Late update–I completed the work last night but had to go to bed.
I spent most of the day doing modeling and 3D animation. I have a fully-rigged Robot that animates a typing loop at its desk. This robot is an NPC that can be interacted with!
A robot, sitting at a desk!
Same robot, fully rigged.
Trees!
The dialog system is still in progress. Check out the Day 5 post–which will be up in a few hours–to see what it looks like!
More progress, although not in the direction I was anticipating!
The “blink” script continued to be problematic, so I removed the fancy one I grabbed from the Unity wiki and wrote my own very simple one. It works. I will release it CC-BY when I upload the source and build.
I did some “hallway testing” with family members. One of them had trouble getting out of the starting room because the door closed too fast after it opened. Instead of bumping up the delay, I did some hacking and came up with a context-sensitive “polite” door that refuses to close as long as you’re looking at it. Unrealistic? Maybe. Convenient for the game? Very much so! Like the “blink” script, I will release the door controller CC-BY later.
Last, the targets did not fully disable their collider when you teleported to them. I added some code that fixes this.
Got lots more lighting done. I figured out my workflow…
Adding a UV map in Blender
Telling Unity to create lightmap UVs.
It’s wasteful to use 6 huge images, but I did make a skybox using Unity’s skybox shader. I used Ingar’s space sky textures from Unvanquished for now. These are available CC-BY-SA 3.0 and I will make these files available when I realize a build and the source.
A table, a chair, a couch, a bed, a bedside table, two lamps, a computer monitor, a keyboard, a small desk, and a refined version of the curvy desk, all handcrafted with the finest non-GMO free range organic vertices by yours truly.
Here’s the fun bits!
In game screenshot. Office!
In game screenshot. Polite door won’t close until you look away. Just like Wheatley!
In game screenshot. Bedroom lighting.
In game screenshot. You have to find the password!
New version of the office, with fancy chairs.
Computer monitor.
General mesh outline. I don’t see me adding new areas in the time I have left in the challenge.
Adding computer monitors.
Second take on the appartment. New furniture!
Early take on some lighting.
Early build with bed.
Lots of progress today.
Every so often, my “blink” mechanic was leading to a black screen with no “unblink”. I made some changes that I think have solved the issue. My script removed the targeted cube from the scene when teleporting to it, re-enabling it whenever the user teleported somewhere else. (So the user wouldn’t be standing on a cube.) I think that using setActive(false) on the cube was causing issues. So instead, I enabled/disabled the mesh renderer for that cube. Time will tell if this was the issue. It happened much more on my phone than it did on the PC.
I improved my door controller, adding a checkbox that allowed the door to switch between “toggle” mode and timed-wait mode, the latter of which causes the door to close again after a few seconds.
I added sound effects for the door using the Google VR SDK tools. Many thinks to Pempi from the Freesound project for his awesome elevator sound. He says he actually broke into snuck into the mechanical penthouse of a building to record it! Whatever the source, I often use it for both elevators and (with some pitch/length alterations) doors.
I blocked in all the major areas where I want gameplay. There are three areas. The first is the long balcony. To the left is a small apartment complex (with one apartment that the player can enter). To the right is the main office for the apartment complex. The idea is that the player will first have to go to the apartment office to get the key to get into the apartment itself, after which point they can look for clues.
Early morning shot of the game environment.
Apartment hallway
Apartment Office
I made a few small detail models, including a desk and a light fixture. I’m planning on creating some couches, tables, bed, lamp, etc for the apartment.
Light Fixture
The desk. I’m super happy with the way it turned out!
Ugh. Just, ugh. I was originally going to use Blender to bake lightmaps. However, the indirect lighting feature only supports “approximate” gathering, which makes for some interesting lighting bugs, like this one, where the light is going through the fixture itself:
The light from the bulbs is going through the light fixture to shine on the ceiling.
Strangely, there was a patch that enabled true raytracing for indirect lighting for Blender 2.6. I’m not sure why this was removed for Blender 2.7. I think it’d be very useful!
So, I decided to use Unity instead. I’m not exactly enthused with Unity’s lighting system either–I gather I’m not the only one–but it’s workable.
Here’s some screenshots.
Early take on the lighting on the balcony.
Actual lighting in Unity. Ignore the half-columns. I’m fixing those!
Early version of balcony, no lights.
Early version of office, no lights.
Balcony with pre-baked lightmaps in Unity.
Office with pre-baked lightmaps in Unity.
Tomorrow I plan to get a basic on-screen dialog system working, as well as creating some computer and switch props. I haven’t decided if I’m going to put people in the game. Maybe robots! Robots would be easier.
I also need to decide if I want to fight with Unity’s lightmapper more or try to pull off vertex lighting. I don’t think vertex lighting will work very well, but I might give it a shot.
Until tomorrow!