GET IT HERE BIG NEWS! TWO DEE IS HERE! I had to rebuild half the code to work with the slightly different math and editor quirks regarding 2D mode. What’s really cool is that Task Atlas doesn’t care if you mix these modes together, so if you are working in 2D but need to do some 3D stuff as well, the Landmark will remember which mode you were and switch from 2D/3D automatically!
Are you tired of getting lost in your own scene? Can’t remember that big idea you had last week? Ever load up Unity and just stare blankly for 10 minutes trying to figure out what to spend your valuable time on next?
What if a single click could show you everything you’re working on right in the Scene view? Imagine having an interactive Atlas for your world?
Zoom right in, and stick notes all over your level. Build a river here… Fix a texture’s UV here… Add an NPC there…
Keep track of where you are by adding Labels to your areas, which fade when far and even tell you how many units away it is!
Get there fast by clicking on a Landmarks image and teleporting there.
It’s an all in one bookmarking, sticky noting, task management, auto Atlas, and more! And this is just the start, many additional features are planned.
Once you try Task Atlas you’ll quickly realise organising your Unity project INSIDE Unity just makes sense and will save tons of time.
Nice idea. I recommend, unless it already has, to allow users to change colors of those sticky notes, buttons etc. ( Some folks are color blind) yes many artists are actually) . Great idea , nice Job Atom.!
Yes that is absolutely a plan for a future update! Not only just the sticky note but I would like to have a few different skins altogether so that instead of a classic sticky look you can have other things, say a sci fi looking overlay. In the meantime, perhaps I can implement a quick tint algorithm on the texture that applies the task color itself as the sticky color.
I really like where this is heading but I’m struggling to get a handle on a few things.
Without documentation or a video explaining what this asset does it can be quite confusing jumping into it. For example:
A) I made a landmark and couldn’t figure out where it was. Turns out it spawns outside the fading range so it’s invisible when you create it and you need to move away from the landmark.
B) I cannot determine the objective of the button on the right side of the screen. It seems like it wants me to click it, then click a landmark and then click a task in its menu but that doesn’t do anything.
Bugs
When you click the … button on the right side of the scene view … it will disable itself if you hold [Right-Click + Shift + A or D] it also happens if you try to scroll in-or-out or move by clicking in the middle mouse button right after clicking the button on the right. That means if I activate that mode and try to move there’s a high chance it’ll just turn off.
Note: This will also happen if you open task view and do that exact same key combination.
Suggestions
The default pin image in the Task Atlas window is giant. Would be nice to have an option for just the name, no picture and just the name with the 5 icons (4 if you remove the image icon). Once you know what the icons are naming them is irrelevant (if possible could have hovering over the icon display the icon name). That paired with the large images could make having even a few landmarks unnecessarily more cumbersome.
An option to only see tasks when you’re selecting on that specific landmark.
A way to allow only specific gizmos (landmark names, task icons) in the scene based on tags. I’d like to keep certain markers active while I work and remove one’s that are extra additional data for when I’m working in a specific area.
Each individual task in the task panel is massive. If you could hide due date, subtasks, sticky tasks, auto timer and delete under a dropdown that would be fantastic. Furthermore, the tasks could appear similar to when you click manual sort on the landmark page- then click on that task to maximize it,
Tasks and Subtasks only have a name. No descriptions, no notes, it works but would be monumentally more comprehensive if a textbox was included for each task/subtask.
Hi there! First of all thanks for the feedback, very helpful! Last night I recorded a 30 min walkthrough of how this system works, so check it in the post above (feel free to watch at 2x speed).
There’s also a 10 page manual included in the Documentation folder.
That’s as designed. When you hit “New Landmark” you should instantly see it add a screenshot of your exact current view to the Landmark list. It’s literally where you’re standing. The reason the label itself “fades away” when you’re on top of it is because you don’t need it anymore, you know where you are. The labels serve to remind you what other Landmarks are close to you. The manual and tutorial also explain that these labels are fully configurable so you could either have them always on, check the settings here:
That’s the magic button! If you only have one Landmark, then it’s not going to show much. Once you get several Landmarks set up then you’ll see the value:
First two green buttons rotate the view, the other two zoom in and out. Each Pin is clickable (and gets highlighted when selected, in the screenshot above Mall is highlighted and centered). If you click the pin again, you get a top-down task view.
Not a bug. This actually took a whole evening to code it properly. So what you call the “…” button is the “Atlas” button, and is a very specific mode that serves a very specific purpose. Early in development I didn’t have it “cancel with movement” and the end result was strange, and busy. You’d zoom into the pin, and the labels would also start showing on top of it, and all the pins would always be on top as well (as they’re GUI objects not actual game objects, they don’t get obscured by 3d models). At the end of the day, the point of the Atlas mode is only to give you a full view of your POI’s, so it records the “valid” worldspace position’s, and if you stray off that mark, it’ll automatically disable.
That being said, rotation is allowed without cancelling the Atlas Mode, and is very useful. Sometimes you’ll have a cluster of Landmarks together and they’ll all be in view, however, you might want to select one way off in the distance – no problem, just rotate your view and click it.
Are you referring to these?
If so, they scale based on the width of the window:
The reason this happens is so that the screenshot is always the same dimensions. When I didn’t scale the right half, it would look a bit funny with all the extra ‘blank space’ so I thought to fill it up by just scaling it all.
I’m not sure I fully understand your request, but I’m all for adding options so that you can customise things as much as possible, feel free to scribble on the above screenshot maybe?
