City Level

So this is for those that havnt seen the city yet, I put this together and added (the most recent) factory model into it. If any of you have suggestions or requests as to what to do to the model please let me know and I will get right on it.

We need a layout based on Water Pollution Issues

From my research, water reclamation isn't really an issue. It's a process.  I'm not really sure what we could do with water reclamation.  It's just the process of recycling waste water (sewage, or toxic water).

I drew this little dummy diagram up, I want to get this set in stone before we move to far forward.  Take a look at this Designers and think about the issues.  how we could layout the map and what the goal is along each path (this image is nothing official, it's made to inspire).

GDD Progress

Hey all! Sorry I missed the scrum yesterday, i was under the assumption since we weren't meeting in person the scrum wasn't happening either haha But! i did begin work on the GDD and made some pretty decent progress. I will upload it to Google Drive for you all to see, its just a simple word document with pictures. Take a look and see if there is anything else we need to add, I believe i covered pretty much everything, but there may have been an element i forgot to add in.

Scrum

I posted to the blog a couple things. I also commented on Nate's posts. I think we really do have our hands pretty full with just the one environment. It's going to take a lot of work from every aspect to complete the first level. Just adding a few things from the asset store today, when I looked at those objects, I remember how much work goes into not just modeling the structure, but texturing and mapping. I think if we put all our energy into one map, it would be a lot smarter. We could still do a landfill and/or water stuff in the same map, but nothing extravagant. We've got to think about all the work that goes into every asset.

Anyway, thanks to those who have been working hard, we only have about 7 weeks left. So we've really got to get rolling on this. 

Also, the GDD is due Thursday and we really don't have much for that. 

I think the goal this week with the GDD is going to be to get things set in stone. We've been too vague thus far and it's preventing us from being productive. 

-Alex

Assets

I downloaded a couple human packs today.  I also got steel bars, and concrete barriers for restricting traffic, a building. I'll save the unity folder to the Google Drive.

Also, there are some cheap, paid assets that we could use:

Fuel Truck: $2.00

Simple car pack: $2.00

I'll keep looking for more.  Check out the assets that are on the google drive.  I added some of them to the scene just to get feel for them.  It made me realize that Texturing is going to take forever probably.

Tech Demo

I have a working implementation of the cars as well as the lights problem in the same scene.  I have uploaded this to the google drive under the TechDemo folder.  Until we have a model for the city that we are going to use, there isn't much point in trying to make the worker car go someplace once its free from traffic.
Is this proof of concept and enough to complete the tech demo or do we need more?  Let me know what else we think we'd need.  I'd rather not have to meet up on Sunday if we can get it all done today.

Light Puzzle

Has anyone actually tried to complete the light puzzle currently designed?  Maybe it's simple and I'm just dumb but I can't figure it out.  I have been working on creating it in Unity and have a pretty good start.  Its fully playable but doesn't have victory conditions yet.  In my opinion, its good enough for the tech demo due Monday.  I just uploaded it to google drive (its in the LightPuzzle folder).  I'd really love to get feedback on it soon so I can try to finish it today.
I'm going to move on the coding the cars problem for now.  I'm hoping to get much done on these two puzzles today as possible.  I'll keep everyone updated on the progress and hopefully some of you will have a little time here and there throughout the day to provide feedback on what I've got going so far.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday...

Don't forget that we're meeting in the Mariott Library Sunday at 1:00.  It'd be good for everyone to be there.  We plan to work for a few hours on the rapid prototype.  We will need designers working on the GDD, we will need people hunting down Unity assets or modeling unique assets.  It'd be awesome if you can make, I think if we're all together working for a few hours, we could make some good progress.

We will also be doing our Scrum at 1:30 on Sunday, so if you're there, that simplifies the communication.

Level Design

I tried to list all the level ideas we had over the past few weeks, whether we plan to use them or not. You guys can also add a level or change one if I described it wrong. Of course, none of this is finalized, and can be changed at any time.



Number of Levels:

• 3 levels, each with a few stages within.
• None of the levels have NPCs or enemies.
• The pace of the levels is set by the player. However long it takes them to finish the puzzles and tasks.

