During the first week of the development process the main focus was to develop a MVP that allowed connections between multiple platforms and displayed simpler graphics. We used Node.js to run it and Socket.io to allow the connection between multiple platforms, which in this case was a running Unity project and internet browsers. The Unity project displayed a simpler 3D world while the browsers showed an interactive 2D map over the world, by the help of Leaflet.js. If the user taped the map a tree would be placed and the user could see the tree being dropped in the 3D world.

When it was time to branch out on the MVP we had three areas: the graphics, the interaction and the logic. For the graphics part a larger and more detailed 3D world was created in Blender and later on exported to Unity. More 3D models, like power plants and nature objects were also created and added. Some objects like the water and electrical cables needed shading and these were scripted. For the interaction we allowed the user to choose between multiple objects to place on the map. To make sure the interface was mobile responsive we used Onsen UI and their components. The user was also asked to enter an alias when entering the page to tell who did what interactions and display that for the other users. And for the logic part we added more things in Unity, like a graph displayed on the larger screen, to show all users how their different interactions affected the CO2 emissions, and a bar that gave an overview to what energy sources that was used. To give a more alive and responsive world we integrated a day and night cycle and if the CO2 emissions were too high a fog appeared.

When the project was displayed to users we deployed the project with the help of a Raspberry Pi and the users scanned a QR code, leading to the deployed website, to join. That allowed everyone to use their own phone in a very efficient way.

Most integrations have been pretty seamless for us. One of few challenging parts has been to extract models from Blender to Unity. There were many materials we couldn’t extract and had to add in Unity instead. One time we also had a huge problem with the vectors in the extraction. which made half of the world turn inside out. Otherwise this project has been a good project to learn more about creating shaders and work with very cute low-poly style graphics. Which was also a style of the graphics that was liked by the users, we learned during the users feedback.

Since we decided to work with a very complex topic, the environment, there’s a lot of future implementations and work to be done. We had to scoop the project and focus on just a few things even if we had a lot of ideas and things we wanted to try out - a challenge but also something you need to practice. In the end we saw that this project serves as a very good proof of concept and could be expanded a lot in areas like education, collaboration and exploration.