Interface and Application Programming
Group Assignment 2021 (Héctor and Gustavo)
Unity 3D
Unity is a multiplatform video game engine created by Unity Technologies. Unity is available as a development platform for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux. The development platform has compilation support with different types of platforms.
Unity allows you to create a UI (User Interface) with a very interactive and visual appearance. You only need to know the basics of Unity a bit to be able to create a functional UI.
To create them, join the Canvas, an area where the UI elements must be. To incorporate the elements into the Canvas, you have to make use of graphic design tools (such as Rect Rool, Rect Transform, Pivot, Anchors ...), visual components (Text, Image, Mask, Efects ...), components of animation (Onclick, Toggle, Slider, Scrollbar, Dropdown…) and the Animation Integration (which allows each transition of the states of the animated controls using the Unity animation system).
In Gustavo's individual assignment you can see an example video of the Unity interface.
MIT App Inventor
App Inventor is a software development environment created by Google Labs for the development of applications for the Android operating system. The user can, visually and from a set of basic tools, link a series of blocks to create the application.
The system is free and can be easily downloaded from the web. Applications created with App Inventor are limited by their simplicity, although they allow a large number of basic needs to be covered on a mobile device.
The applications built using AppInventor are composed of the following elements:
By delving into these concepts with the application and testing, it is possible to create a good application with a good interface with MIT App Inventor in a couple of days.
In Hector Flores's individual assignment you can see an example video of the MIT App Inventor interface.
Web Interface
The web interface are graphic elements that allow the user to access the content, navigate and interact. The purpose of an interface is to provide the user with a framework of use that allows tasks to be carried out in the best possible way.
The user visits the URL of a website and the browser (Chrome, Safari, Explorer, Mozilla) automatically loads the programmed instructions - usually in JavaScript language, in combination with HTML and CSS codes and with the resources of the hosting server.
Normally, for the web interface to work, it must be hosted on a web server.
To develop it, it is necessary to have knowledge of the aforementioned codes, HTML, CSS, Java ... Therefore, it is a simple option for those who already have basic programming concepts on these programming languages and their learning curve will be faster.
In Hector Flores's individual assignment you can see an example video of the web server interface.
Conclusion
The Unity interface is very useful if the application or game for which it is going to be created has also been developed in Unity. Allow your integration to 100%. On the other hand, if you want to create the Unity interface for an application created with external code, you have to spend more time adapting it.
MIT App Inventor, is a practical application with many examples and tutorials. In a few days a functional application can be developed. As a drawback, its use is more oriented to smartphone devices.
Web interface: this may be the most practical, since it can be accessed from any computer, tablet or smartphone, with the use of a web browser. To build it, you can make use of templates or create it from scratch, but you need knowledge of HTML, CSS and Java languages.