Moving Forward - New Features, New Areas!

Hello again! It's been a little less than a year since we finished our capstone class. In that time, Joel and I have primarily focused on getting through our last semesters. Now that we're done and fully graduated, however, we're back to developing the game!

As Joel has already said, he's found ways to create bump maps and normal maps for our various textures. As our game lacked these previously, I can really say that this addition gives a whole new field of depth to our game's graphics! Both the Park and the Mall are benefiting from this, and we've come up with other ways to improve what we already have.

For instance, I rediscovered the LOD Group Component a few weeks ago. I had seen it in action in my earliest college days, but I hadn't realized its true potential until quite recently. Working with Joel, we've begun making some models with a high- and low- polygon version each. I then go into Unity and set up the system so that if a player is far enough away, the lower polygon version is shown instead of the higher one, and ultimately the object is cropped out entirely if the player gets too far away. With this addition, we can focus on even better graphics than we could before, and worry a little less about polygon count in models. We have only just started using the LOD, normal maps, and the like, but in time, we could make a lot of existing content look even better!

Strictly on my end, however, I am pleased to report that the game is now capable of saving the player's progress! It took a while to figure out, but now the game remembers which levels have been cleared, thus paving the way for the player to permanently unlock other levels (like the Park). But that's not all, Music and Sound settings have become even better, in that they are also saved upon being changed. Now you can experience the sound of the game however you like, and the game will always remember for you! Plus, if you are listening to some tunes, you can now also mute the whole game. This preference is also saved, too.

Perhaps in time I can make a means to save the items that have been collected, but I have a lot of other things to focus on, first, such as improving the gameplay that already exists, and getting the Mall's furniture store put together - yes, we are finally doing it!

Last but not least, I am also getting to work splitting up some scripts that had gotten too big and were handling more than one kind of job. In my last semester, I learned how important it is to keep scripts as modular as possible, while making sure they handle just one kind of thing, if possible. I've already split up one script into two, but others will be forthcoming, depending on what I discover. I won't go into too much detail, however, because in the end, the functionality of the game will not change because of this. It will just become easier for me to manage and edit later.

Look forward to future posts from me and Joel - we'll be talking to you all again soon!