By Lenny Martinez

If you just want to see me move around in it: https://youtu.be/shQUnTmgAaM

The world I’m trying to build in this Unity scene is one that’s out of time and reminiscent of a lost temple and loosely based on the concept of a Lost Ground from the video game series .hack//G.U. (http://dothack.wikia.com/wiki/Lost_Grounds).

I started building my Lost Ground by looking through the Asset store for free statues. At first, I had tried to use these dragon pillar statues, but then I settled on the lion statue after I realized I could duplicate part of the prefab statue (the block the lion sits on) to create a space that has a distinct, uniform look and feel. I messed around with the duplication process and discovered that Unity let’s you do math in the input boxes which helped make placing the blocks faster by only having to paste in ‘+1.3’ next to the coordinates of each duplicated block. While working on this, I did wonder if there was a way to quickly combine the duplicate + move features to create structures faster. I also wondered if there was an easy way to group objects that were already in the scene. I also really want to know if there’s a way to copy and rotate when you copy so I can get a pavilion made up of the stone blocks, and surrounded by 8 lion statues (2 at each corner).

I wanted there to be people the player could interact with although Lost Grounds in the .hack// games never had this, so I included a set of identical soldiers. I want to further develop this section by having them fight or taunt each other when the player draws near.

The last piece I added was the temple + angel statue with the music. I had initial troubles getting the first person controller to interact with the temple from the asset store because it was a mesh. Then I learned how to apply a mesh controller and through trial and error played with the options within.  With the Angel statue, I tried to be a little more fancy and added extra lighting, both spot and point, to make sure it was visible to the player. And while I was working on this, Unity crashed. And I hadn’t saved it in a while. So I also learned that lesson while making this part. The remake took less time because I didn’t have to fiddle with the mesh controller or the coordinates of the objects, but I did still fiddle with the lights. In terms of animations, I want to animate the lights to move/change in intensity over time/based on where the player is.

The Thought Exercise: What kind of stories could be set up in this scene?

Thinking as a gamer, I feel inclined to make adventure stories that all relate to exploring the sandy terrain and the idea of a “forgotten temple.” In an ideal world, the player would run/jump through a vast desert, looking for clues to a puzzle by searching multiple lost temples with different statues inside and focusing on the sound emanating from each temple to give hints and also guide him. In this case, I want to hide specific parts of a riddle in different temples so the player can acquire them all, and then has to rearrange them using another puzzle piece to get the prize, which could very well be a poem.

If I were to start again, I’d pick a poem, and build a scene that incorporates all the images from the poem that the player can explore and in a visual-spatial way, appreciate the poem. Of course, I’d have a reading of the poem in the world tied to an object so the player has context, but isn’t bombarded by the sound.

In both cases, I want to explore making a map that is empty and gets filled as the player explores. This will be helpful to the story because:

1. It labels the clear boundaries of what the player/user can and can’t explore.
2. They will want to fill the map out just to know what's out there (if they aren't turned off by the first destinations)
3. It provides a reference to where they may have seen things they liked or hated.