As we are coming up on Alpha, we have been working to prepare and finish a level for our game. In terms of gameplay, we have decided that we will have different sections of our game, where in one level the father and daughter are separated and want to find each other, and in another level they will find each other and work cooperatively to escape the forest. The mechanics of the daughter and father will still stay the same throughout the levels.

The monster is seen by both the father and daughter, and each will have to tackle it differently. The daughter has to hide from the monster, while the father can shoot at it. The animation for the monster movement has been completed, and has been done in After Effects as opposed to traditional frame by frame. Because we chose a design that is sort of an amalgamation of body parts, there isn’t a traditional move cycle and therefore contains more freaky-looking flailing motions. The animations also do not have to contain different directions of movement, as the limbs are pulling in every direction. Along with the monster animation complete, there are a few sound effects for the monster as well. 

Monster Nearby:

Light Growl 1:

Light Growl 2:

Monster Scream

For the design of the level, there are level concepts for the different levels we will have in our game, so we have an idea of the different lighting, color, and placement of the props throughout the game.

Along with level design, there has also been an outline made of the game’s overarching plot and levels. Therefore, we have an idea of roughly what we want to convey throughout the game. We have also started to make the level we will show for Alpha. This level involves two paths, one for the father and the other for the daughter, in the woods during nighttime. This was made using the Terrain tool in Unity. Parts of the path have been decorated with a variety of nature objects, such as mushrooms, branches and rocks using free assets from the Asset Store. We have also placed objects that the father and daughter will interact with, such as a fence that needs to be shot, and a note that can be read.

In terms of changes that have occurred throughout the game, the first is that the father shooting animation has been implemented and works in all 8 directions.  We have also changed the post processing settings to get a nicer effect, as there were strange color artifacts and therefore wanted to reduce them by tweaking the post process material parameters. Another change is that a small bug where the dialogue displayed incorrectly has been fixed.

We also had multiple fixes regarding the camera. One problem that was fixed involved the camera clipping into the ground if the player was walking up or down a hill. A script that moves the camera based on the terrain height has been created to mitigate this. Also, there were many tall trees that would get in the way of the camera and therefore not allow the player to see the daughter or father. Therefore, a transparency for objects that appear between camera and protagonists was set. This was implemented using C# code with standard material attached to the objects, and changing the alpha channel. However, there is an issue in which the tree objects in the scene are part of the terrain and therefore cannot be taken in as a gameObject. 

Finally, music has been made to fit the gameplay. Two different pieces of music have been made. The first piece is intensive with a lot of instruments to represent a fast speed and a rainy forest. There have been some sound effects added to boost up the atmosphere of getting lost and rain getting heavier and the world getting darker. The second piece is more moody, and creates a slower and sadder style.

Two instruments, the piano and cello, are mainly used in this portion, to represent the daughter and father respectively. The beginning portion contains a solo of each instrument. It then transitions and the instruments start to weave together, showing that they are trying to approach each other, but fail as the melody doesn’t converge. The instruments continue to try to connect until they finally converge into the same melody. 

In the future, we will want to possibly have the second piece of music work so the music of each instrument is in a separate channel for some portions of it, so each player hears a different soundtrack. We also want to fix the issue regarding the tree transparency, by possibly replacing all of the trees in the terrain with the same type of Prefab gameObject at the beginning of the game being loaded. However, this could make the game run slower so we will conduct more research on how to solve it. Work will also begin on UI, along with any assets that will be needed for Alpha next week. We will also continue working on level design and add more interactables for each player by Alpha. 

Parasite

The parasite controller got a UI makeover to give players feedback on their jump strength, and the network code for their physics and feedback was fully implemented.

Human

The Human also got networking fully implemented, now fully affecting the parasites physically when they hit them, as well as affecting non-player physics objects when they hit them with the bat.

Possession

Possession also need to be networked, which was done this week. The possession is now a global rpc which is triggered when the human’s face collider intersects with a parasite. This is now all hooked in with our GameManager singleton, so we can customize networked effects and announcements when a possession takes place. We have a full UI announcement system in the works to announce to players when global state changes.

Overall, tech moved forward a lot this week, but it was a lot of first drafts. We are now in a state where we can iterate and test and we have a lot of iterating and testing ahead of us.

Level Design

The basic level got a makeover this week, now featuring plug-and-play maze sections that we can use to build whatever level structure we want.

Props

We built a few basic props to place around the level to give it more interesting physics moments and liven up the otherwise blank initial design.

Characters

More progress on 3d modeling the human player, along with some mixamo work to get the rig and animation workflow started.

Design

This week we refined the details of our gameplay and decided on a solid MVP which will likely evolve over the semester.

Basic Gameplay:

The Human player, assigned at random in the beginning, has traditional First Person controls, and wields a baseball bat that they use to defend themselves from the oncoming parasites.

The Human must prevent the parasites from jumping into their broken helmet, if they fail to do so the parasite will swap roles with the Human and thus has the ability to win the game. Only the human can fulfill the win state (currently just getting to a goal position). After a swap the human has some invulnerability.

The parasite has the ability to walk on any surface and can launch themselves forward as a ragdoll in an attempt to land in the helmet.

In-Engine Work

This week we worked a lot on the basic programming structures and library which will manage game state and hopefully set a good foundation for future work and yet-to-be planned mechanics.

Dynamic Lobby

We have finished the dynamic lobby which lets players set their username and join a lobby before starting the game. This involves managing a dynamic list of joined users that is used with the game manager which assigns initial player roles.

Game Manager

The Game Manager is a core object which manages the active game state and handles things like tracking the current Human player, guaranteeing temporarily invulnerability, and deploys necessary messages to all clients.

Mockup Level

A basic mockup level with simple lighting, several spawns, and a ‘goal zone’ at the opposite end.

Human

We have a basic humanoid model and swing animation we pulled from mixamo, as well as a simple raycast which scans where the player “hit” their bat and an effect to show where the contact point is.

Parasite

We have a basic 3rd person parasite controller which enables and disables a rigidbody when they launch so they can roll around, as well as a custom camera controller so that players can maintain a view of their target regardless of their orientation. After a few seconds of little movement (they’ve physically come to rest), the controller resets back to the normal controller.

Audio

We have several basic audio effects built but yet to be implemented, here are a few samples:

Visuals

Some mockups for the final look and feel of the space facility:

A simple hallway in the facility.

Some mockups for character look and feel:

Challenges and Successes

The individual player controllers feel really good, and the basic gameplay vision is coming together.

Networking has made tough work tougher and integrating everything together for a working prototype took much longer and was less successful than expected. Thankfully its just a matter of spending more engineering time on it and so far nothing has been a roadblock.