A couple side projects came together for me the other day: a 3D gallery of Flickr’s most interesting photos (created by using the Flickr API) and a maze generator.
The result is a sort of randomized 3D art gallery where you wander through a maze and look at really cool photos hanging on the walls.
If you click while looking at a photo (and you’re close enough), its page on Flickr will open in a new browser window.
I keep thinking of ways to improve it, but if you have ideas, please let me know. One obvious thing is better lighting and shadows, but with a procedurally generated maze (and without Unity Pro for real-time shadows) there isn’t an easy solution for that.
Bigger maze! - I could have wandered around for longer! I was having a great time looking at the pictures.
Zombies - OK, how about mummies? Aggressive lapdogs? Fine. No monsters, then
The part I enjoyed most was the open, freestyle nature of it. I wandered, rather than feeling like I was being led. I was viewing the pictures by choice - I didn’t feel like I was being told to look at anything and I was able to almost forget that it was a maze … that sense of freedom led me to feel like I was in control of the experience … I felt like ‘I’ll just turn this corner and look at one more’.
The challenge is finding ways to engage without making the experience intrusive. Your subtle UI already goes a long way to help this happen. It works great and doesn’t feel forced.
I would aim to add some odd random features, rather than trying to change the core experience. Something along the lines of letting users rotate the images or interact with them in some way. Again, not forced. If users choose to interact, they should be able to. If not, they should be allowed to do whatever they like.
Perhaps you could let them move the pictures around, rotate them and arrange them how they like - I would envisage something like the gravity gun from Half Life only it would pick up pictures
A little bit of visual dressing-up would go a long way to making it look more like an environment and less like a tech demo. And the concept is certainly cool enough to justify the extra effort.
@.Tom., frames for the photos and columns at the ends of the walls are both things I want to add. Totally agree that the visuals need a lot more work.
@physcicparrot, That’s a fun idea about the gravity gun (and the aggressive lapdogs). Maybe once I add some frames and give the images a little more presence, I can make it possible for people to take the photos off the wall and move them around.
