I’ve been in a developing-too-fast-to-document place for the past month or so, so most of the action has been recorded in trello boards and git commits. Yesterday was a quarterly review though so I will take a moment to record my thoughts.
There’s currently a web application and a unity VR application. The web application is the multiuser dungeon built on the grotto project. It’s default text interface has been overridden with a crosshatched pixel-art style. There are cenotaphs in some rooms that I have added that represent dead relatives. The UI (as of pretty much today) can be navigated entirely with a clunky old Atari 2600 joystick that I am interfacing with over usb with an Adafruit Feather board and some circuitpython code. The cenotaphs have some expanding text sections that use the details html element, but this still feels pretty janky. Cenotaphs currently have both a pixel-art rendered portrait image and normal photos, which is a style clash that I haven’t resolved. I want to keep the fidelity of the photos but I don’t want multiple resolutions of the pixel art in the webapp if I can help it. There are now lots of new item types in the database, including items to defame and venerate/decorate cenotaphs. There is now a collectable item type that I can see being used as a key/lock mechanic for viewing detailed cenotaph text. There are shields that absorb arrows, there are npc’s that trade items. I did a major refactor to the SCSS and Paul did a huge overhaul to Django and Svelte code. Other features too numerous to mention.
The VR project is a view of a single room (the mud room) but could be expanded to allow navigation between rooms if I had more time. I have to turn in some form of it on Tuesday but I’ll continue working on it as it serves as the eye-candy projections part of my solo show installation. I now have room and character inventory items pulling from Grotto’s api into the VR app. The VR app has two cameras, one for the headset that I will wear, and one for projections that the audience sees. The projected camera also has a canvas for text of room messages which are not seen on the headset.
Haven’t yet set a code lock date before the show but will do that soon. There is a production server that we will switch over to then, grotto.wileywiggins.com is a test staging server.
