Image gallery, upload to server

I made my first attempt at uploading to the MM server yesterday, and it worked perfectly. I had a few more bits and pieces to correct in the meantime, and now I have all that done and the project is uploaded. Mission: complete!

I created an image gallery for the about page because I thought the text needed to be broken up a bit. I used a simple solution using the CSS box model rather than using any jQuery. Again, I just wanted it to be nice and simple, as the Unity application is the main focus of the website and, if scaling this out, it would be affiliated with an official site and would not need this page, other than to explain the concept of the museum.

I am very happy to be finished, now I just need to put the finishing touches on the report. It's been a long process, often interesting and sometimes very frustrating, but I now know how to create a web application in Unity and this could be very useful in the future.

Rectifying issues in testing

Based on the feedback I received from testers, I had to make some changes to the lake scene. I created cube barriers around all the walls of the terrain so the user can no longer fall (or jump) over the edge. I initially tried to use planes, but there are some fall-through issues with these, so cubes were a better option.

I took on board the feedback about the sparsity of the scene, and did some experiments with the default tree in Unity. However, because the scene was not done to scale, it was difficult to get the tree looking realistic next to the hills and objects, so I decided to leave it out.

An average-sized tree, dwarfing everything in sight.

I also changed the music to something more appropriate; I am using Christy Moore's Ride On, which is Irish-sounding without being too cheesey. I may have to change this based on copyright issues. I then included player instructions on the splash screen.

I think I now have the Unity part of things totally completed. Yay! It's just a case of fixing up the website.

Testing

I have tested the nearly-finished project on two groups, one in the 20-40 age bracket and one in the 60-70 age bracket. 

A female tester aged over 60 really liked the project; she thought the landscape and models were impressive. She also found the controls very simple to use, an issue I had been worried about. She suggested that there were not enough objects to click on and look at; this is a valid criticism, but for purposes of this project it was necessary only to have one working object as making more would be repeating work already done. I would definitely expand the amount of objects if continuing work with the project, however. She also suggested the landscape was too sparse and that I should add trees and vegetation, a suggestion borne out by members of the 20-40 group.

A male tester aged over 60 thought the project was useful from a historical point of view. However, he had no interest in learning to use the controls and asked that I navigate around it for him. This could be a problem, as many people of this age group will not have  used similar applications such as video games and may not be interested in trying. It may be necessary to make more intuitive controls of a click-and-drag nature. This was my original plan but time constraints did not allow for it. He also wanted to get inside the crannog, which was part of my original plan but I did not follow through on it due to my decision to make the museum open air. In later incarnations I would be willing to make explorable architecture, which will involve significant work with lighting and baking textures. Again, time constraints do not allow me to do this at the moment, but it is something to think about. Both members of this group wanted the Unity player to be smaller, so that the whole player is viewable as you click into the homepage, so I will attempt to do this.

There were four testers in the 20-40 group, 3 male and 1 female. All enjoyed the project, but many were curious about what would happen if they went off the edge of the terrain, so it will be necessary to add more barriers to prevent this. One expressed a desire to explore the lake, but this goes beyond the scope of the project, as there is no facility at Lough Gur to explore beneath water level. One male, aged between 25 and 30, thought the texture on the crannog needed work. I agree, but this is again something I would do in conjunction with making it explorable.

During the testing process, some of the browsers were more suitable than others. Safari is currently my preferred browser for this project. It works well on Firefox as well, but many people use very restrictive pop-up blockers when using this browser, making it impractical. I will advise my users on the best choice of browser on the homepage, perhaps in the splash screen on the web application.

GUI - Sound toggle and exit button

I have added sound to the project, and I have created button functionality whereby the user can toggle sound on and off, and also exit the Unity application to go back to the home screen. I think sound makes the project more interactive and immersive. The button functionality involved more JavaScript code, which the Unity Community is very useful for. With a lot of this kind of functionality, it's considered quite basic so a lot of people have already done it, and it's not too hard to find examples online.

This one was useful for the on/off button:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/303807/music-onoff-switch.html

The exit button really only required the use of the Application.LoadLevel command.

Unity embedded!

I finally succeeded in embedding the web player with suitable dimensions. I decided to use the web page generated by Unity in the build stage and adding my home page elements, rather than attempting to get the player into my already-created homepage, and it works much better. Now all I really need to do is get the cursor constrained to the centre of the application and it has all the functionality I need it to have. Exciting times!

 

Level complete!

I've just finished the level - you can navigate round the environment, and click on objects to retrieve information on them. You can also rotate the macehead to get different angles on it. Now all I have left to do in Unity is create a start screen and possibly add some audio, anything else I need to do within Unity is optional. I also still need to work on the website and the embedding process but the main task is done. I'm going to go and reward myself with some GUI tutorials. Hooray!

First Person Controller and terrain constraints

My terrain is essentially finished, I might add some trees and grass later on but at the moment it is the shape I want it to be, apart from one small problem: I can't currently prevent my first person controller from going into the lake and not being able to get out. I have used step offset and slope limit to prevent him from going up the hills, but unfortunately I'm not sure how this works in the opposite direction. I've tried smoothing out the terrain by raising the parts of the lake that I've lowered, and it may just end up being a tedious process of doing that, but I'm sure there is also a scripting method I can use so I have to find that out.

This is what you can see from the lake. But you can't really do anything!

Outdoor museum?

I rebuilt the terrain to look more like the natural landscape of Lough Gur. I roughly copied the shape of the lake. I placed mountains around it. These do not follow the topography of the real Lough Gur, as I would need access to digital maps to be able to do a really accurate depiction, so I decided it was best to approximate it and take artistic license with it. I imported my assets with textures, and the size of the assets compared to the terrain was not what I expected it to be. I tweaked things a little bit, and then placed the plinth and macehead next to the lake. I really like the way this looks, and I would actually really like to leave it like this and do away with the architecture. The idea here would be to dot several plinths around the landscape and have the user navigate to them, clicking on each item for information. It allows for an outdoor museum where you can look at the objects in the context of the environment rather than inside a building. I may still place the crannog somewhere as a museum object, but I think the idea of the openair museum is much more engaging, and I prefer the aesthetic sense of it.

Inside the museum

I may not have the textures sorted out yet, but I have a macehead on a plinth inside the crannog-museum, which is progress. I'm not made about the scaling here - I modelled all the game assets to scale in 3ds max and it looks like I have a lot of extra space in the museum that I don't need. I think the scaling is actually correct though, I think it's just that I expected it to look a little bit different. I thought I might have time to model some extra objects, but because the macehead took so long, coupled with the fact that many other Lough Gur objects are of much more unusual shape, made me stick to just one. In a larger scale production I would definitely model more - I would have liked to have the shield done. I tried to get the texturing sorted as well, but to no avail as yet. I think the key is to obtain full functionality at the moment, and to worry about the rest later.

I do also have a first person controller in this scene, but I need to add colliders to the objects to prevent the FPC walking where it shouldn't be walking, and I also need to animate the macehead and add the webpage with all its information.

Website prototype

The prototype for the site in which the 3D museum is to be embedded. The emphasis is on simplicity and ease of use to make the experience as stress-free for the user as possible.

 

Site design and museum navigation

Here are the initial sketches for the site design as I envision it.

And here is the navigation design for the online museum.

Unfortunately the scans aren't perfect. However this is my initial idea of how the user navigates through the online museum, clicking and dragging to view the objects and areas. This may be subject to change as I am no longer certain that this type of navigation will be practical, but I am waiting to hear more advice from the project supervisors.