Monday was Soft Opening – a time for faculty to walk around and gain reassurance that this project will be done by the end of Week 15. Given some slight production delays here and there, we had an incomplete version of the game to show them. The cleaned up animation was in, but the completed textures and voice over had yet to be integrated. The music was still being mixed. Basically, we were a bunch of awesome parts that we’re quite ready to come together.
The faculty expressed concern, and we did our best to reassure them that this will all come together by the end of next week.
Our task list for integration
So while Sharon is working on improving and optimizing the lighting to reduce burden on the game engine, and to fix up small problems with the way the mesh is rendering in Unity, Zoe is getting everything integrated and perfectly matched. Melissa is making small edits to the textures as the lighting changes, and…
Brad is working on the intro!
Brad cheering as he finally figures out how to get the loading room the way he wants
At first we wanted to scope out the introductory scene, but after our most recent playtests, we came to the conclusion that the contextualization would be essential to helping the player understand their role. Therefore Brad has dived head first into getting that up and running.
As a reminder, the player will begin the introduction in a movie theater. The projector glows a similar blue to the interactive objects in the game itself. When the player touches it, the projector will project a portal onto the screen with the title to the experience on the other side. Walking through the portal will start the experience. As of right now the scene transition collider has been installed in the room, and Brad is now trying to smooth out the transition. Right now, when the collider is touched, the player is taken to a default loading room. Valve, the makers of Steam, have made it so the automatic loading space is a room with a grid, and they have made it VERY hard to remove said grid. For the purposes of maintaining immersion, Brad is currently trying to get around it.
Next week is the ETC Festival, so we will have a fully playable final game to showcase by Wednesday, come hell or high water.
See you next week!
