Dev Blog

digm520admin / / Research
March 20th, 2018

Current Research Exploring Game Play at Science Center Tom Tits Experiment – Project Experimenta

Tom Tits Experiment Homepage
This was referenced in the research paper “Designing for Transformative Play” by JON BACK, ELENA MA´RQUEZ SEGURA, and ANNIKA WAERN. The basics of it are that there was work done on a project called Experimenta (originally “The Mission”), where designers worked to create a large scale game that visitors of the Tom Tits Experiment science center in Södertälje, Sweden could play while they interacted with the various experiments around the exhibit.

Key Quotes on Details from the Paper
  • “The design has been iteratively developed over two years, and repeatedly studied over the course of the project. It is now installed as a permanent part of the science center’s exhibitions.”
  • “Allen [2004] describes an interactive experiment as typically including: (1) a surprising phenomenon, (2) some way to interact to explore the phenomenon, (3) an explanation of the physics, or biological, principle underlying the experiment, and (4) a connection to everyday phenomena.
  • “Experimenta is constructed by rebuilding and sensor-equipping such classic installations, so that the experiment can measure how ‘well’ the user performs [Bergstr¨om et al. 2014]. The result is translated into a number of “points,” which are saved to a RFID card. The points are then used to drive a big ‘machine’—a toy marble labyrinth mounted close to the entrance of the science center.”
Paper Citation
[1] J. Back, E. M. Segura, and A. Waern, “Designing for Transformative Play,” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 1–28, Apr. 2017.

digm520admin / / DIGM540, Mesh, MeshGenProject, Scripting
March 19th, 2018

Real Time Updating Gear Mesh – PROTOTYPE

Prototype – Real Time Gear Mesh Editor

This example build shows the real time updating capabilities of the current scripting behind the gear mesh creator. This also has some of the functionality of the original build, but that part is buggy when trying to tie it in to this current build. This build is solely to show that the real time editing of the mesh does work with the current script structure.

There is still significant work needed to combine this real time updating feature with the effective gear generation coding to create a single, cohesive build of all the elements.

digm520admin / / C#, Conventions, Scripting
March 15th, 2018

Coding Conventions – Write Better C# Code

Some practices to write better C#/.NET code

As I teach myself more about C# for scripting games, it becomes more apparent that it would be beneficial to learn some of the general conventions for coding to help stream line my process. Things as simple as deciding where to list out types of variables in classes can take a small amount of time that adds up over many projects, but can be eliminated by having committed to hard set conventions. This will provide resources to look to to help with the organization of code in my scripting, and increasing its efficiency.

Book on Proper Coding for Game Development

http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/

digm520admin / / DIGM540, Mesh, MeshGenProject, Unity
March 12th, 2018

Prototype of Gear Mesh Creator in Unity

Gear Mesh Creator Protoype

This is a very bare bones version of the gear mesh generator in Unity. Enter values into all of the parameters on the left side of the screen, then press “Create Gear” to generate a gear with those parameters. Clicking and dragging a gear allows you to move it around on the xy-plane. While dragging a gear, press space bar to delete it.

The scripting allows for the functionality of real time updates to the mesh and colliders of the gears, but I was unable to implement a player based way to use that that. While editing the values in the Unity editor, it will change the shape in real time. This action just needs to be translated to the build side. I will be looking at something where clicking a gear selects it, then the parameters of that gear will fill the boxes on the side, and when the player edits them, they will see the changes immediately on that gear. Then there will be a separate way to access the parameters when needing to create an entirely new gear.

digm520admin / / Mesh, MeshGenProject, Scripting, Unity
March 10th, 2018

Working with Meshes Via Scripting in Unity

Creating a Game Object and Mesh at Runtime
Tutorial Series – Moving Mesh Vertices at Runtime

This short video shows a very basic way to manipulate existing vertices. It simply moves a few vertices along their normals in a sine wave type pattern.