Level 1: Air Pollution

• Stage 1 / Traffic: The player will have to solve a puzzle by changing traffic lanes to improve traffic flow for automobiles, thus helping lower carbon emissions
• Objects: assortment of automobiles, highways, roads, buildings in background, construction
• Stage 2 / Outside Factory: The player will solve puzzles that help improve the factory, and make it more environmentally safe.
• Objects: factory, factory equipment, gas emission effects, pipes, factory automobiles

Level 2: Water Pollution

• Stage 1 / Oil Leak: A pipe transporting oil from an oil rig out at sea has burst, contaminating an ocean reef. The player must interact with ocean wildlife and objects to help plug up the oil leak.
• Objects: ocean wildlife, water, other oceany things, pipes
• Stage 2 / Oil Rig: The oil rig isn't working properly. The player will have to reconfigure the oil rig's parts to get it working properly again.
• Objects: oil rig workers, pipes, oil rig parts
• Stage 3 / Animal Treatment: Many animals were covered with oil because of the leak, and need to be cleaned. There are specific ways to clean the animals depending on their type: bird, reptile, mammal, etc. Yet, because the animals are covered in so much oil, it's hard to tell what animal is what. The player will have to look for key identifiers or characteristics in the animals to tell which type of animal it is, and give it the proper treatment. The player fails it they guess wrong to many times.
• Objects: different animals, oil, cleaning equipment

Level 3: Waste Disposal

• Stage 1 / Landfill: The landfill's leachate pipes are all messed up. The player has to fix the landfill's leachate system by solving a pipeline puzzle.
• Objects: Waste, pipes, grass, trees, dirt
• Stage 2 / Recycling Center: There are four recycling bins, each labeled with a different material. The materials are plastic, paper, metal, and glass, and each material is represented by the number 1, 2, 3, or 4 on the keyboard. Objects will be shown to the player, and they have a second to press the number that corresponds to the type of material the object is. The player can get only so many wrong before they fail.
• Objects: waste bins, glass objects, metal objects, paper objects, plastic objects, conveyor belt
• Pace: This task is fast paced.

Due tonight - Character & Level Design

I haven't seen any updates for Character and Level design? Has anyone been working on these?  We have outlines due on this stuff by midnight tonight.

- Alex

Audio Design

I am going to start a list on this post of noises that we need. I am going to try to organize them by level and have a general overview of what we should be looking for.

Overworld Map:

• People chattering
• Car noises (revving, braking, etc.), Sirens
• Construction noises (Cranes, back up siren, objects dropping/hitting each other, hammering, sawing, etc.)
• General water noises, swamp noises (for ambient to give a gross water feel), fog horns, bells on buoys
• People Coughing

Level 1, The Big Smog:

• Refineries (fire, molten lava, hissing steam)
• Construction noises (see above)
• Traffic noises (see cars, horns, sirens, screeching breaks, acceleration, etc.)
• Billowing smoke from smoke stacks and what not
• Bus noises 
• Saws (cutting, spinning, grinding)
• trees falling (Deforestation?)
• Clanging, industrial conveyor belts, other industry type noises
• Coughing 

Level 2, Without a Paddle:

• General water noises
• Sludge (dense plopping)
• Dripping
• Fog horns abound
• Spilling noises
• Boat/ship noises
• Dumping noises

Level 3, Waste:

• Dumping of dense materials
• Dumping in general
• Crunching
• Shattering
• Materials being thrown
• Plastic bins
• Tractor noises
• Flies 
• Crumpling (Paper, foil, etc.)

The list so far is very general just to get an idea of what might be needed for each level. It would be cool to have distinct sound profiles for each level, giving them each a unique feel. 

Feel free to add to and suggest other ideas. 

Sprint 2

Sprint 2 Plan  ::  February 14th - February 28th

Notable dates:

Paper Prototype:
{     Due Tuesday, Feb. 19     }

Level Walkthrough:
{ Due Thursday, Feb. 21    }

1st Rapid Prototype:
{ Due Monday, Feb. 25      }

The Game Design Document:
{ Due Wednesday, Feb. 27 }



Designers

• An overview of Level Design.    {    Due Monday Feb. 18    }

• Write the portion of the GDD addressing level design.

