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.