Writing to .CSV Files with Unity Scripting

How to write data to CSV file in UNITY

Printing out arrays of data to .CSV files can be useful when creating large arrays of data for things such as vertices and tris as it can give you a better way to figure out where errors are occurring.

Using InputFields with C# Unity 5.4 (Basic Tutorial)

This video shows the most basic use of input fields in Unity. This may be a direction to take to connect the player to the variables in the gear mesh editor.

Basic UI Functionality – Interacting Directly with Game Objects Unity

Unity 5 UI Tutorial – Input field and event handlers

This video is in the middle of a series by this author on some basic UI functions within Unity. These UI elements focus on types which the player can interact with, and they will cause some change in the game (as opposed to more static UI elements that just show values for things such as score or lives). This can prove useful as a simple way to give users access to the parameters of the gear mesh objects.

digm520admin / / Scripting, Unity
March 10th, 2018

Adding Fog of War Effects – Unity

Some full asset tools created that can create fog of war effects

RPG Map Editor – Fog Of War – Youtube

This tool looks to setup a fog effect on a grid based tile system in a 2D game/environment.

Tutorial 3 : Fog of War – Fog of War 3D Effect – Youtube

This tool looks like it uses light to emphasize the fog of war effect, which it can do since it’s set in a 3D environment, which is more commonly associated with lighting in Unity.

digm520admin / / CoralInvasion, DIGM530, ParticleEffects, Unity
March 9th, 2018

Creating Interesting Particle Effects in Unity

Ripple Effects | Unity Particle Effects | Visual FX Tutorial – Youtube

This video is a tutorial on setting up a basic ripple effect using the particle effects given in Unity. This serves as a basic introduction to some of the different parameters of particle systems. This was useful in setting up the visuals for the projectile in our DIGM 530 project Coral Invasion.

Images and Video of Use as Projectile for Project

Video of Projectile in Motion with Audio

Some Useful Notes:
  • As a projectile effect, it was important to make sure to edit the parameter to have the particle gameObject destroy itself once all the particles died.
  • Editing the parameters of lifetime, rate, scaling size/color all useful to fit the particle between two circle colliders.
  • Was able to attach the particle system prefab to the player script exactly like would normally be done for a generic gameObject used as a projectile. Can instantiate particle systems.
digm520admin / / MeshGenProject, Research, Week9
March 5th, 2018

Examples of Progress with Gear Mesh Generator in Unity

The approach for creating a full gear mesh in Unity was to create a single section of a gear with one tooth with the given parameters/dimensions, then replicate this a number of times equal to the total number of gear teeth and rotate each of these instances appropriately to create a single full gear. An extra bit of scripting was added to place small black spheres around the vertices of the first gear segment created, to highlight the locations of the created vertices.

The prior setup was tweaked to account for the control of spaces between the gear teeth. This appears to have made the instances of the meshes concave in some manner though, so the convex mesh colliders do not completely accurately follow the model around the teeth now. Another technique will be looked into to prevent this from happening.

Parameters:
  • Number of Teeth: 10
  • Thickness: 0.1
  • Body Radius: 0.5
  • Tooth Height: 0.1
  • Tooth Width: 0.1
  • Space Between Teeth: 0.15
Parameters:
  • Number of Teeth: 12
  • Thickness: 0.25
  • Body Radius: 0.75
  • Tooth Height: 0.15
  • Tooth Width: 0.15
  • Space Between Teeth: 0.15

Video Demonstrations of Gear Generation Script at Work

Shows Physics of Full Gear Mesh

As can be seen from this video, the full gear mesh acts as one object even though it is made of several individual objects each representing a gear segment. It also shows that it has basic physics function within Unity’s game space.

Shows Changing Parameters to Create Different Gear Shapes

This video shows directly how changing the parameters of the script relates to changes of the resulting gear mesh. Currently, all the work is loaded at the start of the scene. Further work will be done to translate this to something that can be edited real time.

