Background image transparency and linking of menu buttons

This chronolapse video shows the process of creating an image with a transparent background (in photoshop). It would then be attached to a GameObject created in Unity and setting the material's shader to a transparent diffuse in the inspector.

Changing into Horizontal bar slider and final search bar

With discussing with the client of the current state of our project and what he wants to add to it, a horizontal bar slider was decided to be put in. This slider bar would control what church would be visible on screen according to date. There would be 2 slider bars, one for maximum date and minimum date. By sliding them, the series of thumbnails shown on the page would organise itself visually corresponding to the date of that church. For the script in creating this, with the help of Stephen, he made a functional slider bar by primarily using: a grid, to allow the thumbnails to be shown on a grid; a filter, to update the grid when the slider bars are adjusted; and a series of variables attached to the slider bar to make it functional.

I decided that I didn't want to abandon of having a search bar that I've worked on for awhile. So I decided to create lines of code that would fit into the new script Stephen had made in making a working search bar. This was done by adding a few lines of code inside the OnGUI function, declaring a variable at the top and by updating the filter function to include filtering strings (images shown below).

Code added in void OnGUI

End result of the slider bar + search bar together. Search bar works with how the scenes of the churches are called from the thumbnails. E.g. if a church's thumbnail's scene is called "Church1", then if Church1 was typed into the search bar, it would update the filter to only show that thumbnail from the grid.

Search bar progress

Initially working on the search bar, I've managed to change the text within the results box into a click-able box by turning the results into GUI.Buttons. After that I came across a few more problems with the issue of how to load respective levels of churches based from the the list of results in the search bar and how to transform the results box into a grid system. The search bar wouldn't be part of something now, but rather has its own page where you have a list of options to choose and click from.

This shows an idea and attempt of what I'm trying to do by loading levels from clicking a result from the search bar.

Also this second image shows what I mean by transforming the results into a grid like structure.

Loading Levels

I've created a script where you are able to load different levels of churches. How it works is where a button will be set up in the scene (as a game object) and a script will be attached to it that loads a level in response to clicking it. This Loading levels script is needed to load different churches and the future aspect of adding more churches to the game.

The above script is for the button that will load a specific level when clicked on.

An example set-up of the buttons linked to different church levels

and the result of what happens when you click on the button.

Also this script is used to save a church level that will be used from the script used for the button, so that it'll know which level to load. In addition, by working with multiple levels, the different levels has to be added to the build settings, else Unity wouldn't be find the level as well.

Critical Reflection - Remuneration

The last presentation to be done is about Remuneration which was done by the Suprematist project by Josh and Anders.

Looking at the quality of their presentation overall, it was really engaging, on point and best of all, it related to us designers and gave me a huge insight into working in the industry. Remuneration is basically about the compensation you get from work. They outlined the different amounts of average incomes different types of industries get per year. This includes landscape architects, interior, CAD, and architecture. It was good to see the expected income you would get if you were to decide to follow that line of industry when you finish as a student. The other main thing they touched on was the type of work you want to go on. This includes being a sole trader, a freelancer or working under an organisation. The choice of what type of worker you want to be is dependent on your personality. I couldn't agree more about this because you would either get the feeling of wanting to work alone and not under anyone, having the freedom to make your own choices, or the feeling of working under someone and carrying out orders given by them. To emphasise on these points, they presented graphs and statistics of income and the amount you get paid from.

They also explained how to fill out in invoice to get paid for the design work you carried out. This is another valuable aspect of working that I found extremely useful and interesting to me, outlining the correct procedure to get paid from the work you do. The video that they presented was very engaging and they talked through along the duration of the video to explain what's going on which helped me greatly in understanding more about remuneration.

Linking the database and update to project

After having a very detailed talk with our client last week of clarifying what he wanted, we focused on the areas he wanted us to do. He wanted the game to work in a way that when a course is selected from the church, it would display its relevant information in a pop-up window where a search bar would also be integrated within. With the help of Stephen, he created a server for the church database to based from, and where we would retrieve information to Unity in the game. As of now, we aren't able to link our model components to the database on XAMPP (shown below), but we are looking to get this solved as soon as possible.

In addition, with discussion from the client and tutor, the script I created (the drop down menu), isn't suitable for the project, as it is more suited for a web based application, rather than a game. So in knowing this, I decided to go back and continue on the first script I was working on that actually acted as a searching function, hopefully solving some of its minor issues with some help and develop it further for it to be used in conjunction with the pop-up window Maki has developed.

Assigning components to the list for the script to function as search variables

Roles during the project:

- Sorting out information of the database (exporting it into an excel sheet to be easily read, then passed on the information to group members in charge of the model of the church).

- Working in conjunction with the modelling group to match the naming convention of the sketchup component names to the names of what the database wants.

- Researching and designing a functional search bar to be used in the game.

Critical Reflection - Intellectual property

For my group's presentation on Intellectual Property, we focused on talking about topics of defining intellectual property, its type and how to apply it. For the presentation, I focused on the information about what sort of stuff we can put under intellectual property in relation to the project we are currently doing and how it relates to our project, in terms of youtube tutorial videos, Unity legal use and the use of scripts.

I thought our presentation was right on topic and detailed. We outlined the different aspects of intellectual property and gave examples for a better insight. We related it back to our project, about how it affects us and why should we care about intellectual property, protecting our ideas and designs. The videos we included gives an example of a scenarios of the risk of not putting intellectual property under your stuff and how to apply for one. It's interesting to see how intellectual property can affect our work in many ways, having to consider of any resource you use in your project can determine of your project will be successful or not in the future.

Critical Reflection - Intellectual property presentation - Motorcycle project - Alyssa and Vedran

The content of their presentation on IP was well covered and detailed. They related it back to the project mentioning that it was Russell's project, giving credit where it's due. It was interesting to see information that I've never heard about before, the world intellectual property organisation, WIPO. Although the content was lacking in delivery and engagement since it was primarily delivered in the form of text, the content was still very much appealing. It was also good to know that your work is copyrighted automatically whereas getting a trademark, you have to pay for it.