Today marks the start of the Social Sandbox VR collaborative project. As a team, we have decided on which versions of the SDKs and Unity that we intend to use, and are now going to start by creating some simple storyboards and to continue the ideation process for our respective roles, after which we will start building the project files in the Unity 3D Engine. The trouble I find with storyboards is I can only draw a very small amount of my ideas due to my poor artistic drawing skills, which I can find frustrating when it does not represent the image in my mind to the degree I would like. Having said this, this is something that I can overcome by using a rapid prototyping technique within Unity.

My rapid prototyping technique is something that I have learned from experience through working on many projects; after the project ideation process, I would have a rough idea of which version of Unity that I would use and would load it up and start with thinking of things such as, what mechanics will be needed, what graphics style and what kind of assets may be required. With this in mind, I then start to import scripts and models out of my personal toolbox. Once everything is imported into the project, and not throwing any serious errors, I am able to start creating my “build” scene, which is the main scene that any mechanics will be created and tested in. Normally, I would design a simple level in the same graphics style, then create the player either 3D or VR, but normally both. This is to speed up the testing process, as testing the VR player takes more time through having to put the headset on, so having the ability to switch between the two modes, I personally find extremely useful. Once the player and the build scene are set up, I return to the storyboards and start to create the levels and ideas that have been previously ideated, some of these levels would end having multiple versions due to the ideation that would take place during development.