Ryan Crim_PPJs_wk08

Ryan Crim, Week 8 Journal

From the survey feedback so far, the most noticeable issue is that the objectives are not immediately clear to new players. Therefore, a focus of this week became to try to prototype a way to more clearly present this information. In addition, with our group making strides in modelling the previous week, it was important to start getting them into the scene.

After presenting our demo last week, the first thing I did was separate the controls between the two controllers. In addition, I updated the scripts to allow for switching between 1 and 2-player modes, so that we could perform our testing still with a single key press. Furthermore, I centralized all of the inputs into its own script that can be referenced by the others, so we only need to check one place to update controls moving forward. (1.00 hr)

Next, I focused on adding all of the models that Joseph and Ricardo have made so far to the game. To start, I went through each of the product models by adding the appropriate colliders and resizing them to properly fit onto shelves as shown in Figure 1. A In addition, I created prototypes for a hanging rod and angled shelves that can be used to hold small or oddly shaped items, an example of the angled shelves can be seen in Figure 2. Currently, the design of having the button to press on the front is not ideal because this causes players to run directly into it and stop to wait, but we have had discussions as a group to figure out how to take this idea and improve upon it. (3.00 hrs)

Figure 1. All of the products added to the game this week

Figure 2. Angled shelves containing jicamas, bananas, apples and carrots

The next models I attempted to add to the game were the arms. Due to a change of plans, Ricardo was unable to animate them, but we figured it would be a good idea to have them in some capacity. After resolving a few exporting from Maya/importing to Unity issues, I was able to get the arm models into the level and pose them in a similar manner to the initial orange arms as shown in Figure 3. However, there is still a texturing issue that is occurring as you can see that the arms are different colors, which will need to be worked out. Lastly, I was supposed to import the cart model into the game this week, but when I did there were a few issues that we had found that need to be cleaned up before we do, so the cart will be added next week. (1.00 hr)

Figure 3. Arm models in the reach and vacuum button positions

Other assets that I have added to the game this week include aisle signs using the images provided by Jinghan as well as a basic wall and floor texture that fits more to the games style based on the initial store design mock-ups Jinghan had created for our art template all of which can also be seen above in Figure 3. (0.50 hr)

The last thing I worked on for the game this week was prototyping an interactive start screen as shown in Figure 4. Complaints of the previous start screen having too many words, led to this idea to provide the players with a 2D representation of the game that they can interact with to gain an understanding of the controls before the game starts. The design is very rough, but we plan on taking feedback in our next survey to see if this idea is one worth pursuing and polishing up. (1.50 hrs)

Figure 4. Prototype interactive start screen

Besides working on the game this week, I also meet up with John and Ricardo for a few hours to discuss how we could improve the current level design and changes resulting from that meeting will be top priority for modelling moving forward. In addition, I got three new play testers to provide their feedback and compiled a list of puns that we could pull from moving forward. (2.25 hrs)

Positives: