Embedded Files
Summary
Premise
Creating tools and unique systems to help improve and streamline the games development process is vital to ensuring consistency of tasks, speed of development and the quality of the game.
This module helped to teach how to identify problems, conduct research, design a solution and ultimate create a system.
Impact
The goal of VisHaP-Navigator (Visual Hierarchy and Project Navigator) is to provide visual organization and clarity to 2 areas of the Unity framework: the project window (specifically the folder-icons), and the hierarchy window.
Software
Skills
Editor Programming
File Management
GUI Design
Integration
Problem Solving
Project Planning Methodologies
Testing Methodologies
User Interaction
UI-programming
Both of these tools may not necessarily impact the final game itself, but they aid in the developmental process by providing clear structure and an added level of visual organization.
Gallery
Initial Plan for the Intended Layout
Final Layout by the End of the Project
Starting out with a 'minimum-viable-product', I wanted to try simply drawing a semi-transparent box over the top of the selected folders, and see how I could control colour-usage and context-menus.
Figuring out how to read which icon was being painted within the GUI, and then tinting it was a difficult but interesting process. The most complicated part was reading when a folder is 'opened' within the tree view to show its icon correctly.
A big factor that played into this project was keeping in mind the need for an intuitive user-interface; this is the kind of tool that I intended to appear as if it's a natural part of Unity's software.
That meant that instead of using the UI-builder, I stuck to programming all of the UI within scripts so that it would natively conform to Unity's style.
Another factor of visual organization that I frequently find myself wanting is a way of easily applying colours to the hierarchy, as well as organizing objects into folders without making those objects ‘children’ of an empty object acting as a fake folder.
The systems in place for viewing the tree-diagram like structure of objects can be difficult to navigate at a glance, my goal is to make things easier for the user.
The hierarchy-customisation tool is a component that can be added to any game-objects within the hierarchy window: adding it will allow the user to customise the colour of the box, the text colour, its style and alignment, and make use of the three pre-made presets at the bottom.
Initial Plan for the Intended Layout
Check out my other projects!
Google Sites
Report abuse