With the final submission looming closer, most of my effort was directed at replacing some hard-coded game-play functionality with dynamic data from the Builder and Finder systems (~3 hours), assisting my team with issues they encountered (~2-3 hours), and getting the shelf and chair ready to be built by the players (~8 hours).
The Builder and Finder systems still had a few hard-coded values from the Beta build of the project that were specific to constructing the table, so I worked on replacing those with the data that is contained in the instructions arrays that Priscilla and Maxime created this week. I was initially have problems accessing this array before I discovered that JavaScript arrays can be accessed by string, which simplified it a lot. Below is an example of the before and after of this process.
In addition to this, I helped Priscilla and Max with some of the code they worked on. The most notable was helping Max to add images to the snap-points by adding the image source to the templates array and reading it in through the 'spawner' component, which is something he discusses further in his blog.
Unfortunately a large chunk of my time was spent preparing the chair and shelf models for their placement into the game; far more than I anticipated. Preparing the models for the Aframe environment involved manually creating the Aframe Physics bounding boxes and then manually placing each snap-point for every individual piece of the chair and shelf models. Creating the bounding box for a piece involves finding the dimensions of the piece from the Maya file, and then translating these values into XYZ 'half-extends' that the physics system uses to create the bounding box. Placing the snap-points then requires spawning all the pieces for a build, constructing the furniture in the Aframe Scene Inspector, then dragging a placeholder snap-point to the approximate positions that are required, and recording the position data in the template file.
Although this was not challenging work, it was time-consuming and repetitive and it was slowed down occasionally when problems with the exported models or textures were discovered.
As we approach the final deadline the stress is mounting, but the worst is behind us, so all that is really left to do is hooking up the remaining systems, and implementing a player 'ready' system.
The Builder and Finder systems still had a few hard-coded values from the Beta build of the project that were specific to constructing the table, so I worked on replacing those with the data that is contained in the instructions arrays that Priscilla and Maxime created this week. I was initially have problems accessing this array before I discovered that JavaScript arrays can be accessed by string, which simplified it a lot. Below is an example of the before and after of this process.
// Before socket.on('setFurn', function (data) { this.current = data.id; // Where data.id was always "table" this.step = 0 // "tableTop" is the id for the first piece of the table. sceneEl.emit("setInstruct", { furn: this.current, piece: "tableTop" }); }); // After socket.on('setFurn', function (data) { // Get the instruction object for the specified id this.current = instructions[data.id]; this.step = 0 // Send the parts required out to the app. sceneEl.emit("setInstruct", instructions[this.step]) });
In addition to this, I helped Priscilla and Max with some of the code they worked on. The most notable was helping Max to add images to the snap-points by adding the image source to the templates array and reading it in through the 'spawner' component, which is something he discusses further in his blog.
Unfortunately a large chunk of my time was spent preparing the chair and shelf models for their placement into the game; far more than I anticipated. Preparing the models for the Aframe environment involved manually creating the Aframe Physics bounding boxes and then manually placing each snap-point for every individual piece of the chair and shelf models. Creating the bounding box for a piece involves finding the dimensions of the piece from the Maya file, and then translating these values into XYZ 'half-extends' that the physics system uses to create the bounding box. Placing the snap-points then requires spawning all the pieces for a build, constructing the furniture in the Aframe Scene Inspector, then dragging a placeholder snap-point to the approximate positions that are required, and recording the position data in the template file.
Although this was not challenging work, it was time-consuming and repetitive and it was slowed down occasionally when problems with the exported models or textures were discovered.
As we approach the final deadline the stress is mounting, but the worst is behind us, so all that is really left to do is hooking up the remaining systems, and implementing a player 'ready' system.
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