Maze-CRAZE

Assignment

To make a final project with Unity: an AR experience or a game.

Short demo of the Maze

Brainstorming

My partner Vanessa and I initially wanted to make a ping pong ball that would have someone’s face on it. We ran into many problems with Vuforia, an extension/plug-in component for Unity that makes AR possible, that we ended up giving up on our idea. One of the problems was importing a 3D scan of a model into Vuforia and then Unity. Just a lot of issues from the shape of the model to its coloring and lighting.

We tried to rethink our strategy and we knew that we didn’t want to simply make something appear on a metro card. We thought of maybe making a portal of some sort, but did not have any solid idea. We asked ourselves “ok, clearly this is not working out for us, so what can we accomplish that has nothing to do with AR?” We stared at the example scene that we had on hand and then it clicked, “Let’s make a game!”

We have never made a game before and since we are at ITP – why not? Due to our lack of experience and a short amount of time, we have decided to make conditions to win “physical”, meaning directions simply written in words. A hunt for an object akin to a real world scavenger hunt came to mind, so we made a maze game in which you have to look for a cat. We looked for an ugly picture of a cat, because Vanessa has a wild sense of humor and I like Vanessa’s antics.

Process

I have prior experience with Valve’s Hammer Tool, so Unity’s interface was not too wild for me. I knew how to work the cameras and how to position objects in 3D space.

Vanessa took care of the scripts and did research along the way for textures, assets, music, and memes.

I was pleasantly delighted with our teamwork. We never ran into any idea issues and naturally split up the work.

Challenges

Main challenge for me personally was figuring out the terrain and making sure that the player does not get motion sickness or dizziness of any kind.

Apparently the size of the terrain needs to be adjusted in the settings of the terrain and not manually, which in hindsight makes a lot of sense. At the time, however, it took quite a while understanding the terrain system.

As for figuring the problem with motion sickness, adding different textures and making the terrain non-linear helped a lot.

Conclusion

I think that I finally found something that I really enjoy making: video games. I hope that this is a start of something greater to come. I love video games and complex map layouts. Making it myself filled me with pride and a sense of accomplishment.