Finding A Boat Controller (that led to a new Water Asset)

The Joys of Searching YouTube Tutorials

After searching YouTube for a boat controller script to use, I found two possible candidates.  The first one, by DitzelGames, was an actual boat controller, but to get the buoyancy to work with the WeatherMaker water system, I would need to use another set of scripts. I then decided to check out the second tutorial by Tom Weiland.  Unfortunately, while the buoyancy system worked, he did not have a controller in the video nor another related video that I saw with that functionality I could use for this "asset flip" jam.  Additionally, when I went to add his effect to my level, the boat sank.  Hmm...

Where We Find the Initial Water Asset Did Not Work

This led to a re-design.  One issue I was facing was a continual error message about my camera being out of bounds or something.  I know it was WeatherMaker throwing it so it had to be related to the water and the boat script.  So I decided to drop the WeatherMaker water and see what else I have bought over the years.  In comes Suimono.  I have never used this product, but a look at the quick start guide and I got something working.  I love the reflections in this asset.  However, the water was too bright!  Plus, every time I tried to change it before play, it would revert back.  (I found where to darken it and it worked when I manually adjusted it during gameplay but that obviously isn't a solution.)

Dark Water > Bright Water

After searching the forums a bit and the documentation, I decided to just see what I could find in the API itself.  After a little bit of fiddling around, I found the value I wanted to change and added a quick script to adjust it on start up.  Nope, didn't work.  I think this is a Unity script order issue, however, so I just added a slight delay with an Invoke method.  This may not be the "optimal" solution, but I'm literally writing a script that does one thing at the very beginning of the game cause I can't figure out how to set it ahead of time; I'm not really worrying about optimal at this point!  After this change, the water looks much nicer and fits the mood I'm going for.  Again, those reflections!  Just imagine if I add sparks or something dropping from the lamp pole!

Finally, I have a boat controller that I am happy with (from DitzelGames) and a new water asset that looks amazing.  Still some bugs to work out in the boat controller, but hopefully those should be easy to fix.  Next steps now are to add Cinemachine to get the camera to properly follow the boat and then I can start building the actual gameplay of finding people to rescue.