AJ Abell Final Project: Virtual Maze

AJ Abell Final Project: Virtual Maze


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bs1cY-fKO8&feature=youtu.be

 

For my final project I created a virtual maze that you can run through. It turned out pretty well, but the concept I had in my head before making it was a lot different than what I ended up with. Part of the reason for that is because a lot of the things I wanted to do I could not figure out how to do in Unity so I had to do some audibles. I wanted to make it where you would run through the maze and you would be running from a pack of wolves who ate your family or had to get to the end in time to save your family, etc. Of course I wanted it timed so if you did not complete the task then the wolves would catch up to you and you would die and the game would end, but I did not know how to do about 80% of the things I needed. I looked up on Google how to have things chasing the FPSController and found out that I would have to create an object that's a child of the Controller and specify all of the settings from there, but I could not figure out how to do any of that and, on top of that, if I did figure it out I could not find anywhere that showed how to make those wolves eventually get closer and eat me, I only saw that it is possible to create an object that follows another object. So, that part did not go as planned, and that made my project a lot less appealing. Another challenge was that once I took out the FPSController and replaced it with whatever one it is that you need to make it compatible with the Oculus, the controller could no longer jump. When you pressed space a bunch of statistics would pop up, and I pressed every key but none of them would make the person jump and I could not find anything about it online. So now I had to go back and make my entire world flat, whereas before I had it where you would have to climb some things so that was also a letdown. Off of that, I have water in my scene but if you fall in then the water just disappears and it doesn't look like there is any unless you're on top of it and I'm not sure how to make it so you feel like you're under water but that part of it is also a downer because it just looks unfinished.

Another thing I did not think about was the dizziness factor. Sitting there with the Oculus on and running for 5-7 minutes through the maze I imagine that a lot of people will feel dizzy because you are constantly running but your body is not actually moving anywhere. It is a lot less exciting sitting there and being fully immersed but then still having to press the arrow keys to move, kind of takes away from the whole immersiveness factor, it would be cool if I could put it on the Vive and somehow maybe use the sticks to run and turn.

Overall I think it turned out pretty well, but it could be a lot better once I really learn how to use Unity. The concept is there and a I still think it's cool, I'll just need to spend some more time figuring out different details. There are still some things that pop out at you that are done with Playmaker but it was hard deciding how much was too much and how much was too little, and I'm not sure if I maybe have too little but at the same time it felt weird to have something jumping out or moving at every corner. Also, each wall of the maze is a resized cube, and I did each wall individually and just kept pacing that same cube. You can only imagine how long that took.

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