This week I made a new smaller mountain model for the Science Fest demo. I kept a few things from the larger mountain like some of the trees/coins and the main jump. The new layout of the mountain is the main jump through the ring of fire in the middle, a zig-zag path on the left side where the user skis around flags down the hill, and a giant tunnel to ski through on the right side. The middle path should be the easiest as the user just has to go straight the entire time and no obstacles will be in the way.

I am still thinking of stuff to make the tunnel on the right side of the map more interesting. Coins will be added to the inside of the tunnel, but I want to add something else to make it more of a challenge.

Here are some screenshots:

For next week, I will try to remake the reset function, add more coins throughout the three different runs, place some trees at the bottom of the hill, make the snow fall globally instead of locally, and add a skybox to the scene.

This week I added some more jumps and obstacles for the mountain. I added a ring of fire to jump through, a larger tunnel, more trees, some giant candy canes, turned the smaller tunnel into a fireplace, and made a snowman model. I changed the lighting to give it more of a night-time appearance. We also got the project running in the cave and got shadows to render correctly.

I would add some screenshots for the project’s current state, but my laptop may have died and I am unable to do so right now.

Some things to work on for next week are making a smaller model for the Science Fest demo. This version would be divided into about 3 or 4 smaller sections of a mountain in which the user would choose which set of obstacles to ski through. One would be a ski jump, another would be a half-pipe, and the rest would be things of that nature. I will focus on the new layout until Science Fest. After that, I will return to the larger mountain which will have sort of a holiday theme.

This week I added some models and made the mountain about four times bigger. Some of the things I added are a few trees, coins, flags, a smaller jump, a tunnel to ski through, and a barrier at the bottom of the hill to stop the user. I also added snow, a reset button, some temporary textures, and set a terminal velocity so the user doesn’t go flying through obstacles and coins. The sphere was also made bigger to help the user pick up coins. I chose to delay making the side boundaries for the hill because making those will make modeling the obstacles in the middle of the mountain more difficult. So that will be one of the things I do last.

Here are some screenshots of the current state of the game:

Right now, there is plenty of room to add more obstacles, so that is what I will focus on for next week. Some of the things I could add for next week are more trees/jumps/flags, possibly an underground tunnel, maybe a hoop to jump through, and other obstacles as I think of them. Also, I will look into placing skis where the sphere currently is, that way the user knows where to stand while trying to ski down the mountain.

This week, I created a simple mountain model with one jump and added it to the unity project. The sphere seems to respond correctly to the terrain. At first, when the sphere was rolling really fast, it would go through the terrain on perpendicular (or near perpendicular) collisions and fall into the abyss. I think the high speeds were causing the glitch, so I slowed the sphere down and made the terrain thicker. It hasn’t had any problems since then, so hopefully that won’t be an issue in the future. I also changed the lighting color, but that was just to make it a little easier to look at. Sam and I also went through the project and got it added to the Cave Shared directory.

Here are some screenshots of the current state of the game:

For next week, I am going to try to make a more complex mountain model as this one was just a test model. I will hopefully add in trees, more jumps, and obstacles to make the game more entertaining. And I will have something at the bottom of the hill to stop the user from flying off the edge.

This past week I went through some Unity tutorials and got a sample game working where the user controls a sphere and rolls around the scene, collecting cubes until they are all collected. I didn’t go through the tutorials I mentioned in the last post because I found what I thought was a more relevant set of tutorials, found here: http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/roll-a-ball/introduction . I figured since the ski slope simulation relies on an invisible ball rolling down a hill, this would be a more relevant tutorial as opposed to the first-person shooter game I mentioned last week. However, I might go through a few of those tutorials down the road as they did seem to cover some useful things.

Here is a screenshot of the Unity game:

For things to work on for next week, I am hoping to make a new (possibly larger) model for the mountain, import it into Unity, and get the sphere’s physics to properly respond to the mountain’s terrain. Also, I will hopefully get the project added to my github account

For my independent study project, I am planning on making a newer version of the ski simulator with the Unity game engine. The initial steps for this project will be to go through some Unity tutorials and get a sample project running (since I am completely new to Unity), get the physics working in a simple demo of having a ball roll down a hill, and get the original ski simulator working in Unity. From there, hopefully I will be able to make some additions to the program.

This week, I got my blog account set up, looked through the first video in the series of Unity tutorials, and organized some plans for the project.

Next week, I am hoping to go through the rest of the Unity tutorial videos found below and hopefully get the tutorial project up and running: http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/survival-shooter/environment