(Devlog 4) Interactive Environment Assets


Interactive Environment 

Paranormal Pursuits emphasis on the    players immersive experience is crucial to the games success. Introducing different assets into the game that the player can interactive with provides the game with a certain level of volume that creates a polished feel while navigating through the characters journey.


Locations to hide

A closet function has been added to the game so when the Ghost is hunting the player, the player has the opportunity to hide from the Ghost inside one of multiple closets set up around the map. The function is important, as it gives the player a chance to survive each hunt.


Closet

The closet is comprised of two scrips attached to the object, the first script being the 'ToggleController' script , this script is set up using collider detection to detect if the player is touching the object, and based on the that variable it gives the player an option of toggling on and off its visibility.  The function of toggling off and on the players visibility imitates the player walking into the closet and  hiding  from the Ghost.

The second script is the 'ClosetZoom' script, this script is responsible for switching virtual cameras based the same keys used to toggle its visibility. When the player clicks the keys to  enter  and exit the close, the main camera is switched to a specific camera responsible for zooming into the closet. This small zooming feature provides a polished  feel to the game, it clearly displays to the player when the character has entered and exited the closet.


Challenges 

The biggest challenge I faced was setting up multiple closets, the way the script was initially set up did not work for when I duplicated the closet object. After a lot of playing around with it I managed to set it up correctly, however I was not able to set it up too use one key to toggle the players visibility, it has to use a separate  key for toggling the players visibility off and on.

The second challenge I faced was making the players camera zoom into the correct closet. Since there is multiple closets set up around the map, based on which closet the player decides to  enter the camera has to zoom into that closet, which took me a while to set up as initially I had the 'ClosetZoom' script set up on the Player game object. This was a problem because when it was set up on the Player the script would not recognize which  closet the Player was trying to  enter  and it would zoom into only one of the closets. By adding the script to each closet I was able to make each closet independent    of each other and have separate virtual camera set up to follow each closet. 

Edit #1  -  After backing up my project I notice that the zoom function would not work like it did. After a lot of trial and error I figured out why,  the 'ClosetZoom' and 'ToggleController' scripts were attach to the same closet object, the zoom function would simply not work. Because both script use the same  keys to toggle on and off their behavior, unity craps it self essentially and does not run the 'ClosetZoom' script. 

Using my sheer brain power and supreme intelligence I managed to think of a solution which would baffle many. I added an empty game object with    a separate  duplicated collider to the closet object (empty game object is a child of the closet object), I then attached the 'ClosetZoom' script to this new collider.

Edit #2 - Upon opening the project again I noticed that the fix does not work. However, I managed to properly fix it. I deleted the empty game object with the second collider and combine the 'ClosetZoom' and 'ToggleController'  into one big script. For some reason when adding both scripts together, it works perfectly fine, even after closing and reopening the project.

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