I’m working on getting an arcade-style game about whales which I helped make a back  uploaded to this website as a Unity web game. So here is a brief list of what’s needed so far in getting the game ship-shape (pun intended).The main change I have on my hands with the move to browser is tackling the move from a hand sensor to a plain mouse and keyboard setup. Luckily, the bare minimum needed would be changing the instructions to say “Mouse” instead of “Hand” , as we opted to cut our workload and use GameWave, making the Leap Motion act exactly like a mouse.

One issue that crops up is that the user may not be focused on the game in a browser, and with the original game using only the mouse position, it’s worth me thinking about how to ensure that the player is engaged, and that they have clicked on the window to get the mouse active in the game. With this in mind, I’ll introduce a brief menu, where the player can actively opt into the gameplay, and would prevent looping sounds grating anyone who has been left with it on another tab.

Another to-do is slimming down the project to make it optimised for a smaller download. We had the luxury of a Mac with the game pre-loaded for the installation, but in a web environment, the game needs to download fast, and not be too demanding for different hardware.

The final to-do is getting the sound working purely through Unity as opposed to within Max MSP. It’s a bit of a turn-around, as I spent the past year working on getting the two talking to each other, but it’s essential the game works out the box. Unity’s sound handling is more than capable of what this game needs, as I’m only using short samples.

I’ll post updates as I go on with the project, and also update with any other to do list items as they inevitably arise!