I have added the ability for AI NPC’s to enter interiors.
I am generating the AI navigation graph for each interior asychronously as the interior loads, so there isn’t a major performance hit.
I had some issues transitioning from one graph to the next as the AI enters and leaves interiors, but this is now working well.
The next step is to add additional actions for the AI to perform within interiors.
I have improved the AI pathing and graphing system in my project, and added added more performance improvements as well.
I can now spawn AI NPC’s in my cities without huge performance issues.
The next step is to add interior transitions, so that the AI can randomly enter buildings, perform actions, then leave.
The interior trigger and loading system is now working.
The next goal is to add NPC characters to the system.
I have decided to use the existing Morph 3D MCS system for this, since it is already integrated into my project.
The problem with this is mainly due to performance. MCS performs a lot of processing on start(), and this causes noticeable framerate issues with the editor.
I am hoping that I can optimise this enough, using coroutines, loadasync, etc, that it will not be noticeable in a build.
I have successfully integrated the new interior object with the city system.
I had to make some changes to the scaling and height offset, but it worked out quite well.
The exterior and interior of the building are different prefabs, and, for performance reasons, I am loading the exterior only until the user attempts to enter the building. At that point, the interior will load. This is the next step.
The art for the new interior is basically done now.
I have added lighting effects (using dynamic lighting only) and I have added some aura lights for the Aura 2 lighting system.
I have created some food and drink items that the user will later be able to interact with.
The scene looks reasonably good, but I will need to do a lot of work on it later when I integrate it into the actual procedural generation system.
The artwork is basically done for the interior scene.
I am now working on the texturing, and setting up the scene for unity.
This scene needs to be loaded dynamically, so I intend to split it into two pieces. I will have a simpler scene for the exterior, and load this using instantiate, and then, when the user attempts to enter the building, I will load the interior using loadsceneasync.
The lack of realtime emission will seriously hurt a scene like this, real time emission would look great, but it’s not compatible with dynamic scenes, so I am having to use regular lights with custom light cookies.
I have successfully integrated nVidia Ansel into my project using THIS asset from the asset store.
The asset doesn’t work in the editor, but it does work in the build.
Ansels allows for capturing stereoscopic 3D and super high resolution images, which will be useful for rendering out stills from my project.
I am still having some issues getting superresolution images working. I suspect that this is due to the nested camera setup that I am using in my project.
The art is still progressing well, and I have done some testing with the build, and, with the exception of some minor issues, it seems to be working fine.
The art that I am working on is going reasonably well. I am not focusing too much on the quality of the art for now, I am mainly concerned with the software side of things, particularly the AI and dynamic story elements.
I have also fixed a long-standing bug in my project that caused issues with the skybox when transitioning from space scenes to atmospheric scenes.
