Desk area
In this update, I decided to replace the desk/workspace. The old model was a prefab I had bought with some lab assets, but it felt decidedly out of place in the space I had created for this app. It was too square, and didn’t feel like it fitted in visually with the other objects I had made.
I had just been playing a new game from Schell Games/Kurzgesagt called ‘Out of Scale’ and I really loved the aesthetic they had. I realised that a more circular type desk would suit the essentially static gameplay better, forming itself around the player and also echoing the shape of the hemispheric environment. I also incorporated an explicit grab rail going around the inner perimeter of the desk. This also makes it impossible for the user to accidentally grab the desk surface, since the grab handle is the only grabbable element.
I used ChatGPT to generate some reference images, which was amusing since Dall-E kept generating some truly wild and literal designs, especially when I asked for a ‘doughnut’ shaped desk. Eventually, it hit on a desk shape I liked the look of, and I based my model on that – but much simplified.
Quiz and tablet
The quiz is the main gameplay part of this initial scene. It drives the character feedback, and is a good way to provide some basic information to help the player in the later scenes. Having done the initial test video, I had intended to go forward with making the rest of those, since I had already written scripts for all of them. I’m glad I decided to hang fire though, because as I worked through the quiz mechanic, I realised that the script needed some work.
I now have a tablet set up, that appears when the user presses the left controller menu button. I used this as the interface for the quiz questions. The quiz script is now working on this tablet, with the user able to click through the answers and get feedback for their answers.
Scene organisation
I also improved my project organisation. I found the free asset Colored Hierarchy Headers, which is great for organising your gameobjects into related sections. Such a simple asset, for something that really should be a core feature of Unity.
Next
Next up is to look at tying the scene together with a gameplay flow. I plan on looking at using the Unity timeline, and also hooking up multiple videos for the quiz feedback and end of scene videos.