Interactive Display Production 3

Now that we have been making more progress on the environment and have most of the ant assets done, we need to really figure out how we want to integrate those assets into the scene. In particular the ant. We have had a pretty good idea for some time on how we wanted the ant to behave in game so this week I worked more on designing more formally the Ant's behaviors. The ants behaviors are fairly simple with it only transitioning between a few preset behaviors so a state machine is the most effective way to implement these behaviors. This week I planned out the different states and how they connect together. I used google draw to create a visual representation of the states with the basic transition criteria. Essentially the ant starts off by navigating between two preset points, which would most likely be anthills. If the player gets too close to one of the ant, then the ant will begin chasing the player. If the player gets too far away the ant will 'lose' them and st...

This weeks class saw us get a lot of elements finished and pulled into the build. I reviewed more of the animations and models being done by our artists. One of team members returned with a great white box of our level layout. Additionally our programmers continued looking into some of our upcoming tasks. I assisted with getting the combat script working in the build. It ended up being a fairly small detail relating to the rigidbodies on the enemy, however it is the type of small issue that can be hard to actually find. Once we got that done we were able to start integrating more into the build. Once our build master got the level geometry integrated into the build I started testing it out a bit. One of the first things that was apparent was that our initial assumption that being small in VR would be cool was correct. It is a very cool thing to have to look up in VR to see the entirety of an object and helps with immersion. On that note however, we will likely have to 'fudge...

We are roughly halfway through the semester so I thought it was a good time for my team to do a retrospective together. The exercise of finding the things we've been doing poorly, not been doing at all, and been doing well is a great way to continue improving as a team. The format we went with was Stop, Start, Continue. Overall our team has been doing pretty well, especially considering how many classes were missed due to weather and such. Many of our issues came down to documentation. Our only thing to stop doing was making too general of tasks on Trello. This also ties into our team needing to start using Trello more. There could also be some more communication between members and we need to be developing in the Ocullus more to ensure things are more easily integrated into the build. On the positive side, most of the team have communicated with me as the PO very well. We have been really good about completing valuable work for the game. We have had no interpersonal issues yet...

Our work on the first portion of our game is nearing completion. This includes our player locomotion, general level layout, and a basic inventory. So I am beginning to do research to better design the second half. We already know we want ants and spiders in game, so we need to design encounters and behaviors for them. Along with that we are planning on having some portion of an ant colony explorable which will require some design as well. The ants in game are going to be mostly passive. Ants can often be seen forming line as they follow the pheromones trails other ants leave. We intend to use this to give the players a navigational aid. At the beginning of the game players will see some ants carrying of some items. If players follow the ant trail they will be led directly to items. We intend to use this throughout the yard. By creating multiple ant trails the player is given some indication of where to go. As far as the colony goes, there will be slightly more work in terms of desi...

I spent a good deal of again this week maintaining our Trello. It's been a few weeks now since we started work, so our initial goals are nearing completion. As a result I had to begin further breaking down our backlog. We are still making what I feel is good progress towards the project. Along with that, now that more tasks are being completed the build is starting to come together. Connery, Mitch, and myself worked to begin integrating more elements into the build. There were some issues with the item system when importing due to the control set up that we quickly fixed. There were also some additional issues with colliders and triggers that we are still looking into.  It is great to see so many tasks completed or awaiting integration into the build Other than that, it was a lot of reviewing tasks and providing direction where needed. The art team seems to be making steady progress which is great considering the difficulty of modeling and animating insects. Our progra...