-What are your overall feelings on your project? Are you pleased, disappointed, etc.?
Overall I was pleased with the outcome of the project. After working on the two ski simulator demos this semester, I feel more comfortable with developing programs on Unity, creating models with 3ds Max, and designing textures with Paint.NET and the UV editor in 3ds Max. And I got a little taste of what it’s like to develop video games, which was my main goal for the semester.

-How well did your project meet your original project description and goals?
I feel that my project definitely met all my original descriptions and goals. When I first started the project, my goal was to get something similar to the original ski simulator working in Unity. After working with Unity for a little while, development became (surprisingly) very easy and quick. With how fast development was in Unity, it was easy to go beyond my initial goals for the project and exceed my initial expectations.

-What were the largest hurdles you encountered?  How did you overcome these challenges?
I would say the largest hurdle I encountered was simply getting started with Unity. When I started the project, I had no experience with Unity whatsoever. However, after sitting down and watching some tutorials on the Unity website, I was able to figure out how to make a simple program. Beyond that, I found Unity to be very intuitive and easy to learn for all the other features of the program. Any other issues were usually solved with a little bit of thinking and possibly a few google searches.

-If you had more time, what would you do next?
If I had more time, I would look at designing and implementing animated models with moving limbs in the program as that sounds challenging, but useful. Also, I would attempt to make the project more suited for the web-based and android environments. I might look into these things on my own as I think they might be nice to know and good things to add on to the program for fun.

Also, here is a screenshot from the editor of the entire hill (minus some trees due to the rendering distance of the impostors):

And if you want to download the executables, here are the links:

Windows: https://blogs.discovery.wisc.edu/public/apps/SkiSimulator/SkiSimulatorWindows.zip

Mac: https://blogs.discovery.wisc.edu/public/apps/SkiSimulator/SkiSimulatorMac.zip

Linux: https://blogs.discovery.wisc.edu/public/apps/SkiSimulator/SkiSimulatorLinux.zip

This week I finished up the holiday demo. I finished making and placing obstacles, put coins throughout the mountain, and made the trees look slightly more consistent after playing around with the shaders. Some things I added were houses and a giant christmas tree at the end of the hill, jumps and moving obstacles in the candy cane tunnels, a waterfall in the tunnel with the penguins, a castle gate towards the end of the hill, and wooden archways to help guide the user through the mountain. I also populated the rest of the hill with some previously made obstacles to make it more interesting. And I made a simple script to spin a given object, which I used on some hoops in one of the tunnels and the star on the christmas tree at the bottom of the hill.

Here are a few screenshots of the mountain:

After finishing the project, I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit from the experience. I walked in knowing nothing about Unity and now I find it to be a very comfortable environment for developing programs. I also got to learn C# and explore how to utilize scripting in video games. And with Unity taking care of a lot of the tedious components of the program, I was able to gain more experience with modeling things in 3ds Max. Overall, I would say I had fun working the project, learned a lot, and have no complaints with the final product.

This week I added moving penguins to the hill that walk around and collide with the user and a medal system for when the user collects coins. I also made a light post model, made some christmas lights for the tunnels, and added gumdrops to the candy cane forest. I added some fog to the demo to make the trees rendering in the distance less noticable. After the first jump on the hill, I added another jump with more hoops to jump through. I also got the snow to appear globally now. I just made 3 different particle systems at different vertical coordinates with respect to the user, that way the user cannot ski out of the snow (as easily) when going downhill.

Here are some screenshots:

For next week, I will look at trying to wrap up the project. I will finish adding coins and obstacles throughout the hill and make boundaries to the hill to prevent the user or penguins from wandering off. I might also look into making better house models for the bottom of the hill if I have time.

This week I placed more coins, improved the quality of particle systems, made the skis turn in the direction of the user’s motion, and created some more models. I made a gingerbread man, a penguin, and a poinsettia model and placed some of each throughout the course. Right now, I’m planning on having the penguins walk around as moving obstacles, but as of now they just spin in place as the terrain has irregular heights and I’m not yet sure how to deal with that. I also added fireworks at the end of the hill to make the bottom of the hill look cooler. I attempted to make the snow globally distributed, but this resulted in the user skiing too fast for the snow to catch up. I’m not sure if it is possible to make the snow global and look realistic given the user’s top speed, but I will continue to investigate.

