This week the mechanics team focused on setting up and locking down ideas for the basic mechanics of the game. Progress was made with setting up dials and buttons through the Leap Motion’s framework in Unity. The mechanics team, in addition to setting up the website, continued development of the narrative and looked into assets that could create a cohesive experience.

LeapMotion development has proved slightly different than what we had anticipated, since collisions between the hands and the environment are not detected using Unity’s collider system, rather just checking for overlap of the hand with assets. The team considered some options to get around this, such as attaching a collider to each fingertip and working from there, but ultimately settled on just using the overlap checks for each finger, as for our purposes there are only certain interactable objects in which collision checking even matters. Dials and buttons have been implemented in this way, with an example of dials here.

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On the asset team, it was discovered that there are a general lack of assets that fit together cohesively and with our vision for our purposes, with many props being set up for more sci-fi situations, or being part of large packs that contain many additional assets we do not require. Since narrative is a large part of our vision, it is likely that our asset budget may exceed what was originally planned.

This image is part of the HQ PBR Retro Office Props Kit, which is one of the asset packs we are considering.

Next week the Leap Motion team aims to continue to implement more gameplay mechanics, such as levers, and plugging wires into a decryption machine. The asset team will begin to purchase assets and set up a basic scene that can be iterated on, along with making some set pieces that can be utilized such as the missile detection radar. We plan to be able to demo these mechanics in class, as well as show off our initial vision for the level to get feedback.