This week, we primarily focused on integrating the stat system and the stat view, procedural animation, implementing a dog sleep mechanic, and creating a park environment, where we plan to implement features including playing and picking up dog poop.
One aspect of our app we felt it was important to focus on was making the whole simulation more realistic; as such, we implemented world sounds and simple animations including making the main room fan spin.
In that vein, we also refined the behavior of the pet itself. Adding a new “sleeping” state that allows it to regain energy, which it can now lose just from walking around or being too hungry. The state machine was refined to allow for more custom behavior and is easier to work with on our end, so our goal next week will be to incorporate even more convincing behavior.
Additionally, we added features to make the pet feel more alive. We tweaked the pet movement so that the pet faces the direction it is moving. Currently, it snaps from one rotation to another based on the pet's velocity, but this is hardly noticeable as the pathing for the dog typically smoothly rotates. This causes the pet to smoothly rotate for the most part, but there are some instances where the pet makes a sharp turn and snaps to that rotation. We also are in the process of adding a petting mechanic to the pet. So far, a collision sphere has been added to the dogs head to register when a player's hand is near the head to begin petting. Unfortunately, actually detecting when the hand has collided with the dog head has been difficult to implement.
Finally, we have some progress on procedural animation. The goal of procedural animation is to be able to dynamically change the dog’s pose according to various scenarios, in particular the dog’s body should turn at a specified angle at runtime (when the dog is changing direction), and also the dog’s head should be able to look at specified direction. We wanted the procedural animation to work in conjunction with normal animations like walking or idle, effectively modifying them according to the situation. We were able to accomplish all of this this week, our sample video demonstrates this by playing the original idle animation while the dog is turning at a 30 degree angle via procedural animation. Next week, we will implement the dog walking animation and tie the animations with the actual gameplay.
Playtest Link:
Sample Footage
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