• Be very descriptive.  Include images and references to deliver the intended message.

• For each level, Talk about each puzzle.  How does it work? What are the possible outcomes?  What is the message from the puzzle?  

• Discuss the pace of the puzzles and the levels as a whole.

• Work with artists to determine the layout of the levels.

• Make a level walkthrough to portray the flow of each level.  {  Due Thursday, Feb. 21  }

Artists

• Explain the look and feel of the level.  How does the mood change throughout?

• Explain assets of every level.  Why are we using these assets? What is the asset's purpose?  Does this asset have a message?  How might the message influence the look of the object?

• What is the player hearing?  How do we influence their feelings with art and sound.

• Work with designers to determine the layout of each level.

• Make an overhead map of each level with important features noted.

• Get a few more models for programmers to utilize in Unity.

Programmers

• Get a rough prototype of the gameplay.  1st Rapid Prototype. {Due Monday, Feb 25th}

• Get various interactable objects into Unity. 

• Try to get some sort of puzzle ready for the tech demo.

* Note this all relies on more models from Artists.

Tasks Through Monday

Level Design:

If I remember correctly, this task was divvied to Dom and Austin:  You two communicate on these points.  I don't know if we need artists to help on the overheads of Maps.  If you guys would like Christina/Kyle to jump on that, please announce that to me or on the blog as soon as possible.

Here are the key things to submit for level design:

number of levels

what the player experience is for each level

NPCs, enemies and other interactive objects contained in the level

general plan for pacing through the level

overhead map of the level with important features noted

Character and Audio assets:

Christina is going to head up on character and object assets.  If anyone has any idea how we can add character to key objects as to send a certain message, post those ideas here.  I think the key elements will be that we make the objects that are broken or that are causing the bad voodoo, make them ugly, rusty, dirty, dark/drab tones, etc.  The objects we use to make things cleaner and prettier, make those things shiny, colorful, etc.  We should also outline mechanics of these objects.  And answer these questions: What does this object do for the puzzle? Why is this object used in this map? Why is it used for this puzzle?  

Audio: Kyle is going to head up on that.  I'll list things as I think of them, too.  Mostly what we're looking for is good ambient noises for background noise depending on what you're looking at.  If we're at the zoomed out level of the industrial city, we should hear the construction, the traffic, etc.  If we zoom on the traffic jam, the traffic should be noisier, you should be able to hear the hum of engines and people yelling, etc.  Then we need to think about sounds that are specific to puzzles and objects.  If I drop a big metal beam, there should be a good thud or clang.  This might also need to depend upon what the objects come into contact with.

Then we have to have the following laid out for our Sprint 2 (Feb 14 - 28).  We need to progress in these categories:

• Level Design
• Audio Design
• Character Design
• Game Design Document
• Tech Demo/1st Rapid Prototype

I'll get the sprint laid out and posted here with people's duties hopefully by this Thursday.

Reeeaaadyyyyy....Break!

Asset List

Level 1:

Overall:

- smog

- buildings

- smoke stacks

Car Puzzle:

- Cars

- Busses

- roads

- construction signs

- gas station

- bicycle station

- fuel truck

Factory:

- machinery

- machine parts

- steam

- coal

- wind mills

- solar panels

Construction yard:

- steel bars

- crane

- steel containers

- various construction vehicles

Level 2:

Overall:

- Nasty Water

- Oil rigs

- litter

- Sludge lines

 Possible things:

- dead sea life

- coral reef

Level 3:

- piles of waste

- conveyor belts

- factory

- recyclables - cardboard, plastic bottles, etc

Maybe these things:
- people
- fire

Air pollution notes

Notable facts:

- Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulates, and biological matter into the atmosphere that cause harm to living organisms or damage the natural environment.

- Air pollution has become so great that Earth's natural cleaning process is inadequate to fully cleanse itself.

- The biggest contributing factor to air pollution is the burning of fossil fuels.  It's a part of nearly every human's life.

- China leads the world in air pollution emissions.

What you can do...

Driving:

- Take public transportation as frequently as possible.

- If you do drive, plan all your stops so they coincide with your trip.

- Ease into acceleration. Gunning it burns much more fuel.

