The UI system I created for Vesper is grid-based and the way UI elements are laid out relative to world objects matters. The visual interplay between UI elements and world objects also matters.
To maintain relative placement I needed to ensure a 16:9 aspect ratio (the ratio I designed for). So I created a tiny system that adds letterboxing/pillarboxing as needed.
[↓] Pay no attention to the planet in the background, the satellite (and the camera with it) is spinning.
I'd like to explore ways to make this system more dynamic. Expand it so that is encompasses camera placement, shot framing, and adjusting the UI grid and elements to service the intention of the layout, while ensuring a strong visual composition.
Closing out exploration week I decided to push myself a bit - see if I could design and build a small proof-of-concept game in two work days.
Wanderwood (working title) is a tiny ambient exploration game where you wander around a forest, discovering various things and taking notes.
That's it really. I've always loved exploration for its own sake. Exploring the woods by our house when I was a kid. The space program (back when). Expeditions into the unknown. Drawing maps and taking field notes.
[↑] The texts are written in a .JSON-file and parsed into Unity.
Summer Exploration week 2025
We usually set aside a week for exploration in the fall. This year we wanted to do one before the summer break as well.
I decided to start with something I've wanted in my tool box for a good while - an editor Tool that'll let me "paint" (instantiate) prefabs onto a mesh in the scene.
There's an endless supply of tools like this one baked into a bunch of other stuff out there. I wanted something small and purpose-built.
[↑] The Y rotation and scale of the placed object can be randomized in the settings window.
There's also a preview wireframe "ghost" and a setting to adjust where the instantiated object will end up in the hierarchy — in the root, on the clicked object or under the currently selected object (if any).
Getting the basics working was surprisingly simple. A lot of my time was spent making sure the code was clean enough to be easily parsed, understood and modified by myself down the line.
[↑] Generating tree structures procedurally. Probably inevitable.