I'm Free Production Blog 4

I'm Free Sprint 4

The end of Sprint 4 is here. We're just about halfway done with production. For this sprint, I was assigned 5 cards with 2 cards carried over. The cards I was assigned were to reorganize the blockouts to the level templates, the lighting cards for the rest of the levels, and adding assets and building the zoo level.

Our programmer made a levels script that held the prefabs for the rooms that would be randomly generated. These prefabs need to follow a template that had start points and endpoints in each room with the start points at the (0,0,0). To be able to test the random generated, I reorganize the blockouts into prefab variants of the room templates with the spawn points and moved the room and endpoints to the (0,0,0) point and the end of the room. Then I added them to the prefab folder and the levels script. 

Block outs all at (0,0,0), added to prefabs folder, and levels script (right side)

During spring break, I worked on the easier and less time-consuming cards. Those would be the particle effect cards that were carried over from the previous sprints. I first worked on the electric sparks card because I have done a similar particle effect for a previous class. All I needed to do is export it from the past project and import it over to the current game. I played around with the settings and made it fit the particle effect we needed for our game. I changed the shape from where the effects flew out from linear to a more circular motion and increase the speed of it so it looked more comical that would the theme of our game. They also have collision detection so the sparks will bounce on and off of surfaces and objects.

Electric Sparks

The blood effect took a bit more time and effort but luckily the motion is similar to the sparks. I did encounter a problem with the particle system in that the color over time did not work. The blood effect is supposed to go from red to a dark maroon over the course of its lifetime. However, the colors do not change. I changed the shaders and tried using different alphas/templates but it still doesn't work. My teammates also had a similar problem with their particle effects in that the shaders turned transparent if they did not use a certain shader. My problem was that using different shaders made the particle completely black or transparent but the color over time still did not work. It's not an impactful problem and the effect still looks good without the color change so it's not too much of a problem. It is still unfortunate that little detail isn't shown. 

Blood splatter

After the break and finishing the particle effects, I worked on building the zoo level. I added the zoo and military assets to the asset folder and started building the rooms with the level templates via prefab variants. It's a tedious task to make sure each room looked unique with the limited models we have. I also had trouble keeping in mind the blank spaces for enemy placement and not having the zoo level look cramped as it's the most open and brightest level. I also needed to go back and forth from the scene view and game view because I'm adding assets with a perspective camera view while the game is played in an orthographic camera view. We also decided to remove the door and sidewalls of the smaller rooms based off of the feedback we received from our electronic playtest. 

Zoo Level

After the building of the level and rooms are done, I added them to the prefab folder and the script. The next card and the one I'm currently working on is adding lighting. Since lighting is different for each level, we might need to have individual lighting for each room. But this is really difficult to do since spotlights and area lights do not light up the room as efficiently as directional light. The lights also need to be specifically placed and the radius of the light might affect adjoining rooms. I'm still trying to figure out how to do the lighting. This would be the biggest thing to focus on at the beginning of Sprint 5 since the cards carried over from Sprint 4 are the lighting cards. After I will be building the military level and working on sound. Until then, I'll do my best. 

Zoo 1

Zoo 2

Zoo 3

Zoo 4