Why You ask?
Potentially as a way to give my brain a bit of a mental refresh i began to fixate on the lack of an interactive map feature for a game I pass the the time with. As a result I cooked up a quick prototype map viewer application for Android or iOS.
The project is Built in Unreal Engine and has fairly minimal code. mostly around some custom view controls I created to handle the typical swipe to pan camera position as well as pinch to zoom controls.
Here is a shot of a level loaded into view
THE CONCEPT
Build an application that can stream and un-stream 3d models that represent levels or locations in the game world. these levels will connects with other locations, so touching on the joining area should allow the player to load that zone as well. Each zone in addition contains various points or interest to the player. i wanted to create a simple visual toggle to allow the players to see only what they wanted to see.
HOW
As I mentioned previously the project guts are built in unreal and coded in their Blueprint scripting language. overall it's a fairly simplistic application. There is the element that handles the input controls. the UI layer that handles the toggling on elements vis class objects placed in the map and then the UI that loads and unloads the requested 3D file.
I made the model in Sketchup, and exported out as anOBJ. but any package should be able to get you a similar result.
Send me a message if you'd like the .apk or any of the other source files to mess around with.
Snippit of input code, Unreal Engine Blueprint
Base 3D model, created in SKetchup
Menu open showing visibility toggles