Here are some screenshots:

For next week, I will finish adding coins to the hill, work on getting the penguins to walk around, look into the global snow effect, add boundaries to the hill, and maybe make more models. Some models I might make are light posts, christmas lights, candles, and better looking houses at the bottom of the hill. I might also add some spinning hoops to jump through.

This week I focused on finishing the toy soldiers and adding them to the simulator. I also made some simple building models and textures for the bottom of the hill. I added some large snowmen models near the candy cane tunnels and some particle systems in the candy cane forest.

Here is a screenshot of the toy soldiers:

For next week I will look into making the snow globally oriented, having the skis turn in the direction of the user, placing some coins throughout the track now that the terrain is finished, and maybe add some moving obstacles and other models.

This week I worked on generating some plots for the research paper. I created some bootstrap confidence intervals for all 7 questions in the survey and also made a scatterplot matrix to potentially show correlations in certain user’s responses. I also worked on adding particle systems and textures to the fireplace in the holiday demo. And I finished adding trees throughout the map.

Here is a screenshot of the changes:

For next week I will look into adding some obstacles like snowmen, toy soldiers, and animated obstacles (maybe snowballs or toy trains or something). I am currently in the process of texturing a model for the toy soldiers, so hopefully that will be good to go by next week.

This week I found a few sources for the research paper. One source was particularly relevant since it was a study on the relation between motor skills and a different ski simulator design. I also added a few more tunnels to the holiday demo. I chose not to do the heightmap I mentioned last week as the mountain seemed pretty good after a little bit more smoothing. Also, as a potential solution to the impostor issues, I thought of possibly adding fences to keep the user from getting too close to the impostors and have the impostors draw all the time, that way we would avoid any shader issues.

Here is a screenshot of the tunnels I added:

For next week I will work on adding/editing the research paper and possibly adding some statistical analysis to the report. I might look into making bootstrap confidence intervals for each of the observations. Also, I might make some more models/obstacles for the holiday demo.

This week I worked on separating the obstacles from the original mountain model and placed them into the terrain. I also worked on smoothing the terrain a bit more. I looked into making the impostors more realistic by changing the shaders, but that did not help the cause. Right now the impostors still have the issue of shadows popping up when the user gets close, dramatic difference in appearance, and the trees/candy canes tilting slightly. If I can get the meshes and impostors to look similar enough, I might just make the trees along the path real meshes and have the rest be impostors, so there can be some collision detection.

Here are some screenshots of the game:

For next week, I will be looking into generating the terrain via heightmap, since that will make it easier to generate a smoother hill. Also, I will try to find some references for the ski mountain paper and add them into the Latex project. I will keep investigating the impostors as well to try to make them more realistic.

This week I made a new terrain object for the Holiday Demo. The new terrain is one 10000×10000 terrain object. I’m not sure why the terrain suddenly started allowing larger dimensions, but it seems to work so far. I made boundary mountains and the full-scale ski slope directly out of the terrain object. Also I added some tree objects to the terrain (trees and giant candy canes).

Here are some screenshots of the new terrain:

For next week, I will look into getting the tree impostors to look more realistic and adding some jumps and obstacles to the terrain. Right now, the impostors look quite different when they go from impostor to full model. I think it is an issue with the lighting, so I will look into the shaders a bit this upcoming week. Also, I hope to add collision detection to the trees as you can pass through them right now.

This week I finished the Science Fest demo. I added some more coins/trees, added some point lights and particle systems to the tunnel on the right side, added some point lights to the ring of fire, remade the reset button, and added a skybox to the scene. Also, Markus made some cool changes to the terrain by adding hills and optimizing the trees to allow for more to be rendered at a time.

Here are some screenshots of the Science Fest demo from the version on my laptop:

For next week, I will resume working on the holiday ski slope demo. One thing I will look into is converting the larger mountain model into a single terrain object for more effective tree placement and more realistic surfaces. After going through the Science Fest demo, multiple terrain objects cause weird things to happen to the physics calculations, so it needs to be one object for the terrain. This might not be possible given potential maximum dimensions to the terrain objects, but I will investigate this for next week. Also I will make the models for the jumps separate from the terrain so that they can be more dynamically placed.