Larissa Urbiks

I wanted to have a realistic environment for my assignment and designed an island. I put some objects on the island and tried to tell a story with them.

The story is about “Treasure Island” – a long forgotten island in the middle of the ocean. The army found a document that was marked as very important. Unfortunately, it was in such a poor condition that they were only able to read some coordinates. They looked for them, but all sources said that there is nothing than water, so they decided to fly to the coordinates, and they found Treasure Island. At this point, the scene begins. A special unit just landed and is going to discover the island. They don’t know what to expect and if there are other people or animals. They find a treasure chest that is not even hidden. Various skeletons are lying around it. Did they die while trying to open the treasure chest? Are there islanders willing to protect it and killed them? Or is the island enchanted and a course on the treasure chest? The soldiers decide to go further. They want to find out who the dead people are. They find a cabin, a water tank and a helicopter on the other side of the island. “U.S. Army” is written on the cabin. Obviously, soldiers were stationed on the island, and they may be the skeletons. What was the mission about and why is the document the army found marked as important? There must be something significant in the treasure chest or something else on the island. The special unit is going to search for more hints. And they don’t know yet if they are alone on Treasure Island.

The user would discover the scene by exploring the island such as I did in my video. He might ask the same questions and trying to find some answers.

After a while, I enjoyed working with Unity, and I immersed myself in my scene. It worked well to add different textures to the terrain and place and enlarge objects. Unfortunately, many objects I wanted to place weren’t available for the Unity version we use. I also figured out how to animate my soldiers. But I had significant problems with the sound, and it took me almost one hour to figure out how to set up the sound for certain objects. The problem was that the sound played the whole time no matter if I was close to an object or not. I adjusted the settings in the same way our professor did in class, but it wouldn’t work. After one hour, a fellow student found out that we need to uncheck the audio setting in the main camera.

I was wondering what the functions of the main camera are? For what can I use it? And is there the possibility to have more than one camera? I also was wondering if there is a better way to add water to a terrain? Because my water doesn’t look realistic at all and from some perspectives, it seems merely like a shadow. And is there a possibility to change the head height during the play mode or to look up?

It was the first time I created a scene with Unity and, obviously, it’s not perfect, but I had fun trying it out!