Current Equations for Determining Geometry of the Gear Mesh – Shown for Creating Single Gear Section

Parameter Equations
  • angleForSpaceBetween = Mathf.Asin(spaceBetweenTeeth / (2 * bodyRadius));
  • angleForSpaceBetweenDeg = Mathf.Rad2Deg * angleForSpaceBetween;
  • distanceToCenterOfSpace = bodyRadius * Mathf.Cos(angleForSpaceBetween);
  • angleBetweenSections = 360 / numberOfTeeth;
  • halfAngleBetweenSections = angleBetweenSections * Mathf.PI / 360 – angleForSpaceBetween; // Cuts in half and converts to radians
  • cosineTheta = Mathf.Cos(halfAngleBetweenSections);
  • sineTheta = Mathf.Sin(halfAngleBetweenSections);
  • cosineThetaAlpha = Mathf.Cos(halfAngleBetweenSections + angleForSpaceBetween);
  • sineThetaAlpha = Mathf.Sin(halfAngleBetweenSections + angleForSpaceBetween);
Vertex Equations
  • newVertices[0] = new Vector3(0, 0, 0);
  • newVertices[1] = new Vector3(bodyRadius * sineTheta, bodyRadius * cosineTheta, 0);
  • newVertices[2] = new Vector3(-bodyRadius * sineTheta, bodyRadius * cosineTheta, 0);
  • newVertices[3] = new Vector3(-toothWidth / 2, bodyRadius * cosineTheta + toothHeight, 0);
  • newVertices[4] = new Vector3(toothWidth / 2, bodyRadius * cosineTheta + toothHeight, 0);
  • newVertices[5] = new Vector3(0, 0, thickness);
  • newVertices[6] = new Vector3(bodyRadius * sineTheta, bodyRadius * cosineTheta, thickness);
  • newVertices[7] = new Vector3(-bodyRadius * sineTheta, bodyRadius * cosineTheta, thickness);
  • newVertices[8] = new Vector3(-toothWidth / 2, bodyRadius * cosineTheta + toothHeight, thickness);
  • newVertices[9] = new Vector3(toothWidth / 2, bodyRadius * cosineTheta + toothHeight, thickness);
  • newVertices[10] = new Vector3(distanceToCenterOfSpace * sineThetaAlpha, distanceToCenterOfSpace * cosineThetaAlpha, 0);
  • newVertices[11] = new Vector3(-distanceToCenterOfSpace * sineThetaAlpha, distanceToCenterOfSpace * cosineThetaAlpha, 0);
  • newVertices[12] = new Vector3(distanceToCenterOfSpace * sineThetaAlpha, distanceToCenterOfSpace * cosineThetaAlpha, thickness);
  • newVertices[13] = new Vector3(-distanceToCenterOfSpace * sineThetaAlpha, distanceToCenterOfSpace * cosineThetaAlpha, thickness);
digm520admin / / DIGM530, Scripting, Unity
March, 4th 2018

Creating 2D Enemy Movement in Unity that is Able to Avoid Obstacles

How can I make an AI that avoids obstacles WITHOUT using NavMesh?

This link contains oStaiko’s answer to the above question, and describes two standard ways to deal with basic enemy AI movement, especially on a 2D plane. These two ways are: a waypoint setup and a more “vision” focused setup.

Waypoint Setup Pros/Cons
  • Good on static maps where enemy can “know” the entire map
  • Deciding fastest routes can be tricky
Vision Setup Pros/Cons
  • Works better for non-static maps/obstacles
  • More difficult to setup (scripting-wise)
  • Better for open maps, can work poorly in more constricted spaces

Example Script for Setting Up Raycast AI to Move Around Obstacles

Unity 3D – Enemy Obstacle Awareness – AI – Code Sample

This link leads to some sample C# code for setting up a script that gives an object raycast vision to avoid obstacles and refocus on a target.