Week 4 - 4/19/2024

Finalizing

For the final partial week, we finalized some features that were in development, but we were mainly focused on adding details and fixing bugs found during the final playtest. We finalized the NPCs and their behavior in different situations. There were a lot of details to fix which included sounds, lighting, object collisions, scoring, movement, and many other elements of the game. We also put together marketing materials which included the trailer that is now on the front page of our website. 

NPCs

Last week we were in early development of our NPC functionality, so we had a lot of work to do this week. There were NPC skeletal meshes that came with our asset pack, but we could not figure out how to load them into mixamo. We went to Sketch Fab to find a new NPC asset and rigged it up with animations for idle and running. They run out of the building when the fire alarm is pulled. They are also capable of being caught on fire and extinguished. 

UI and Scoring

This week, we finalized our UI and scoring systems which are closely intertwined. Last week we had quests just printing out to the console. This week the quests are part of the UI so the player can easily see them in their POV. We also finalized our scoring system. It is based on finishing tasks and a multiplier for doing the tasks quickly. The game ends when they player reaches the emergency meetup point and they receive a score in their UI. We had to tune the points for each task and the time multiplier to make sure that the player is prioritizing the right tasks. 

Sounds

We added sound effects for calling the police and talking to the NPCs in order to increase realism and help the user know exactly why they’re doing each of the actions for fire safety. They help to emphasize the value of calling the police and ensuring that everyone makes it out of the building when in a fire safety scenario.

Other Changes

We made some other tweaks to the rest of our simulation in order to increase realism as the more realistic the simulation is, the more helpful it is. We gave the fire extinguishers ammo, so they could run out of foam. We made a police car pull up to the building if the authorities were called. We fixed issues with quest recognition of fires being put out. We added a larger poster. 

Trailer

Early on in the week, we wrote a script for the trailer and recorded in-game footage fulfilling the shots that we listed in the script. The initial script had an IRL shot of someone using VR in it, but when we recorded this, it seemed awkward and made the trailer seem unserious. Because of this, we scrapped most of the script and rewrote it better. Our trailer begins with an action sequence to hook players in. This is followed by a voice-over that explains the product. The second half cuts between our emergency expert interview and gameplay to show how we implemented his advice. Having the expert in the trailer serves to demonstrate the realism of our game.