Mission Two – Testing a Player's Learning - Creating E-Learning Games with Unity - page 176

Adding NpcRacers to the mission
To make the race compelling and interesting, we will create two NPC racers to chal-
lenge the player. If it turns out well, we can build most of these with the technology we
have already developed.
Each racer will need a spline to follow. Recall from the previous chapter that we deve-
loped a system for placing waypoints in the scene and using the SplineMgr script to
generate a smooth curve for an NPC to follow. This will define the smooth path they
traverse from start to finish. To implement the other racers in the level, carry out the
following steps:
1. Create an empty GameObject, and name it _splineDataA . Create a series of
sphere game objects, and place them in a path from start to finish. Disable the
mesh renderer of these objects, and then parent them all to _splineDataA .
2. Create a second _splineData object with different path nodes so that the
second racer will follow a similar but not identical route through the course.
Name it _splineDataB .
3. Parent these two _splineData objects to the _level2 root level object's con-
tainer to ensure our level loading strategy remains simple and elegant.
4. As with the player, create a placeholder model for the racers, which is com-
posed of a capsule with a rectangular hat parented to the top. Name them
RacerA and RacerB respectively.
5. To RacerA , add an instance of npcScript (created in Chapter 6 , NPCs and
Associated Technology ). Associate _splineDataA to the path reference on
this script. Make sure the DecisionMgr member is empty; we won't be using
it for the racers' logic. The structure of RacerA should then resemble the fol-
lowing figure: