NPCs, Spotlights, and more models

In the previous blog post which was in the beginning of March, we made progress in doing small experiments with simple gameobjects, testing out the controls, and also testing out the interactions with the collisons of gameObjects. Now here at the end of March, we have begun to incorporate some of the custom 3d models into Unity, test out NPC scripts so that they can walk unique paths, work on the blurring and darkening of the screenview, and implement our scoring system.

Following our latest task from the previous blog post, we put in the custom made 3d models that our artist created. One of the problems that we initially ran into was with the scaling of some of the models. When they were imported into Unity, the default scales of the models were a little off.

We also needed to have the non playable characters that are on the map move around in different random patterns on their own. We implemented a script that would allow NPCs to move in different paths

Another thing we worked on was the darkening and blurring of the screenview. We wanted to make it so that the screen was both darkened and blurred in order to make it challenging to find Ronaldo, rather than have him in a crowded group of people and objects, hence the spotlight. We used code that uses a shader to darken and blur the screenview of the player except for the area under the spotlights. One problem we ran into was that the code made the game run very slowly, so we fixed an optimization problem with the code where the code was doing unecessary work, making the game smoother as shown in the second GIF.

Then we implemented the basic scoring system and logic of the game where you gain a point for finding Ronaldo, and lose a point for finding fake Ronaldo, the player with the most points at the end of 2 minutes wins the game. We are also beginning to implement item effects of the spotlight as shown in this GIF. When the spotlight finds the green capusle item on the ground, the spotlight is able to move more quickly. We will be implementing more ideas for items as we continue on.

Going forward once we have our base game down, we talked about a few ideas in a meeting that we would hope to implement to add something extra to the game. The idea would be instead of having to just find Ronaldo, you would capture him for a set amount of time, and other players would be able to release him from jail. Below is some notes summarizing a meeting we had talking about some potential new ideas. The second picture is some artwork for designs of the Ronaldo characters.

In short we have implemented most of the basic game so far, going forward we will be integrating more of our custom models, and tweaking our game objective a little bit. We also will be having custom music made by a group from the adaptive music class.