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.

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!

 

Terrain barriers

I have just solved the problem of the player falling into the lake and/or off the terrain by placing cubes at the sides of the terrain and turning off the mesh renderer. I placed a plane on top of the water of the lake and again turned off the mesh renderer, and the controller can now happily traverse the lake should he/she so wish. I feel like I've solved a lot of issues today. My website and Unity application are now more or less complete, I just have to iron out a few more issues. Nearly there! (I hope.)

Application.OpenURL vs Application.ExternalEval

To address one of the problems mentioned in the previous post, the fact that Application.OpenURL only opens the website in the current browser window rather than in a new tab, I did some research on the Unity Community forums and found the using Application.ExternalEval will actually open the page in a new tab, so it is less disruptive to the enjoyment of the viewer. Here is the code I used:

 function OnMouseUp()
    {
    Application.ExternalEval("window.open('http://www.youtube.com','YouTube')");
    }

And the code I replaced:

 function OnMouseUp()
{
    Application.OpenURL('http://www.youtube.com');
}

I still haven't attached it to my own website though. That will be next.

Note: Since originally creating this post, I have added functionality allowing for a page of the project to be opened rather than YouTube, calling the file from my folder structure like so:

 Application.ExternalEval("window.open('../../K00123456_Project_2013/macehead.html','Macehead')");

Splash Screen and web embedding

I created a basic splash screen and loaded the game to playing on clicking the button. It looks dreadful but at least I have the functionality there; I will edit it later.

The problem with the stretched application continues; I have uploaded to the web page but it stretches across the entire browser and does not look good. The code I used is available here:

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/WorkingwithUnityObject.html#initPlugin 

I have posted on the Unity forums to find out if anyone can help, as I can't figure it out. Hopefully that will show something up. 

Another issue is that, in the finished application, when you click on an object to open a web page, it doesn't open in a new tab, rather it opens in the tab you have open so you have to browse back to the application and restart it. This is a pretty big problem so I am looking into ways to fix this now.

This is how much the application stretches :(

 

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!

Unity file embedded to web

I've had a certain amount of success in that I have managed to create the basics of my Unity application and embedded it to the homepage of my online museum. It has not been seamless; the textures still aren't there, and I have a basic rotation on the macehead but it is not working the way I want it to. This I will sort out soon. At the moment the main problem is the way the web player appears in the page; I was hoping for a small window like in the actual Unity file in game mode, but the window is elongated. I also haven't compiled it at my desired start point and will have to look at creating a GUI as well. That said, I'm very happy with the way things are going so far. This is still my trial file so hopefully I will have these problems ironed out before I get the real thing sorted out.

As you can see, this screen shot shows just how problematic the game window is, but I should be able to sort this out.

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.

Progress with Unity and 3ds max

I have created most of my sample scene using Unity. If I have time I will go back and create one that matches more correctly the shape and topography of the Lough Gur area, but at the moment I just want to make sure everything works. I have imported the crannog, and the plinth is in there somewhere as well. The textures have not transferred. They transferred easily the last time I tried this so I will have to go troubleshooting. I might also make the terrain smaller as there is only a small playable part of the scene and it is a little swamped by all the scenery. I used an overcast skybox, because it's probably more realistic for the Limerick area.

Note: I think the issue with the textures is just a settings problem ie. I didn't check a box that I should have checked. Will sort this out later on, going to continue with the functionality of the scene for now.

 

 

 

 

 

3ds Max Macehead

It took a very long time but I finally got my macehead to look like I want it to. It was a long process of using the boolean feature to make it look the correct shape. I tried to sculpt it from a cylinder or lathe the correct shape but neither of these approaches worked. I also tried to join the vertices of the individual shapes together for a more seamless surface by selecting individual vertices but this approach was not satisfactory either. Texturing is still needed but I am happy with the progress on this at the moment.

 

More 3Ds max assets

Unity 4.1 has been installed to my machine in college but at the moment my files will not open in it. This is very frustrating as I had planned to do a lot of work in Unity today. I did manage to import my crannog to a new project in Unity by converting the max file to .fbx and bringing the textures in separately, but none of my older projects will work at the moment. Instead I decided to make some more assets for inside my museum, including a plinth with a cushion on top. This isn't done with the correct textures, but I did learn some interesting things about texturing for the purposes of the project. I think for my crannog I need to up the values in real-world map size to make the mud texture look more realistic. I might also attach a separate bump map instead of relying on attaching the mud texture to both bump and diffuse. Here is an image of my cushion file:

The swirl pattern you can see on the cushion is actually added to the bump setting so it looks like the swirl pattern is indented into the pillow. I will do some more work on this over the weekend.

The tutorial I followed is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhnrkYDWJys 

More Unity issues

Unfortunately Unity is not in any way backwards compatible. Older versions don't read files made on new versions, and new versions don't read files made on old versions. This is extremely frustrating. The version number of Unity does not appear in the program's properties, so the only way to check is by opening Unity. However, the last time I opened it in college was to view project files I created using files I created at home, with the result that it won't open now because it can't open without a compatible file. So now I have to do some detective work!