Ryan Crim_PPJs_wk05
Ryan Crim, Week 5 Journal
After receiving feedback from our initial changes and discussing our plans moving forward as a team, this week I continued working on the game, specifically focusing on cart movement and item collection.
To start this week, I made some small modifications to the cart movement. These modifications included adding a maximum speed limit to the cart and changing how gravity affects the cart during jumping and falling. In addition, I wrote a quick script and added some UI objects to create a basic timer that can be seen in the top-left of Figure 1. (0.75 hr)
Figure 1. Timer element added to provide feedback to the player
Another thing I added was a secret room, in order to show the possibilities of what we could do with the environment as we continue to work on our game. In Figure 2, you can see that the button on the upper platform is red, then, in Figure 3, you can see that when the button is pressed it turns green and the entrance to the secret room appears. This addition of the new button also prompted me to rework the button scripts to have one to handle when a button is pressed that would take a reference to a button action script that would perform the task that the specific button controls. This main button action script is abstract, which allows the different tasks (starting game, opening room) to have their own scripts that override it. (1.50 hrs)
Figure [if supportFields]><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA'><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span></span></i><span style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>SEQ Figure \* ARABIC <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></i></span><![endif]2. Before opening secret entrance
Figure 3. After opening secret entrance (note: pictures taken in different attempts)
Next, I met up with John a few times this week to merge his changes into the scene and continue to refine the cart movement together by adding and messing around with variables while testing. In addition, we fixed the ground check to properly handle the two-wheel turning and fixed the jump arc to be more consistent. (1.00 hr)
My last focus for this week was to try to figure out a logical way to retrieve items from the lower shelves, since it would be no easy task to scoop items with the arm. Therefore, I decided to add a vacuum on either side of the cart with upper and lower pipes, as shown in Figure 4, which would allow these items to be retrieved (as well as items off the floor if they are tall enough). Then, in order to control these vacuums, I added a control panel on the cart with two buttons that can be pressed by the arms, shown in Figure 5. Not only does this provide another option for the player controlling the arms, but I also added the ability to stretch the arms over the cart to try to contain items when jumping/turning as shown in Figure 6. (5.00 hrs)
Figure 4. Vacuum on left side of cart with the upper pipe for the middle shelves and lower pipe for lower shelves/floor items
Figure 5. Left arm pressing the vacuum control button
Figure 6. Both arms outstretched to try to contain items off of jump
Positives:
Was able to figure out the problem of how to retrieve items from the lower shelves
Added more movements for the arms to increase options for the player not steering
Continued to improve cart movement
Prototyped features, such as the timer and secret rooms, to show how game will move forward
Cleaned up and reorganized a lot of the scripts
Negatives:
Need to add the Unity project onto Perforce to prevent having to meet up all the time to merge changes
Still need to get around to separating the controls onto two different controllers
Cart movement still needs a little work, including maximum speed and turning angle
Total Hours for the week: 8.25
