Sept 25th, 2023 – October 1st, 2023
Production
This week we welcomed our clients Laurie and Diane to the ETC. It was a great opportunity to have them playtest the beginning stages of our game and to have the chance to finally meet in person.
Design
During our in person meeting we also had the opportunity to discuss the echolocation and that helped us to narrow down the echolocation design. Below is an early mock-up of how we envision the player using the echolocation in the game and the type of feedback they will receive.
We also worked on the game play and flow for the second part of our game.
Art
This week we worked on adding an underwater skybox, updated the mangrove root model, animated seagrass, and started creating 3 types of fish. We used a free online underwater skybox and implemented it into Unreal as a material (https://opengameart.org/content/ocean-hdriskybox). We also plan to tweak the color of the skybox to mimic the murky green shade that comes as a result of the red tide.
The seagrass was procedurally modeled and animated using Houdini, with random scale, bend angle, and rotation.
The mangrove roots were updated in Houdini to have more randomness with the l-system that is creating the extending branches.
We also did research on the specific fish that live around the mangrove forests in Sarasota, Florida that dolphins feed on. We narrowed it down to focus on the mangrove snapper, schoolmaster, and striped mullet as fish that the guest will interact with.
Programming
We use post processing for creating the limited eyesightness. By creating this effect it will help us to give a more realistic underwater view where things don’t come into view until you get closer to them.
We are also looking into how we can showcase how red tide will affect the player’s view when they encounter it in the game. So far this has been a difficult challenge, but we are working on finding a solution.
We have also constructed the foundational framework of the project, including GameManager, SoundManager, Dolphin and Fish classes.