Tools & Workflows

Project Management: Trello, Userstories, SCRUM Tools, Microsoft Teams
Development Software: VRTK4; Unity3D

Movement of the Pigeons

Walking was quickly implemented using the Nav-Mesh system of Unity, while the flying and landing birds needed a highly customized code.
At first, I have taken a course on basic vector mathematics, and started to implement the flying behaviour. While moving the birds realistically was simple, the collision detection, and making the birds to turn around in time without crashing into a building, was challenging. First, I have tried to use proximity, without the unity-internal colliders. However, after multiple trials and errors, the current system uses bigger colliders on the houses, and the birds use raycasts to detect the obstacles.

Challenges & Learnings

Programming: Movement of the Pigeons

Programming-wise the biggest challenge that I have faced during this project was the realistic movement of the pigeons. Although the rough walking animations were quickly implemented, the flying behaviour with accurate collision detection was more difficult. Especially combining the single behaviours and make the transitions to look realistic was the biggest challenge: flying – landing – walking in different velocities, then, walking – taking off – fleeing to a fence or to the distance. The most problematic part was the rotation of the birds. (Sometimes they resembled rockets… but hey, now I know how to make rockets fly and fall!). The key takeaway is that a variety of systems and tutorials should be looked at, before starting to implement behaviours. Additionally, a system does not need to consist of one logic but could use different systems too.

Project Management (PM): Internal Communication

For this project, the biggest challenge PM-wise was aligning the vision and communication between the team members. Since the team did not have a physical room to meet up to work on the project, it was a challenge to align the mindset of all team members. Back then, our team was not used to collaborate remotely (oh sweet Pre-Covid-19 times!). Goals definition is also a challenge that we have faced. It is necessary to state clear goals to avoid misunderstandings. For instance, some team members might think that doing a task by a date means just-in-time implementation, while others might expect the polished feature. Especially when working remotely, daily stand-ups are a must, to align every member’s vision. Since non-verbal communication is almost non-existent, problems and questions need to be addressed directly without any room for assumptions. User stories helped to align the understanding the development process with external partners. Especially user stories should be created by all team members since those are going to be the basis for further development.