It is always interesting how knowledge from other courses can be applied to game design, sometimes courses that would be least expected. Computer Graphics is not one of those courses. Computer Graphics is obviously going to be related to making video games, there is no surprise there. This week in Computer Graphics we have been learning about lighting and shaders, so the whole time I have been thinking about how I can use that knowledge and apply it to the VR Rhythm Game project.
Shaders are able to do some amazing things, and much more efficiently than other methods because of the hardware support of the graphics cards. As the person in charge of the User Interface, I feel that shaders will be especially useful to me. They can be used to make visual effects, warp objects and apply texturing. Best of all, Unity has built in support for the shaders, so creating shaders should be a simple process. I look forward to digging into shaders and learning how to get the most out of them.
Before this project I hadn’t realized just how all inclusive Unity is. The tools available out of the box make putting together a game much easier, if you take the time to learn the tools. And that, I believe will be the biggest difficulty for this project, learning the tools. I have every confidence in the team’s ability to write the code and get everything functioning, but for two of us Unity is completely new.
Despite the oncoming learning curve, Unity is definitely the right choice for this project. The all-in-one system will make it easier to manage the project, and the plethora of free assets means we don’t need to keep reinventing the wheel.
