as there being side effects, such as keyboard inputs being able to control something only the controllers should be able to, so I decided to add all new inputs to properly organize and separate the controls properly. After that, I made sure to update all three of my games to use these inputs. This was a bit tricky for G-Switch, however, since I was using Unity’s default RigidBodyFirstPersonController that uses the standard inputs. Therefore, I created a custom prefab based with customized scripts to expose the inputs used by the controller so that it could be easily changed for multiple games. Moving forward, I will continue to use these controls and hopefully everyone else on the team does so we can keep a bit more consistency. (0.75 hrs)

Content Positive:
- Added art to Abducktion and Draw at Noon
- Finished G-Switch greybox, including alien interaction
- Updated the InputManager with more logical input definitions
- Added custom RigidBodyFirstPersonController for easy control swapping

Content Negative:
- Need alien model to finish art for Draw at Noon

Total Hours for the week: 7.25 hrs

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