VietPark – Part 3: The Design
With the mockup sketches in hand, I can now look at how the scripting will come into play.
My first design decision is to use Flickr as my photo storage area. The benefits of this are:
- VastPark supports Flickr natively through a plugin
- Flickr is free and nice to use
- I dont have to worry about the bandwith bill
My second design decision is to use a managed control system for this site. Rather that letting the user walk around the site at will Im going to restrict the movement to certain regions so I can better control their experience.
With these design decisions in place, I can now think about the triggers and events I’m going to need for this site. I’ll take a look at this on an entity-by-entity basis:
Flags
The flags are going to connect to Flickr and download a certain set of images according to my Flickr username and the tags I have applied to the pics. I want this to happen when the user clicks on the flag. I also want the flags to animate when the users mouse hovers over them.
Events
OnClick: Connect to Flickr and generate entities for each search result
OnHoverEnter: Play flag animation (looping) and apply the highlight shader
OnHoverLeave: Stop flag animation and remove the highlight shader
Movie clapper
When this is clicked on its going to cause the currently visible photos to begin a slideshow. Its animation will play while the mouse is over it and it will light up to show the user its clickable.
Events
OnClick: Begin slideshow for currently visible photos
OnHoverEnter: Play looping animation and apply highlight shader
OnHoverLeave: Stop animation and remove highlight shader
Notepad
Will allow the users to add a comment to my site.
Events
OnClick: Open my blog to the comments section for Vietpark (alternatively use the comments section on the VastPark Commons)
OnHoverEnter: Play looping animation and apply highlight shader
OnHoverLeave: Stop animation and remove highlight shader
Finally I need to think about site events. When the site first loads I want it to connect to my chosen comments website and download all of the comments and the user’s avatar that posted the comment and generate entities for each one in the site. This can all happen asynchronously. So in the SiteLoadEnd event, I’ll write some code to accomplish this.
Its been fairly brief, but I now have a simple design that I can take to the implementation stage.