Unity + Mobile browser controller. Thoughts? - user-interface

I'm developing a game in Unity. I want it to be similar to Jackbox Games in the way that the main game is ran on a computer attached to a TV in a living room, but the interaction from those playing it come from using their phone's mobile browser to send their input. The difference that I want to accomplish is I want it to be semi-real time. Think Mario-Party mini game real time, where you might have to spam a button or do some light movement left, right, up, or down.
So here is the question: What is the best API for making the networking portion happen? I've looked into Unity Multiplayer, but it seems un-scaleable. Websockets seems possible, and Photon looks enticing with the Unity integration. I'm looking to eventually publish this, so it can't be a short-term solution. Thoughts? I'm open to any suggestions.

Go for Unity Multiplayer, There is nothing you can’t do using
UNET. And it’s very easy to understand and implement.
Photon is the other option, Yes, so much scalable at some
extent.It’s not that easy to implement but you will get through it.

Related

Which screen size should I start making a wireframe from?

Usually, browsing on Behance, Dribbble or other online stuff like those, we see wireframes only for desktop or only for mobile, so I'm still in doubt about something: when we need to make a wireframe (and considering the "mobile-first"), where should I start from? Desktop, tablet and mobile or the inverse?
"Mobile first" is a design philosophy of designing for a small screen and touch interactions first and then adding layout changes that need to happen as the display gets larger...
Start with the size/device your audience is most likely to use for interaction. Not all interactions are best on a small screen...
So as a designer who knows most users will be on a phone might go: "mobile first". In that case, you should start with mobile wireframes and then show the developers how it should change on a bigger screen by making additional wireframes (if that's your team's process).
Behance and Dribbble are bad examples of process since they're usually only showing you the end result, not the work that goes into getting there.

Adding multiplayer to HTML5 canvas game

Let's say I have similar simple HTML5 canvas game in website: LINK
What are the options to add multiplayer to this? By that I mean one user can play with other.
Tutorial?
Blog post I didn't find?
Library specially for that?
Or you know to say few works about that?
First there's a Play button which then "keeps loading" when clicked until anyone else presses the button too & it automatically hooks up these 2 users - very simple construction, nothing too complicated.
I've done my homework & I didn't find anything useful.
You have some options, but for a basic tic-tac-toe game I'd use a database.
Connect the clients to the database, updating the move they make from both sides and voila, you've got yourself a (slow) multiplayer game.
Alternatively, check out this tutorial to try it with javascript (ajax): https://jadendreamer.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/ajax-tutorial-2-player-tic-tac-toe-game-no-database-required/

How to animate basiceditfield in blackberry?

In my j2me blackberry application, I want to open editfield to enter text when user clicks on search icon. I have search icon added at the top right corner, when user clicks on it, I want to open basiceditfield with animating from right to left. I want Animation should be like default search on main screen in blackberry. How to do this? Is it possible?
You can do almost anything with the Blackberry Ui, if you understand it and are prepared to put the time in. But what you see when you press the magnifying glass is something that someone has spent a lot of time doing. There is API for doing anything like that (at least not one I have found). So if you are not experienced doing BlackBerry Ui, as I suspect is the case here, then I would suggest that replicating what the BB engineers have done with the animation from the search icon on the Home screen to the search screen, is too difficult to justify.
A lot of these sorts of things are, in my opinion, just gloss. They do not make the application any easier to use, just make it look flash. Personally, I would spend your time on making sure your application works well, rather than making it look flashy.
I do recommend using the screen transition animations as a way of moving from one screen to another. These are fairly easy to use and when used correctly, provide a good visual clue to your user regarding the flow through your application. I also suggest you spend some time making sure your assets (icons etc.) look good, on all the various sizes of BB that you are developing for.

How can I make calendar notifications show bigger?

This seems like an easy thing but I'm coming mainly from the Win world to Mac. Is there a way I can make notification alerts bigger? Or install a different App that will do this?
Right now if I notice them, I see a little alert boxes in the upper right of the desktop when a calendar appointment comes up. I have no sound...and might not be sitting at the desk anyhow...so if I have a lot of windows up and happen not to look at the upper right (actually of two screens)...I just miss the notification. I'd like to have a lot of control over those pop ups. Size, perhaps different actions (flash the screen until acknowledged?) etc. At the very least it's just not useful to me at all unless I can increase the size of the popups somehow. Jack up the font size? Again, maybe some different app that I need? Etc.
Thanks in advance! Man I can't seem to hit on the magic Google input to return anything useful on this topic.
After some research, amazingly it seems there is no way to customize OS X native notification display. The best I have come up with, in theory but not personally tested, is to add a third party notification app called Growl which is much more customizable, and then add an app that produces Growl notifications based on iCal entries. I haven't done this yet because it seems like a lot of hassle and overkill...so for now I've been living with the native notifications. When I have time I'll try the Growl route...unless I see something different posted here.

Generate and post Multitouch-Events in OS X to control the mac using an external camera

I am currently working on a research project for my university. The goal is to control a Mac using the Microsoft Kinect camera. Another student is writing the Kinect driver (which will be mounted somewhere on the ceiling or the wall behind the Mac and which outputs the position of all fingers on the Macs screen).
It is my responsibility to use that finger-positions and react on them. The goal is to use one single finger to control the mouse and react on multiple fingers the very same way, like they are on the trackpad.
I thought that this is going to be easy and straight forward, but its not. It is actually very easy to control the mouse cursor using one finger (using CGEvent), but unfortunately there is no public API for creating and posting Multitouch-Gestures to the system.
I've done a lot of research, including catching all CGEvents using an event tap at the lowest possible position and trying to disassemble them, but no real progress so far.
Than I stumbled over this and realized, that even the lowest position for an event tap is not deep enough:
Extending Functionality of Magic Mouse: Do I Need a kext?
When I got it right, the built-in Trackpad (and the MagicMouse and the MagicTrackpad) communicates over a KEXT-Kernel-Extension with the private MultitouchSupport-framework, which is generating and posting the incoming data in some way to the OS.
So I would need to use private APIs from the MultitouchSupport.framework to do the very same thing like the Trackpad does, right?
Or would I need to write a KEXT-Extension?
And if I need to use the MultitouchSupport-framework:
How can I disassemble it to get the private APIs? (I know class-dump, but that only works on Objective-C-frameworks, which this framework is not)
Many thanks for any response!
NexD.
"The goal is to use one single finger to control the mouse and react on multiple fingers the very same way" here if I understand what you are trying to do is you try to track fingers from Kinect. But the thing is Kinect captures only major body joints. But you can do this with other third party libraries I guess. Here is a sample project I saw. But its for windows. Just try to get the big picture there http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/kinect/Finger-Tracking-with-Kinect-SDK-and-the-Kinect-for-XBox-360-Device

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