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.

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!

 

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 :(

 

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!

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.

PHP assignment - useful for the project

Yesterday I handed up  30% assignment for the Advanced Web Programming class that I think will be very beneficial to the project. The task was to create a database with full CRUD functionality in order to make a static website dynamic. Below is an example of the 'read' code and the resulting web page. 

It was quite a difficult project and not all of it works, but hopefully I will be able to iron out the problems to achieve full functionality within the project itself.

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.