Reading Week and Project Updates!
This week was reading week, so our group had the opportunity to take advantage of this time to begin drafting our basic functionalities and 3D models. We received feedback from the Iohahi:io students about our alpha presentation, which they seemed to like. Their idea of adding more interactive elements to the user experience on land was already something our group was thinking about, so it was nice to know that we were all generally on the same page.
Challenges
One of the challenges I faced this week was incorporating 2D UI into 3D space. I was focusing on getting an inventory system working through a basket button so that the user is able to collect and store artefacts as they go through the journey. I found that using HTML button tags wouldn't work because it's not able to be integrated into the A-Frame scene, which is crucial in order to store object information every time a user collects an artefact. Then, I tried to use a component from GitHub that someone made a while back (link: https://github.com/EditVR/aframe-dialog-popup-component). Learning my lesson from last week, I tried to make sure that the files were recent so that they were compatible with A-Frame 1.3.0. Unfortunately, this was not exactly what I was looking for because the elements were scaled to 3D space, creating weird distortions that I did not want.
Successes
A success I had this week was being able to find a temporary workaround for my basket button issue. See the video below:
I used the text component and parented it to the camera to give it the illusion of a 2D UI. Parenting it to the camera is what made the placement static no matter where the player went, which helps to make this experience more engaging for the user. The objects that should be collected are shown as a silhouette and when collected, will be properly displayed in their inventory. This layout, while isn't the most visually pleasing, might actually make it more intuitive for the user to understand what their job is once they enter the environment. This design is still something I'm working on and will have to review with the rest of my group since it is different from what we initially proposed.
Next Steps
There are still some positioning issues I'll have to work out with the basket UI depending on the device being used to test the scene, but that is something I'll be continuing to work on. The next large step for functionality will be to find a way to inform the user that all objects have been collected in the time period. This will guide them to know that they are ready to leave the land and move on to the next canoe scene. I'll probably approach this by setting the same id to each collectible artefact, then setting up a counter in JavaScript to calculate how many objects were selected.
Number of Hours Spent: 10
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