Link to YouTube video: https://youtu.be/6kKAmyzpCnA

Well, it took me along time to get used to Unity. I never realized how difficult it would be to create a video game or 3D environment in a world that you make yourself. I tried a bunch of things that didn't seem to work, or maybe I just didn’t understand them. One of the main things was just getting used to Unity's UI. I found it difficult to go exactly where I wanted to in the scene, and thought the navigation and controls were kind of clunky. Also, wish that a lot of the properties on assets were easier to understand. I'm sure there's a lot I could have done with certain materials, but I don't really know how to control them. I wanted the water in my scene to have a more realistic look, so I added some sort of physics package to it that should have made waves and such. In the final export, that unfortunately didn’t work... Ideally, I'd like to learn a little bit more about how to make scenes more interactive, because that's where it gets fun. How to get into the boat and drive it around, swimming, even climbing a tree.

I did learn how to do a LOT, though. Once I found my way around Unity, it wasn't too difficult to figure out what I needed to do. Resizing and moving objects was a useful skill that I picked up, as well as shaping terrains. I found an atmospheric beach recording on FreeSound and added it to the boat. Since the recording is only 3 minutes, I checked the "loop" button to make sure it would keep playing. I can't believe how much material there is on the asset store to just import for free. The actual process of bringing downloads into the project was super easy too, and I love how the store is built right into Unity. I made use of a few different packs that had textures and objects for the beach, such as the trees, sand, rocks and boat.

There's an infinite amount of possibilities I can explore within Unity. For the beach scene in particular though, I like the idea of a "stranded on a deserted island" scenario. You could find and use resources from the island to help yourself stay alive until a boat comes and saves you. The story would play out as naturally as possible, with the player figuring out that they can use essentially anything in their surroundings as a tool.

I imagine the player getting up from a plane crash and making their way to shore, where they can harvest some food and other supplies. You would have to build a fire to signal to people offshore, keep it burning with wood, build shelter, and eat. There's so many assets that would fit right into the island's design and decoration that would also be functional as you have to use everything to your advantage. In my film classes, we are always told "show, don't tell" in scripts. Hopefully, little would be explained in the experience, and the player would just have to figure out how to survive. This is just one idea I have, there are lots of possibilities, and it's fun to think about what you can realistically make on your own in Unity, and bounce ideas off other people.