Project1S21

Whack-a-Mutant

As if the original 2019 Coronavirus was not bad enough, there are now a number of mutated variants of it which are spreading among the world's population. One of the most concerning is the British B.1.1.7. Mutations develop randomly and in unforeseeable locations. Which makes for a great game concept!

In this first programming project you need to create a simple game in Unity that resembles Whack-a-Mole, except you're whacking Coronavirus mutants. The game will exist in a 3D world, even though we're only going to use it with mouse and keyboard on a desktop or laptop computer (exception: extra credit option).

The idea of the game is to find the mutated viruses among an array of original Coronaviruses, and eliminate them. The player has a limited amount of time to eliminate as many mutants as possible.

The project is due Sunday, April 18th at 11:59pm PT.

Project (100 Points)

Download Unity and do a Unity tutorial. Unity's own tutorials are great, but might also like the tutorial from edX course CSE190x.

Learn how to make Unity apps and get an app working in Unity (any app). (5 points)

Use Unity to create a Coronavirus game for your Windows or Mac computer. The game does not need to run in VR, but there is an extra credit option for it.

Here are step by step instructions:

• Create a thin box that you use as a wall as the backdrop of your application. The wall's height should be approximately equal to your vertical field of view. (10 points)
• Using a photo camera or your phone, take a picture of your surroundings (indoor or outdoor), or some other location near you that Coronaviruses can live in, with your smartphone and import it into Unity as a texture asset. You are allowed to edit the image as much as you'd like. (10 points)
• Paste the picture onto the wall so that it faces the user. (5 points)
• Create and place an array of 5x5 = 25 Coronaviruses between the player and the wall. Each virus should be roughly the size of a tennis ball (0.07 meters diameter), and the virus center points should be 0.14 meters apart from each other (horizontally and vertically). (15 points)
• Create C# code to highlight a random virus with a method of your choice (eg, change its color, let it pulsate, frame it, etc). (5 points)
• Create a cursor (e.g., a line, small sphere snapping to closest object, etc.) to allow the user to select a virus by pointing at it with the mouse. (10 points)
• Start the game when the user pushes the mouse button. This should start a 30 second timer, which needs to be displayed as text somewhere on the screen. Only display whole seconds, no fractions. (5 points)
• Display a counter in a different part of the screen. This should be a number that can be up to 3 digits long. It starts with zero and counts the number of whacked mutants. (5 points)
• When the user clicks the mouse button, check if they hit the mutant and if so increase the sphere counter. (10 points)
• Every second the mutant should degenerate back to a regular Coronavirus, and a different virus should mutate. (5 points)
• If the user clicks on a virus other than a mutant, the click should be ignored. (5 points)
• Repeat the above until the timer is up. Then display a message such as "The time is up". (5 points)

Here's a mock-up of what the game could look like:

You can use [tbd this Coronavirus model] (source: Sketchfab)

Record a video off the screen while you play the game from start to finish. Make sure you include a shot of your final score. Upload the video to Canvas by the deadline. Also, add a comment stating which parts of the project you got done or didn't get done.

To create the video you don't need to use video editing software, but you should use software to capture your screen to a video file. To record off your desktop computer, we recommend OBS Studio, which is available free of charge for Windows and Mac.

Extra Credit (Max. 10 Points)

Options for extra credit are:

• Add sound effects to your game (5 points).
• Get your game working on your VR headset, or on your smartphone with a VR viewer (such as Google Cardboard). The video recording of a run of the game is still required and needs to be recorded off your VR device. (10 points)