19/01/23 - Button, Lever & In Game Menu progress

As of yesterday, I have completed both the levers & button and the in game menu to a degree that I am happy to submit.

I have decided to group these mechanics together as they mostly work together in my project. While I have the lever in a separate section, I have added the buttons and another slider actuator I created to be used in the in-game menu to control the menu settings such as volume, height, and whether the player is left or right handed.

As mentioned in the previous "world to local coordinate translation", I have updated both the levers and sliders to use the relative translation node, this allows them to be used at any rotation. Following this I created a new model to store the menu components - a car interior.

Initially, my idea was to have the user play as a postal delivery driver delivering packages; their delivery car would be the menu. While I haven't developed the project enough to be a playable game, I have still maintained the menu scenario.

The user makes use of a car key accessed through the radial menu to teleport to and from the menu, the player presses the upper button once to open the key and another time to confirm the selection (this helps avoid unintended presses); the same process is repeated to return. The players location before teleporting is stored so the player will return directly to it after exiting the menu. The actual key teleport has been completed for a while, around 2 weeks; initially it just teleported the player to a different room with some levers and buttons. The main changes since have been the inclusion of the car model and the location being changed to fit the player in the front seat. Another key addition was resetting the players location to face forward so they would not be greeted with the headrest of the seat if they teleported from an undesirable location. Additionally, I added the inbuilt no teleport zone demonstrated in the default VR template to make sure the player couldn't teleport directly out of the can which would be both unrealistic and unnecessary.

For the actual menu controls, two sliders have been incorporated along with buttons (used to select the players dominant hand). The slider information is displayed on the cars radio screen, and the dominant hand is shown using text colour on a panel in the passenger seat. The height slider does not do anything and will likely stay that way as the players height is automatically tracked using the HMD. The volume slider does work and can be tested using the car horn present on the steering wheel.

The hand selection will work in the final product and will switch the radial menus allowing the user to more comfortably use items like the pen.