Week 5 (Final) Scripting and Final Touch-ups

To begin my conclusion, I have to say I'm extremely satisfied with what I was able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. This is expressing the hard time constraint.

I spent a majority of this week focusing on adding flavor to the game. Tweaking lighting, creating interactive objects, and most of all, designing a third person character, as well as scripts to interact with the person.

I followed the Unity 3D plat-former tutorial almost word-for-word. I can honestly say I've read almost all 122 pages of the PDF.

I had almost no trouble getting the applications found within the PDF to work, however, getting everything to work in my scene was a completely different story, and many headaches worth of work to troubleshoot.

I was able to do things I didn't expect to add, I couldn't do certain things I wanted to do, and certain aspects still feel unfinished. However, overall, I'm happy with the results.

What I was successful of creating:

-Creating a Third Person character from scratch
     -Created a custom character
     -Created custom character interactions (Wall jumping, Punching)
     -Created a custom mouse control system

-Created a HUD
     -Created a system that represents current HP on display.
     -Created a system that represents current Fuel cells.
     -Created a system displaying remaining lives.

-Created Enemy AI
     -Created a script to interact with the player
     -Created enemy AI animations to occur under specific circumstances
     -Created enemy to have specified HP functions.
     -Created ability to follow target.

-Created Particles
     -Created a particle prefab hiearchy system .
     -Created particles to respond under certain conditions.
    
-Created Movers
     -Scripted an object to move at a set value infinitely.
  
-Created GUIskin
     -Created a system to show start menu and game over.

-Created Terrain
     -Created multiple layers of textures within a Terrain.


Here's a few things I feel I've comfortably mastered in this short amount of time:

-Prefabs
-Collision
-Hierarchy systems
-Adjusting values in-game to tweak optimization values.
-Recognizing scripts
     -Coding script input channels
     -Troubleshooting coding script errors.
     -knowledge of Int, Bool, True/False systems
-Particles
-Terrain editor
-Object Animation creations
-Creating custom first and third person controllers
-Using the GUI Skin system.

Here's a few things I attempted but was not successful at creating:

-Projectiles
-Respawn catcher
-Keybindings
-Camera Collider
-Recreating enemy AI
-Opacity maps :(
-destructable objects (without model swapping)

Lastly, what would a good blog post be without some screenshots

This is a screenshot of some of the scripts I used.

Lastly, here's what gave me the biggest hang-up in the entire project. Somewhere in here, there's something wrong that won't allow the AI to function properly, Also I had to re-create all the animations off the take001 animation:

My last words on this project, I'll absolutely continue working on this project, probably sooner than others. At first I didn't approve of using Unity for the second half of the quarter, but I've heavily enjoyed it and personally, I prefer Unity over Unreal.

Week 4 Level Construction

Admittedly, I'm posting this late in an attempt to catch up on last weeks' work. I've finished my texturing and I was quite pleased in the results of my results. I used a combination of seamless textures, UVW Mapping, and Unwrap UVW methods. For the most part, I was able to create a majority of my objects without having to unwrap them and create custom textures. Still, for other objects I couldn't do this, I focused a majority of Unwrapping to develop the middle structure.

I've gotten everything in my scene. My textures are attached to my objects at this point. I'm currently using the default first person controller.

Week3: Modeling, Unwrapping, and Texturing

Due to time contraints I wasn't able to go back and re-work previous sections of the project so I'm pushing forward. My modular pieces are complete and I've begun constructing my level.

As I began creating my scene I chose base textures that I would use for each piece. Ussually, what I like to do to centralize my UVs before I begin unwrapping is I do a simple box UV map modifier. Considering the nature of Unity, I decided to attempt importing the textures onto my objects without fully unwrapping my objects. Sure enough, the information retained through the UVW Mapping modifier! Surely, there is probably some limitations to doing it this way such as shadows or light not functioning properly, however, I added a light to my scene and this is the results:

With this new method I'm attempting I'm focusing on making seamless textures instead of Unwrap UVWing every object. Specific objects that are modular and would be acceptable to a single simple texture, I may leave just the way it is. However, for more complex objects such as the monoliths, I still need to unwrap and create a custom texture design for. I don't particularly feel comfortable using this method because I'm unsure of the results, however, I feel a lot of this project is focused on experimentation and I'm very interested to see the results of this method. If it works the way I imagine, it could save me a very large amount of time on the more basic objects. Though, it is too limiting to use on the more complex objects.

Week 2: Final Previsualization

This week has been quite productive. I've completed the color scheme, the map, as well as two of the three concept arts. Next week I'll be adding the final one and any touch-ups if I have time.

The first image below is the concept art of the completed asthetic. This image provides information of two of the three monoliths. The third monolith is understood due to the bridge extending outside of the imagery. This concept also gives an understanding of the ground plane and its detail, emphasis on the blood veins that rest on top.

 This image is not as complete as the previous but provides information of the underground section of the level. you enter this area by jumping through the mouth-like structures. This area connects several pathways below the main monolith as well as extends up into the main monolith.

 This is the map in its entirety. This level is intended to be completely symmetrical, so even though the legend cuts off a small portion of the map, it's understandable what information is missing by looking at the top left corner.

My goals for next week is to finish developing my models to import into Unity, add more information to the map, as well as finish my last concept art, and clean up the second concept art.

Week1 Preplanning and Previsualization Phase1

Due to being unable to use a Wacom Tablet right now I can't come up with concept art for the upcoming level for the next few days. However, this will come next.

In the mean time, I'm currently occupying my time with various organic shapes attempting to get interesting results. This project is specifically focusing on organic modularity so I want to spend the majority of my time developing exactly that. Here are some of the more interesting results for this project:

As for the game design aspect of this, I've always felt that building vertically is more interesting than building horizontally, as a result, I want to emphesize on exactly that. It is my intent to make a symetrical level with the center point being a high elivation. In addition to that, I want both Player 1 and Player 2's spawn points to also be elivated high, with long corridors that stretch across into the center of the level.

Gameplay and battle-wise, this gives the player an opportunity to shoot down onto the enemy if the enemy is below, or inside the structure in the center. This also gives an opportunity for close-combat in the center while minimizing the time duration to encounter the opposite player.

Texture and Color-wise, I'm going to attempt to use red decals to resemble blood and/or veins. Large structures that can be walked on I want to have a grayish tone resembling bone. Various other forms of architecture I want Blues, Violets, and Greens to add more fantasy to the mix.