Home:

- Use less warm water.  Wash clothes on cold settings, wash your dishes with cool water.  Warming water is very expensive in energy consumption.

- Turn off your lights when you don't need them.

- If your power company supports renewable energy, find out how you can consume and encourage renewable energy.  Rocky Mountain Power provides customer's with the option to buy into their Blue Sky Renewable Energy Program. The blue sky program uses renewable energies such as wind farms and solar power instead of abrasive energies like burning fossil fuels.

- Reduce your lawn size. Having less lawn that needs to be weekly maintained with watering and mowing will do a great deal.

- Don't have more than two children.  The biggest contributor to air pollution is man.  Every single person contributes a great amount to the problem.

Proposed Efforts:

- Klaus Lackner at Columbia University devised a system called Air Capture that uses membranes that bind CO2.  They are sometimes referred to as "artificial tree" because they do the job of a tree by breaking down CO2, only artificially  do it 1000 times more efficiently.

Scrum Meeting tomorrow at 3:00PM

Everyone try to be available tomorrow at 3:00PM for a scrum meeting via Google Hangout.  We need to discuss what we've done and what to do through this next week.  

-Alex

Without A Paddle - Basic Puzzle Ideas

So I've been trying to think of some good puzzles we could use for this level, and I've come up with a few fairly basic ones. Are we still striving to make this like a Rube Goldberg Machine, though? Because all I could think of were tracking down the items you needed in the other sections.

That aside, I've sketched up two quick references:

 

So the layout I've thought of was to make this big area, which has 3 different sections. (to make it easier to think of) Section A will address an oil spill, B will be an inhabited area with a ton of litter, and C will have sludge line(s). We could probably just have ducks and maybe fish to simulate how bad water pollution is, assuming our players couldn't tell that from how horrible this water will probably look considering how it's just a slab of land/water that they'll actually see.

 

Section A:
I thought of two things we could do for this one. One of the most prominent images you see when oil spills happen are ducks that are covered in oil. So maybe a puzzle that involves washing them off?
Aside from that, I also thought about maybe tracking down the floaters used to help contain oil spills (or maybe tying together netting, empty bottles and stuff).

Section B:
Items that you would use in the level could be found here, since it's all just miscellaneous litter.
And as you use the stuff here to help the other sections, it helps clean it?

Section C:
All I could think of was to plug it up. We could have a timer on it so the plug would spit back out, and while it was plugged, you have to find a way to turn it off?

- Christina

Water Pollution

Ways water gets polluted and solutions to different types of water pollution:

Reducing Water Pollution At Home, Domestic Sewage and Agricultural Wastewater:

Decreasing solid surfaces around your home will allow for less water runoff, the excess water can seep into soil and gardens, helping reduce runoff polution.

Use native plants, they require less water and are more tolerant. You can even create your own compost to reduce the amount of chemical fertilizer required by your plants and will prevent chemicals from getting into water systems.

Water lawns and gardens efficiently, don't over water. The less we use the more we conserve.

Don't flush non-degradable products and dispose of all pet waste properly. (out of storm drains and water supplies)

Dispose of all chemical waste properly. (keep paints, oil, cleaning solvents, polishes, pool chemicals, insecticides and other hazardous household chemicals out of drains, sinks and toilets)

Recycle used motor oil, don't pour it down drains. 1 quart of motor oil that seeps into groundwater can pollute 250,000 gallons of drinking water.

In the Ocean, Industrial Wastewater

Plastics producers must be held accountable. Plastics account for 70% of marine litter. Find ways to stop using plastics in your day to day routine. Recycle all plastic you use. Clean up plastics off of beaches.

Ocean acidification. CO2 emissions are a huge problem for marine life. The acidity level of the oceans is causing coral reefs to die off and the underwater climate to change. Finding ways to reduce use of CO2 emissions is crucial to helping slow this process.

