Final Project Blog

Final Project Blog 

During the first few weeks of the final project i hve managed to model a small portion of the games level and familiarizing my self with the layout and modeling abilities of unity at first i attempted to import various models for the scene like a set of  stair cases from cinema 4d into unity however i decided against that and created a few ramps which would allow easier access for the players , ive finalized the art style for the environment from the two choices the first was a med evil themed dungeon to fit with  the old dungeon crawler games in the early 90s or a surreal science fiction style inspired by the PC game system shock 2 i decided too go with the latter as it seemed a more interesting choice
, in these few weeks ive also began to create primitive first person controls and interactions using java scripts attached to the main camera allowing the player to control and navigate with it establishing at first person style.
I am using Cinema 4d to create models for use in game.

ive now began to work on other game mechanics for example i have now successfully established a shooting script and a respective projectile again using JavaScript, i believe i have  increased
my understanding of the scripting language so far in particular java script i can now understand and use  the proper punctuation and language for scripting as well as a better understanding of the use for variables, tags , references  and functions.
A functioning door has also now been established which requires the player to collide with a switch object in the level which destroys the door allowing accesses however i intend to add a animation insted of destroying the door later in the creation process.

i have briefly touched upon unity's animation engine and i have learned the basics like navgation, layout  and event taging , i will try to use this for  a later point in the project.


 as the project has continued i have finalized ideas for the visual aspect  of the game  i have also modeled more of the   actual level attempting to coincide it with the design i have also now setup a shooting script and some more advanced first person controls including full rotation of the camera via the mouse which is now allowing for easier and smoother navigation for the player , the shoot script that i have created is a basic function of creating  and transforming an  object in this case a small sphere complete with a fireball texture and fire animation the only fault so far is that i am having an issue with object recycling where by the objects do not die away however this small error  will be fixed shortly,
i have also created a cross hair to aid the player as basic 2d GUI texture thats fixed to the center of the screen  this has given me a chance to understand how HUBs can be created  as well as there uses
and i intend to experiment with a HUB  further into the project.


the project continues with an attempt to create a main objective for the player my first idea was to have the players retrieve a number of objects which would allow them to progress into another part of the level this would come with a GUI to indicate and allow the players to track there progress
i attempted to create a restriction for the area which the players are trying to reach as well as creating properties for a basic object which once the player collided with it would not only destroy the object but , add to the GUI texture as well as send the appropriate message to the array which all these objects  information is being kept track of once all of the conditions were met in this case all the objects being destroyed and there respective scripts being false would remove the area restriction,
i had a few problems creating this however so i decided to try a similar idea which involved a door and at least 5 corresponding switches  all of which have to be triggered in a fair time limit given the size of the current level as well as the speed of the player and knowledge the player might have of the layout i decided a 3 minute limit would give newer players enough time to locate and activate the switches, i am currently looking into creating a time limit counter as a GUI to alert the player.

i have briefly experimented with an AI script that was acquired from a separate source  i was able to modify it slightly to be part of my game however any attempts to get it to attack the player were unsuccessful however i was able to get the AI to follow a simple way point , i have since scrapped the enemy concept and i have tried to create a simpler enemy for the game i am trying to create a sentry gun  ( a static enemy that will attempt to kill the player at a certain range) using a script that i have acquired
however this time i disassembled the script and built it from the ground up and learning what each chunks function is and then modifying the finished script to my own needs , it works by tracking a tagged  object ( in this case  ray cast the player) and uses a to communicate with 2 external scripts the first also attached to the sentry gun which is a weapon script ( in this case a machine gun script) and a Player damage script attached to the player if the ray-cast is targeting the player tag then it will send the information from the machine gun script to the players damage script, however the object has to transform in order to align the ray-cast so shoot its target.

now that both the sentry guns and the main objectives have been established i have re organized there positions and edited the current level a little to provide more of a challenge for the player setting up obstacles and traps like one of the objectives being only accessible from certain platforms or parts of the level giving a disadvantage to the player against the turrets, i have from here tested the game to see if the obstacles were fair enough given the time limit of collecting objectives as well as taking in to consideration the fact that players will not be knowledgeable about the levels layout and the nature of the obstacles after a bit of testing i increased the time limit slightly to make it a bit more balanced.

i have been experimenting with sound and importing some models from cinema 4d, i managed to successfully import two models in cinema 4d which were both half's of the sentry gun model the reason being they need to both support separate scripts but work together for example the bottom half would need to support its own collider and also be static which the top half could not as it is required to rotate, as for sound i have successfully implemented a soundtrack for the game which is just a looped mp3 track in a Audio re verb zone which now provides some atmosphere for the game however i  have not yet successfully added other sounds that were intended such as footsteps, or a player being hit indication.

after testing it with a co league i discovered a few faults with the game specifically in movement and jumping like the player getting caught on the ceiling however after a few adjustments these faults were corrected