Even in Arcadia...

Path showing an NPC’s movement around the Arcadia Gardens Lobby as they read informational plaques. I’ve been using the BetterPaths tool from the Unity Asset Store and it’s a huge improvement to my workflow! 

Promotional materials for Intrepis’s newly developed habitable planet, Arcadia, and its premiere attraction, the Arcadia Botanical Gardens!

Getting the conversation system up and running. Ozzy’s a big believer in the benefits of that ancient leaf known as ‘tea’, or ‘the mighty leaf.’

Working on nailing down the design for the Flowers Room. The bright colors of these exciting plants make them one of the most popular attractions of Arcadia Gardens! 

At HyDraught Maxine envisioned using her genetic engineering skillset for a new purpose: to bring the lost flora of Planet Blue to life. For years this idea was a dream only, until CEO of CosmiCorp Ozymandias was so moved by her vision of a rebuilt Eden that he personally funded the project. Working with CosmiCorp, Maxine was able to create the breathtaking experience you now find yourself in: The sublime and wild nature of Planet Blue, reborn.”

Go anywhere you like within the gardens, but be careful if you find yourself in the desert! 

Here’s what the avatars for my final two main characters look like in the game :) On the left is Roxxi and on the right is Maxine.

This is what the level looks like from the outside at the moment! Since the entire game takes place inside this space, you’ll never actually be able to see it from this angle while playing... except perhaps if you encounter some promotional material for the in-world architect :)

These avatars give an idea of what the characters in the game will look like. The guy on the left, Ozzy, I just finished today. Joan (middle) and Bill (right) have been done for awhile.

These oh-so-exciting colored cylinders are stand-ins for the main NPCs that will be moving and acting within my game world. Eventually they’ll look a lot nicer than this, but for now I’m focusing on implementing the timeline for each character--shown here are each of their starting positions at the start of the game. From their, each will act on their own timeline, moving throughout the world, interacting with each other, and enacting scenes regardless of the location of the player character at that moment.

Been awhile since I posted! I’ve spent a lot of time the past week working on story/dialogue/various other writing tasks, so haven’t had much visual content to show for it. But I’ve also been working on and off on THIS! A model of the floorplan for the entire game! Because the game is on a timer (and a fairly short one at that) I don’t want to waste any time loading different levels, so everything will be in a single level. That means I need to be efficient with my polygons, but the benefit of modeling everything myself (rather than using models from Google Warehouse or other online sources, as I’ve done in the past) is that I can do just that. This is what I’ve got so far--eventually each room will be covered in a dome-like ceiling, connected by tunnels separated by airlocks, and there will be a second level “canopy” resting on top of the tree-like structures, accessible by climbing their spiral ramps. 

I spent today figuring out how to get my NPCs to move around the way I want them to in Unity. Because I don’t have the time to create 3D, animated characters, I’m using 2D images for my NPCs. Today I fixed up a script that rotates the NPC gameobject along the y-axis so that it always faces the player’s camera (but doesn’t tilt along other axes, as it did at first when I tried using transform.LookAt()). I also set up my NavMesh before, which is how Unity determines areas that NPCs can walk on. With a NavMesh, I can designate NPCs as NavMesh agents, which can then be programmed to move intelligently along the NavMesh and find the fastest route to their target destination. My NPCs will move in a timeline, which I can implement simply by changing their destinations when the game has been running for a certain amount of time. 

Had a heavily-scheduled day, so I didn’t get much done on this project. But I did model a few variations on this leaf-shaped table. Several of them will be arranged in the lobby, the first room you see upon entering Arcadia Gardens--a spot for visitors to sit, mingle, and discover who else has made their way to this little spot of paradise out in the middle of space. 

“Discover a new Eden at the Arcadia Gardens orchards, perfectly designed and curated for the comfort and amusement of man... if you’re here at the right time, you might even find yourself drunk on the fruit of paradise.”

“In one of the most famous Old Earth stories, the wandering hero Odysseus finds himself in the land of the lotus-eaters, where his crew eats the fruit of the lotus plant and finds it so sweet that they never wanted to leave. Here, experience the intoxicating scents and sites of our own lotuses, just as beautiful as those Odysseus saw. Let our crew of gondoliers ferry you about the lagoon’s three pools, each of which exhibits different types of water-plants. If you reach the bar in the room’s far end, you can taste the sweet lotus fruit yourself… perhaps you’ll find that you never want to leave our gardens!”