So today the cube arrived and finally, so i could start building the physical object.

I drew a grid on the card that I’d cut and did copied the maze layout onto the grid, this made it easy to measure the sizes of the pieces I cut as once I knew the size for one square i just counted the squares which meant no measuring!

I labeled each piece of the maze by their unity name so I didn’t mess them up or lose them, as I still have to paint them and glue them on.

I used a scalpel to cut the foamboard as it was too hard with a knife, i didn’t realise how sharp it was and nearly cut my hand off!

Next up I need to build the base to hold the Arduino and mouseball, then paint, hopefully I’ll be finished before Monday so I can concentrate on this dome correction.

My RFID tags which I wanted to use in the gloves came today, I brought them after looking online at the correct frequency but apparently something was wrong somewhere, as they don’t even scan on the reader.

This means that I’m going to have to use the ones from the kit which is fine, but the problem is they are massive so will be pretty hard to fit into a glove!

Now I’ve got my laptop finally working & the RFID’s controlling the character, I’m starting to really think about what actual content I’m going to have on the screen, I’ve had quite a few ideas as I’ve gone on with my work and originally was going to with the cube. After a meeting with Mike I’ve actually started to think of another idea as he was keen on the object you are holding or using being related to what is on the screen.

I’ve had a few more brainstorms but thought that something with a cube would still work well, but I’ve now changed my idea to a clear perspex cube as I feel this provides a good opportunity for nice on screen visuals, and I can’t get the idea of Hornby train-sets out my head, with the tiny model trees etc.

At the moment I want to keep the visuals pretty simple but also very effective and something that will provide a challenge, and for that reason I’m looking into making a puzzle or a maze.

More to follow…

Today I went down to the dome with my semi-finished map to try and get dome correction working, sadly due to some issues with the plug-in, this wouldn’t work, but Luke is going to send me some stuff tonight to try and get it working, and I am going to spend today working on a fix for this issue and hopefully will be able to test it tomorrow! If I can’t get it to work for any reason, I’m going to have to try and find another solution, but hopefully it won’t come to that.

So I now have Windows on my mac! It took about 30 hours to get it to work, and I had to wipe off OSX but all my data is back and it seems to be working fine, although it’s very strange to be back on a PC, especially when it’s on my mac!

As you can see I’m starting to make some progress now! Next step is constructing a physical object.

For the past couple of days I’ve been trying to get the Dome Correction plug-in which Luke told me to use (called Bourke) to work.

I cannot actually get it to work as when I add the camera to the Hierarchy you cannot see anything in game mode, I’ve got a feeling I’m doing something stupid, and am going to arrange with Luke for a meeting as I’ve go a feeling he’ll be able to help me out with a few simple answers.

Just when I thought everything was going well, I’ve now got some pretty major issues with my laptop that I brought back from Southampton, this morning when I turned it on the screen was not working, I’ve spoken to a friend and he thinks that it’ll need a new one, which I don’t have time to wait for as I’d need a special one ordered.

Instead I am going to attempt to get Windows working on my MacBook with BootCamp. If that doesn’t work I’m in serious trouble with just over a week to go til the deadline…

Today I finished the basic design of my maze, I’ve decided to keep it simple for now as I haven’t had a chance to see how Unity looks in the dome, and don’t know what will work and what won’t.

As you can see I’ve set the map inside a “glass” dome, this is how the physical dome will look and I feel it has come out pretty well, The inside of the dome looks pretty plain at the moment and I think I’m going to include some obstacles for the players to avoid, but at the moment I’m happy with the map being complete, then I can work out how to make it more interesting once I get the map dome corrected.

For now I’m going to look into how best to dome correct the map and have a test of different skyboxes, effects, and textures!