Week 7: Adventures in Unity UI

A new week, a new task. This week the team decided it would be a good idea to add the finial systems and refine those we have already completed to be in a more complete state. I was to look back at the map and refine the markers system. The way they work now is a rough implementation, and it makes it too easy to navigate. The bug with lighting also needs to be removed so the player can no longer cheat with the flashlight to find their position on the map.

First, the markers. Current implementation lets you spam markers while also placing an infinite amount of them on the map. If you spam placed them while moving you can create a trail that lets you know the exact path between different points. You still have to remember the general landmarks along the path, but it's a power that can be abused. Under the new system, you would have a limit on the markers you can place, but the markers would be nameable so you know exactly what each was for. This requires a lot of UI work, something I'm not very good or familiar with. The marker keybind needs to open a menu instead of just placing the button. The menu will have the name of each marker with a second way to identify it on the map, probably by color. It will also have a button to add a new color and a box to enter the name for that marker. This is all new ground for me, and still requires a lot of work to complete.

Next, the lighting bug. I've looked around a lot, but something I did not anticipate was that almost all my searches would turn up outdated info. In the switch to Unity 5, Unity also made drastic changes to its shader system. None of the previous solutions exist in Unity 5, so I need to create my own solution. I have the advantage of not know shaders in previous versions of Unity so it's all new for me, but I still have a bit to learn and tinker with. If I can't come up with a working solution through shaders, I can fall back on the pre-render/post-render functions for the map's camera.

Going into next week I will continue working on these problems and have them complete in time for our next stage challenge.