During my research on recent Smartphones, I found that there
is a handful of new OSs that are out there. The list of the OSs I've heard of
are: Linux, Tizen, Firefox, IOS, Android, and Windows. I didn't even know that
Firefox and Linux were making Smartphones. This means that in the field of
working on apps for these phones, it is important to have a good knowledge of
the different languages and interfaces. That way your app can be used on all of
the phones that are connected to the app store. This would be very important if
the app store allows different OSs to use it.
http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/01/do-we-really-need-another-smartphone-os/
During my research on 3D TV, I found that 3D TV might be
something we all will have in the future. With 3D movies in theaters, it's no
wonder why it is picking up more speed. The problem with 3D TV is that there
aren't a lot of 3D videos out there, Samsung is thinking about that however.
One of the new TV's they advertised was called 9000-series. This TV is a third
of an inch thick, 3D with a feature to turn 2D to 3D, and has a touch screen
remote that allows you to watch TV on it and has apps. This really fits in with
the future because 3D is good until we come up with virtual reality, thin is a
big future thing, and the remote is basically like a tablet.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/samsungs-impossibly-thin-3d-tv-tempts-hollywood-producer/
During my research on configurable games, I found that Sims
3 and Spore are games that are big on creativity. Sims has always been about
having a character and leading them through life to be the best they can be.
This included giving them items that would make them happy and help them to
advance towards that ultimate goal. These items, as well as the people and
their outfits, can be customized to be what you want it to be. If you are not
all that creative there's an online storage of modified items. As for Spore it
was designed with a lot of customization. You could make custom buildings,
people, vehicles, and planets. The problem with these games to me was they had
very simple game play. I find it unfortunate when a game with such creative
power can be dulled by the interactions. With spore there aren't a lot of
advanced interactions until you get to the space age. With Sims it doesn't
really change and can be boring at times. One thing I've always questioned is
why there are no mini games that would make you feel like you were actually
doing something.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/04/hands-on-sims-3/
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/09/spore-review/
This week I'm starting work on the last thing I need to do for the project. I plan to take screenshots of gameplay and put them into the tutorial. I have to wait on some of the finishing things that my team has to do, but soon I can get the tutorial underway. It should be a simple menu with forward, back, and skip buttons. The rest of it will be pictures that are shaded and have text to tell the player what things do. After that, if it's the first time they are playing, the game will start up and let them play.
A majority of the work that I had to do is finally getting completed. All that's left now is some final touches and a help menu. Once those are done, I'll pretty much be done with the tasks I have to do. With that in mind, I plan to look into areas that I can help to improve the game. One thing I noted is some of the backgrounds seem a little out of place. I plan to look into editing them in some way with Photoshop so that they seem more like they fit in better.
As well as that, there is still more modifying I can do to make the code cleaner. I may or may not do that depending on how fast this all gets together. Because we need a running version next week, I can't really do game changing modifications. It would make us recombine everything again. I may have to wait for a new completed version of the code before I can change any of those things.
Finally have all the shop assets, which is great. Now I need to just add them into the game. Because the items need to be programmed into the game by Dameon, I have to finish the shop this week. The prices don't need to be set up yet, nor all the restrictions necessarily. So I'll be working on that in a later copy.
Also on the side I have been working to reduce the lines of code that I have. It was something like 1000 lines of code because there are so many unique items and 5 different unique locations. But, because of arrays that can hold object names, I can shorten my code by at least 120 lines.
This week we are trying to add more content to the game. I'll be adding in more programming and items to the shop. Mostly just adding the units at the moment because the items are being finished. As well we are working on adding in some restrictions to the units to allow only specific units to use specific items. This will need a small HUD update, which I'll be working on soon enough.
This week I'm working on fixing some of the comments we got during the week 8 presentation. Other than that, there isn't much new stuff to repair due to QA comments. Many of the comments were about how we didn't have anything you could actually command at the moment. As well some were due to confusion. This was to be expected because there isn't a working help button. That will be added nearing the end due to screenshots and small new features that will need to be explained.
As well as the comments, I am trying to work some on adding in the new features and items we will have in the shop. This unfortunately requires item submissions from Wes, which means I'll have to get to that later on when I receive them.
This week is my first week back from vacation. It was nice to finally have some time off of work that needed to be done, but now its time to start up work on the project again. The first thing to do was to set up a new statements of work. We ended up mostly with the same list as before with only a few things done. The reason of course, was because we had planed for this to be a two parter and there was plenty of final things left to implement. The weeks off to a slow start, but that's fine because what needs to be done right now is getting everything set up to work on again.