Redirect urban runoff away from the oceans and watch what chemicals and waste is being routed into runoff.

a good general pollution resource

http://www.nrdc.org

Waste Issues

"If properly designed and well managed, landfill can provide a hygienic and relatively inexpensive method of waste disposal. On the other hand, poorly designed or poorly managed landfill sites can create wind blown litter, attract vermin and allow contamination to leach into the soil. In addition as the waste breaks down methane and carbon dioxide are produced, which are greenhouse gases and can cause odor problems and kill surface vegetation." 
"Each year the UK produces 100 million tonnes of waste suitable for anaerobic digestion. Most of this, 80 to 90 million tonnes, is made up of manures and slurries, but 12 to 20 million tonnes is food waste."
http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues/waste/

"Every year, the United States generates approximately 230 million tons of "trash"--about 4.6 pounds per person per day. Less than one-quarter of it is recycled; the rest is incinerated or buried in landfills. With a little forethought, we could reuse or recycle more than 70 percent of the landfilled waste, which includes valuable materials such as glass, metal, and paper. This would reduce the demand on virgin sources of these materials and eliminate potentially severe environmental, economic, and public health problems."
http://www.learner.org/interactives/garbage/solidwaste.html


Municipalities generate approximately 154 million metric tons of waste each year but they are
not the only sources of solid waste in the US. The primary sources of solid waste are split
between livestock (39%), extraction and processing ore minerals (38%), crops (14%),
municipalities (5%), and industry (3%), totaling over 4 BILLION tons of solid waste each year.
The vast (> 90%) majority is linked to mining and agricultural activities.

The ~50 million metric tons of solid industrial wastes
each year are categorized by their impact on the environment, by law, into toxic, corrosive,
ignitable or otherwise hazardous material categories.


Municipal waste disposal is an
environmental problem that costs users
billions of dollars each year. The EPA
reported that the typical composition,
before recycling, includes paper, yard
wastes, food wastes, plastics, metals,
rubber, leather & textiles, wood, glass, and
other materials including disposable diapers

Muncipal Waste Stream (2007)
254 million tons before recycling
paper 32.7%
yard wastes 12.8%
food wastes 12.5%
plastics 12.1%
metals 8.2%
wood 5.6%
glass 5.3%
other 3.2%
rubber, leather & textiles 7.6%




http://people.hws.edu/halfman/Data/PublicInterestArticles/Landfills.pdf

Level Aesthetics

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Initial Research

Ok, so like I said, i made a few categories of what I believed were the top issues, what society viewed as the top issues, and what were the top political issues. Here is what I came up with:

My Issues:
1. Renewable Energy
2. Renewable Resources
3. Resource Effeciency
4. Air/Water Pollution
5. Overpopulation and its effect on Climate

Political Issues:
1. Clean Energy
2. Climate Change
3. Water Quality
4. Biofuels
5. Waste/Consumption (Disposable Society)

Popular Issues:
1. Climate Change
2. Energy (Clean/Renewable)
3. Waste/Consumption
4. Clean Water
5. Food (Famine)

Here are some links (in no particular order):

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080428212142AA78iF0

http://webecoist.momtastic.com/2008/08/18/most-important-environmental-issues-of-today/

http://srel.uga.edu/ecoviews/ecoview060326.htm

http://news.yahoo.com/top-five-environmental-issues-2012-election-173600279.html

Level 1 Research

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/
http://www.universetoday.com/81977/causes-of-air-pollution/
http://membercentral.aaas.org/blogs/scientia/interview-father-global-warming
http://www.universetoday.com/52392/air-pollution-pictures/

Kyle's sample level

Looks like a good start to me.  My first thought on it is that we might want to make the points of interested larger.  We might even want to greatly exaggerated the smoke stacks and things like that to make them easier to see as the target for the player to see from a distance.  I am certainly no artist however so maybe we don't want to go this route.  Just figured I'd put it out there since I was thinking it.
Also, can we get an FBX export of whatever you currently have so the programming team can start trying to set actual level geometry in the holodeck?

Kyle's potential level model.

So I spent some time yesterday and today kinda getting some level design stuff down since we are supposed to get that stuff moving. I started drawing concept art and then decided that it wasnt a great idea to do that with how little time we actually have. Instead, I started making a model for a potential factory background that can be used in a level. It is a pretty low level model currently, with very basic shapes and no textures. If you guys like the idea though, I can improve it and we can use it for the game.
Please give me feed back!

Added a crane and base to a metal structure... looks kinda shitty, can make it look better some other time.