Team VT Newsletter
2/24/2012
Following the feedback of quarter walk-arounds by our faculty and staff we set out our goals for completion by the end of the semester and have gotten well under way in completing these tasks. By the end of week seven we are scheduling to have the majority of all functionality completed within the simulation. Thereafter we will be focusing on the polish of our designs, the introduction sequence and adding animations to the non-player characters.
For the creation of our Facebook Application Cintia has created the layout and functionality for guests to access the simulation without having the leave their comfortable position within Facebook. Along with the application she has designed an area directly below the simulation view port to display the logo and title of the many sponsors that have contributed to this ongoing project. To ensure the many sponsors, old and new, are updated accordingly we will be creating an external file that will be editable and directly link to the Facebook application to give credit to the individuals and corporations that deserve praise.
Siddhesh has been working tirelessly on incorporating the Gigapan images into our simulation. He has been able to load, cache and display the files upon request and has some final tweaking to do in order to allow for guests to easily navigate the images as well as return to the simulation when they are finished viewing the incredible scenery. Siddhesh is also working alongside Sun-moon to begin in game programming that will give our non-player characters their voices, the kiosks their interactive ability and truly bring the experience to life.
As far as ‘in-game’ assets we have quite the number of them to complete this week. Sun-moon has developed a unique interface that will, upon command, be displayed to the user and allow them to experience a variety of choices. Within the user interface guests can revisit the tutorial explaining the controls for navigation, have options for choice of music as well as teleport from room to room, kiosk to kiosk. The idea behind this interface is to allow guests to easily direct themselves in the right direction and never feel as if they are lost, stuck or confused.
The interactive kiosks are something we have been talking about for a few weeks now and they finally have a face to the name. Thanks to Sun-moon the kiosks have been modeled, appropriately matching the main structure of the building. The kiosks will include a hovering 3D text, a glowing particle effect and of course the option to be interacted upon. All of these features that have been included in the design of the kiosks lend a hand to helping the guest, an experienced gamer or novice computer guest, quickly and easily understand the functionality behind the kiosks.
This week we will be completing all functionality of the kiosks, Gigapan Images, our Facebook app, the web player on our website and the non-player characters to bring the empty building simulation to life. Starting next week we will have an internal play test to delve out what works and what is failing among the various interactive aspects of the space and move into the polishing phase. By our half way mark, March 20th, we plan to have a fully functional, artistically correct, simulation that will be open to select groups of individuals to gather extremely important feedback.