Interesting idea, so you mean that it’ll hide all Sticky tasks in the scene that’s outside of the landmark you’re currently inside of in the Landmark Editor?
If so, not a bad idea and I can definitely add that.
Similar to the above but instead based on tags not just the currently “selected” Landmark. I can add that as well!
I like this idea, and I’m going to start playing with it, might tackle 2 & 3 above first as this request does require a bit of a redesign. But I agree, it is tricky displaying all this info without cluttering up the view. That’s why I at least made sure the Task Header remains sticky as you scroll down, so you know which Task you’re actually editing! But yeah, I think adding some collapse buttons would fit nicely. Great idea.
Sure I can add that. The Task Name itself can be very very very long (it gets truncated for the ‘views’ of course) but perhaps it makes more sense to have “notes” as well.
On that “note” in a future version I actually plan to add different types of objects here, not just tasks but also a plain old “Note”, a “To Do” check list, and if I can make it work also allow for “Sticky Reference Images” so that if you’re working on a beautiful waterfall scene, you could actually import an image of a waterfall to use as a reference.
Please note: do not move the asset to any other folder at the moment. I’m working on an update soon that will dynamically be able to find the data file even if you move it.
Launch Sale will be ending soon as we approach 25 sales, if you are strongly considering this, please don’t delay!
Also note I have zillions of enhancements coming that I will build off of this framework with, I also look forward to your ideas too that I can incorporate.
When’s the best time to start planning out your project? As soon as possible. I designed this to be, hopefully, one of the first assets you install into any new project. Yes, you’re brilliant, but that just means you have so many awesome ideas you couldn’t possibly remember them all. So write them down, right where they should go: inside your scene!
I spent this month squishing a few bugs and making a couple of minor improvements. Thanks for the quick feedback everyone.
What’s next?
I’m already working on 2D mode for the Atlas, if all goes right I want to launch that Late Feb / Early Mar. Could be earlier if I get lucky. It’s not a terribly hard change to do, but there are some significant considerations I need to work out. For example, the 3D Landmark Labels show in front of you, but in 2D mode I need to arrange them so that they’ll show up around the rim of the screen when they’re off camera. That’s not hard, of course, but just an example of some tweaks I need to make to make 2D mode feel like a first class experience and not just something I quickly converted.
Now that you’re using it, I’m very excited to hear what else I can add. As I mentioned, I have many of my own plans for this tool but if you have a specific need, it’s likely others do too, so let me know and let’s see if I can build that for you!
I decided to jump into it this afternoon, here’s the start of the 2D Mode!
It’s not much yet, but the ‘bookmarks’ and screenshots seem to be working perfectly. It’ll also capture your “orthographicSize” (or in non programmer speak, your Zoom Level)
Just submitted an important fix to the store. A user likes to have multiple scene windows open at once, and it turns out this made Task Atlas glitch a bit in it’s calculations. It’s now fixed, the labels and sticky tasks will measure from each Scene Window’s distinct camera positions now.
Atlas Mode, at the moment, gets enabled for all Scene Windows at once, however I’m working on a new solution to allow Atlas Mode to work per Scene Window so it can be enabled on one and off on the other. But for now, just know that this is in the works.
Finally, if you have multiple Scene Windows, the Landmark editor thinks in terms of the last focused Scene Window. So it’ll take a screenshot / position data from the last Scene Window you clicked. And if you hit the Screenshot to fly to the bookmarked location, it will, again, use the last focused Scene Window to do so.
How cool is this? The Landmarks are now “Dimensionally Aware” so if you ‘capture’ the position while in 2D mode, and then switch to 3D mode and capture another one in 3D mode, you can switch between them and it will automatically adjust the 2D/3D mode.
You’ll notice that it also records the zoom level in 2D mode so you can put a Landmark close up or far away.
Here’s how the Landmark Labels look so far. They’ll stick to the edge of the screen when you go far enough away. They’ll still fade with distance, or be always on if you prefer. Also, as you can see, they still take the color chosen for the Landmark. Notice that it’s not just happening left and right, but also up and down, so should work nicely whether you’re building a Platformer or a top down Dungeon Crawler type game.
One thing I want to do is somehow “slot” it so that two labels aren’t allowed to overlap.
I’m almost ready to release, need to get the Atlas Mode working properly in 2D mode and polish up a few details in the Landmark Editor. Still on target for a late Feburary 2D update.
Non 2D stuff:
After this, I will be taking a hard look at the Landmark Editor and making it a bit more polished and streamlined. I want better sorting abilities and perhaps collapsible tasks would be nice to release soon. I also think it would be cool to soon allow you to change the default Landmark Icon (the pin) to whatever you want, so you could put a scary monster face there or a Town icon, whatever you want.
Sticky Tasks now working very nicely. They’ll get big when centred, and if zoomed out will first shrink, then lose alpha, then vanish. Their size depends on the zoom level of the original landmark position, so if you’re super zoomed in, those tasks will exists within that zoom level.
Not visible in this preview, but I also put in a sorting algorithm so that the “most centred” (ie. largest) task will always display on top, which is actually a pretty nice little piece of polish.
BIG NEWS! TWO DEE IS HERE! I had to rebuild half the code to work with the slightly different math and editor quirks regarding 2D mode. What’s really cool is that Task Atlas doesn’t care if you mix these modes together, so if you are working in 2D but need to do some 3D stuff as well, the Landmark will remember which mode you were and switch from 2D/3D automatically! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEPVpXV1Ha0
