Capstone Highlight 4 - GitHub

One of the best things I probably contributed to the team besides the development I've done, is to create, manage, and improve our Git version control. When I first created it, we mostly only worked on the master branch (primarily during first semester of Capstone), and I was usually the only one to actually be using Git since we were having issues with all of us working on it at the same time.

At the start of second semester of Capstone, I really worked on making sure that we utilized GitHub more effectively. One of the most important things I learned was taking a more in-depth look into using the Git command line. I had been trying for way too long to manage the repo without using the command line, and when I started learning how to use the shell it made things 100x easier.

For fun, I've taken a few screenshots of our GitHub repository that show some data about our usage of it so far.

 The image above shows frequency of code added, it can be a bit misleading because some of the things I added, I added for Nevin or Ryan.

 This is the punchcard for our repo, it shows all frequency of commits at different times of different days.

My favorite feature of GitHub, the network graph of our repo. I could only screenshot a portion of it, but it is basically a timeline of all the different commits on all of the branches, and when they were pulled between different branches.

Capstone Highlight 3 - Main Menu Credits Screen

Another screen I created for the main menu, the credits screen was probably my favorite portion of the main menu to create. I have a previous post where I showed a video of a previous stage of the credits screen, and this video shows off the new textures that I added to the moon itself, while also simply highlighting the fact that I really enjoyed making this feature.

Capstone Highlight 2 - Main Menu Story Screen

One of the more recent additions I made was the story screen on the main menu. It gives a great view of the entire main menu environment, and also shows off the stories created by Sam Neils. A video of this screen is below.

As you can see in the video, you can choose different stories to view, scroll through the story once selected, and also get a good view of the moon orbiting the planet. A screenshot of the code to run the scrolling and choosing of the stories is below.

Capstone Highlight 1 - Popup Changes

For this half of the semester I'm going to focus on what I did that was fun and interesting to me, rather than a week by week account of every small thing I did.

The video above showcases the shader I wrote for the popup ad virus ability. I did this with some initial help from Mr. Das, who taught me how to create the initial ring effect using Unity shaders. I then took it a step further and added a mask to it, and also drove the ring by a sine wave so that it would loop between a large and small circle repeatedly.

The code above shows how you can create the pulsating circle effect.

Capstone Week 24 - Build Assembly and Retrospectives

Today I spent a good amount of time bringing in different features from various people into the build. These include (please forgive me if I forgot to include yours or don't mention you on here):

• Ryan F's out of bounds wall
• Ryan F's wall "hit" effect
• A nice shader feature that I will be looking at to see how he did it
• Mario & Geoff's new level iteration
• Alex's William Tell armor and crossbow

Also I integrated my work that was done that I discussed in my previous 2 posts. This next day of class we will go over these changes and see what everybody thinks.

Tomorrow is also retrospectives for midterms! There are a couple things I know already that I didn't do the greatest on:

1. Attending online meetings - There were a few online meetings that I just forgot to show up to, which is unlike me. I think this was just because of our changes in times for meetings, but I should've been at a lot more of the meetings. The one plus to this is that each time I wasn't able to make a meeting, I did post a standup and a notice that I wouldn't be there.
2. Getting work done early - For some reason I've suffered from a temporary bout of procrastination this first half of the semester, tending to do my work more towards Sunday and Monday nights. I know this needs to change for me personally, as I hate staying up too late (which doing this forces me to do) and it also gives me less time to work on my tasks. I'll be working on getting my tasks started earlier this next half of the semester as I should have been doing this whole time.

For this first half of the semester I would give myself a 4. While I was doing good quality work, I felt I could have (and should have) done more. I should've pushed further into researching shaders and just generally pushed myself to do more, as I know I can.

Capstone Week 23 - Menu Controller Support

This week I got the rest of my tasks done. These are listed below!

Done:

• Main menu controller support - I ended up going with the plan I mentioned in my previous blog post about using Unity's navigation flow to allow a controller to navigate through the menus. In the image to the right, you can see the navigation flow arrows that Unity visualizes for you. This allows you to see the flow of navigation and easily know what is going to go where. This was created using the "Explicit" type of navigation on the buttons. This can be seen in the next image. I use explicit because I don't want the navigation on this menu to be interacting with the UI elements on any other menu unless explicitly (ha! I'll show myself out.) desired. It is a very nice feature being able to specify the direction that you want as well, and Unity even visualizes your custom links for you (hence the image at the top with the arrows). Once we get an official options menu design, I can then setup the navigation for that as well. I also included a picture of part of the script I wrote down at the bottom of this post. There you can see how I handled moving between each button.
  
• HUD Rework - I also was in charge of implementing Samuel Neils design for the HUD rework. It actually turned out to be a nice design once implemented, as I had my doubts based on the Google Draw that Sam had made. But with a little nice touch here and there it really stands out now! Images of the new EKG location/design are shown below. I also have pictures of the new loadout "look" but they aren't the greatest so I'm going to retake them and I'll include them in my next post. The EKG works slightly different this time around. As you can see, it was moved to the left-hand side of the screen. It was then stretched so it filled the left hand side when at full health. As you lose health, the EKG moves closer to the center of the screen, the color changes, and your health percentage is shown floating above it. All of this happens with a lovely, smooth Lerp, so it appears the EKG and text are sliding to their new position rather than "teleporting". This makes for a nice system, and will look especially cool if there's a sudden drop in health, or if there is any DOT on the player.

Capstone Week 22 - Random Loadout and Menu Controller Support

This week was the beginning of a new sprint! I completed all of my tasks for the previous sprint, which I am happy with. Up next/already done are a few things:

Done:

• Random loadout button - this button was requested to be placed on the character customization screen so that you could easily choose a new/random loadout. It can be used by either clicking on it with the mouse, or by pressing "Y" on your controller (if you have one plugged in). It then fills up the remaining empty slots you have in your loadout with completely random items (weapon, armor, hack, virus). This means if you want to use one specific item, and have the rest be random, you simply have to select that item and then hit the random button and voilah, you have a random loadout with one (or two if you want) item of your choice. Pressing "Y" again however will clear out your entire loadout, it will not save the item you chose. This could perhaps be changed to not do this in the future, but it depends on playtesting feedback on the button.

Doing: 

• Main menu controller support - While it is a seemingly simple addition to the game, I think it will provide a lot of ease of use and enjoyability to the menus. I plan on using Unity's navigation controls within their UI system. It's actually very nice because it shows you the "flow" of your navigation, and you can change it to whatever you'd like. This allows you to set up the ability for the UI to respond to inputs from controls or "Tab". For example, using a joystick or D-Pad to navigate up and down a list of buttons without having to set up any scripts that are incredibly complicated.