BARRIERS is a virtual reality experience that allows the user to view interactions through the eyes and ears of a Non-Native English speaker. The experience takes place in a fantasy world where the immersant must interact with talking animals in order to achieve their goal of finding a washroom. My personal role in this project was developer and project manager, which meant that I was in charge of the scripting in Unity and managing the team. The most complex part of the project was coding the dialogue with the Non-Player Characters (NPCs). The first step was to set up the physical layout of the room where the experience would take place.
I used placeholder objects while waiting for my team mate to finish the high fidelity models of the NPCs. One of the most crucial steps was allowing the user to initiate the dialogue by pointing the controller at the NPC and pressing a button. Before this project, I had previously worked with Unity software, but had very little experience creating virtual reality experiences. This meant I had no experience detecting where a user was pointing. Through help from my teaching assistant and classmates as well as several tutorials, I was able to get this step completed.
The second hardest aspect was timing the dialogue correctly. This meant using a special type of programming function in Unity called “IEnumerator” which I had never used before. I had to play test the dialogue many times in order to check if the timing on the dialogue was correct. The final project was shown at a showcase and overall we received positive feedback from those who tried the experience.
