Week 6 - Final Prototype
This week I worked on the final prototype of my project. I would've liked the time to make the cave bigger, add in the narrow diving tunnels, fix the diving physics, and implemented the dialogue, but overall I'm happy with the way the project looks now.
Week 5 - Post-Processing, Fish, and Locomotion
This week I worked on the fish spawner, adding some new types of fish to replace the textureless ones I had before. I also added a post-processing underwater effect from a Toon Water shader to the project, and some overall post-processing to the scene globally such as depth of field and bloom. I began trying to implement the swimming locomotion, so the player will switch from walking on ground to swimming and diving, that way players can swim up and down, but there is an issue with switching back to the walk blend mode once the swim mode is entered. There also is an issue where the player sinks in the water even though the gravity is turned off once the player's head enters the water.
I also added new avatars, which I ripped from my Sims save file (don't tell EA). I wanted the characters in my game to be kids, and I couldn't find any models that worked, especially character creators like Ready Player Me.
Week 4 - Avatar and Cave
This week I worked on what is a time effective way to add in a custom avatar for my game. I made a ReadyPlayerMe avatar, imported it into the project and matched the Mixamo swimming animations to it.
I also started cutting out the bottoms of the cave in Blender, and added some rocks at the end to seal the opening of the cave. I've been researching what to do to have an AI character that the player will follow that swims with them.
Week 3 - Water Shaders
This week I worked on creating custom shaders for the water and planar reflections, as well as a ripple effect for the water.
Unfortunately, there are few water tutorials available for the URP, and those that exist do not always work with the 2021 LTS version. While trying to implement planar reflections following this 3 video tutorial series, I found that the planar reflections system does not work past the 2020 version of Unity. I then followed this planar reflection tutorial, and ended up discovering in the end that the reflections do not work properly when objects intersect with the water plane, as it causes strange reflections such as the bottom of the feet being reflected in the water.
I eventually gave up on reflections after so many hours, and continued through the tutorial series. I tried to implement ripple effects in the water as the player swims through it, using a particle system and particle system camera, but this for whatever reason also does not work after version 2020.
It's a bit frustrating that this change in the render engine has made so many tutorials and materials obsolete, and even tutorials posted only a month ago are running older versions of Unity, which make it difficult to find anything that works currently.
Week 2 - Starting Map
For this week I completed the Roll A Ball tutorial for Unity to re-familiarize myself with Unity, as I haven't coded in it since late 2019. One thing I noticed is that Unity has changed its system where rotating a GameObject also rotates its transform axes, which can be problematic for arranging objects by hand. I had to use the inspector whenever I wanted to arrange objects constrained to an axis.
I then started working on the cave environment, which is from a free modular set of mining tunnels. I adding some lighting and played with different mushrooms/crystals I found on the marketplace. Something frustrating I encountered is that many of the free items on the marketplace that utilizes shaders/light emissions cannot be converted to work with the Universal Render Pipeline, so import broken into Unity. Props like crystals or mushrooms that give off light or have transparency no longer work. I managed to edit the shader settings for a crystal I found, but the transparency/lighting settings still do not work. There are only two free water shaders that are currently compatible with the URP, but they still have issues with their normal maps it seems.
I added some swimming animations from Mixamo which ended up looking pretty good. I have to edit how gravity works when diving under the water, as well as add some sort of way to ensure the player cannot rise too far above the water's surface. I haven't decided yet if I want the game to be in 1st or 3rd person yet, but there will be a companion character so adding the swimming animation in is helpful regardless.
I found a flocking simulation for fish/birds/insects that would be useful for my project, but the shaders are broken for the models, so I'll have to combine the flocking simulation with other models (perhaps from sketchfab). I haven't yet been able to get the collision layers to restrict the fish, so that they collide with the water surface and walls.
For next week I want to create an underwater shader, add decorative fauna to the cave walls, and create a few of my own modular caves to add onto this free pack. There's a generous amount of tunnels in this mine pack, but I need to create sections that have cracks in the bottom that lead to winding caves to dive through. I opened the meshes in Blender and they are fairly low poly, so I believe with some effort I can easily replicate them/edit them to what I need.
Week 1 - Inspirations and Map
While visiting a friend in Gainseville, Florida back in 2018, we took a trip to Ichetucknee Springs, a natural lazy river that sections off into swimming holes and underwater caves. I took a peek under the water and was fascinated by the crack in the ground that led into the aquifer and cave system beneath.
Not long after this trip I attended the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and saw Under a Cracked Sky, a VR documentary about divers underneath the Antarctic sea ice. The film was a beautiful and immersive experience, and even years later I remember this short film.
I'm also heavily inspired by stories set in science fiction settings, especially space fantasies as they're such a fun sandbox to play in. I love the films Alien, Star Wars, and Fifth Element, as well as the games Knights of the Old Republic, Outer Worlds, Doom, Astroneer, SOMA, and the Mass Effect series.
With these inspirations, I want to create an underwater cave system that is subtly alien, not of this Earth. I want to have fauna, fish, and insects that are familiar but strange, such as the examples below that are mostly real plants but do not feel like they exist.
I am mostly a 2D artist but would like to improve my skills in 3D, and so I want to challenge myself to make this game only with 3D assets. I've found some modular cave assets on the Unity store that I believe would allow me to create this underwater system, as well as some flocking animations for fish and shaders for water. I would like to try modelling a few alien fauna in Blender to improve on my skills in that program.
I want the cave system to feel as if humans have recently started to inhabit it: they've fled underground due to turmoil on the planet's surface and have rarely resurfaced the past decade. With this I want to add elements like a metal makeshift ramp into the water, as well as some things that might be hanging in the cave system like wind chimes. I think a halocline would be interesting to add, but might be too confusing in a 3D modeled environment.
My stretch goal is to have two children travelling in the underwater caves, a brother and sister taking a trip outside of their community to look at a sparkling ceiling full of crystals and glow worms, the sister telling the brother that this is what it was like to look at the stars.
My ultimate stretch goal, if I end up having a ton of time to work on this, is to add a section after the crystal cave. I'd like for the brother character to wake up from this dream about his childhood in the caves, he's much older now and lives on a space ship with his daughter. I'd like for the both of them to look at the stars together out of the cockpit window, to resolve thematically his desire to see the sky.
For the figures of the characters, I was thinking of taking inspiration from the game Tacoma, where the characters are all colorful holograms and have few distinguishing figures. Since there are free basic character controllers and 3D models on the asset store, I may take some "dummy" figures and make them glow so that you cannot distinguish much about them beyond their silhouettes.
For the map, I took inspiration from the Silver Glen Spring cave system since I'm not very familiar with how aquifers work. I took some liberties to make the cave more winding and twisting, though having some areas where the player can swim and breathe. The map starts on the left and ends on the right, the largest chamber being the crystal cave.
