Another Update
Starting this week we talked to a DPSS official as well as another group of playtesterd, and from those discussions we decided to work on developing a quest system as well as UI elements to portray those quests. We also added damage interactions and refined the behavior of our previous simulation. Together, when these additions are complete, our simulation will function more like a fully fledged game.
Quest System
To build out the backbone of our upcoming quest objectives, we began by creating a dataset that holds a variety of objectives that we want a person to achieve in a given scenario. This is set up to print out messages that occur when quests are activated and when they are finished in the scenario. Currently, the messages only print out to the terminal, but they will be connected to the UI elements in the future. The status of each quest is saved in the data structure and associated with a description and a point value that can be earned through the completion of each task. Outside the building, a gate is located, representing an exit and a successful escape from the fire. After exiting, we added a scoring system that appears when a player passes through the gate in order to inform them how they performed based on a combination of speed through the simulation and success in completing the objectives.
UI
Currently, we have developed a system that flashes the screen red when the player comes into contact with fire, simultaneously it negatively updates the health of the player. The health is then accessed by the health bar UI component that shrinks as health decreases. The quests that can be completed are also listed in a UI component on the screen. The larger UI element was created out of smaller UI elements that represent each quest. Next, we plan to make it live update when different quests are activated and completed. When a player takes too much damage, then they die, the screen tints red, YOU DIED appears on the screen, and the application stops working. This represents a losing state for the simulation. These UI elements were created using user widgets derived from each other and added to the VR pawn's main camera.
NPCs
We are early in the development of a set of NPCs that will exit the building when the fire alarm is pulled and die otherwise. This would represent a quest. We still need to make the NPCs animated fully and respond to the fire alarm when it is pulled, exiting the building.
Other Tweaks
We added light emission to the fire simulation to increase realism making the fire actually flicker. Smoke gravity and duration was added in order to make it float around lower and longer. Sound effects were added to represent difficulty breathing when a player comes into contact with smoke. The fire extinguisher was edited to make it more difficult for the fire extinguisher to put out the fire.
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