I spent this week tying up a bunch of odds and ends and helping out everyone else with what they were working on. Now that the WiiMote and headtracking is all done I’ve been working with Chau to try and get all this server stuff integrated and working correctly. Jared, Chau and I all met on Friday for a few hours and worked on the multiplyer aspect. We ran into a bunch of problems and are meeting again this week to finish it up.

I tweaked my WiiMote shake function to be more responsive but it still doesnt do anything in game. I’m waiting for Jared to finish up his Library class before I mess around with it. For the demo Tuesday I’ll make it do something cool…just wait.

I’ve also been looking into AIR’s Event.EXITING stuff to run custom code when the application closes. Right now if you dont manually run the WiiMouse disconnect function (i have it as the One button) the mouse hook will remain active and you essentially can only control your mouse via the WiiMote. I’ll have this working by next week, I’ve been in Jersey and don’t have all the equipment to test it right now.

I also helped Deimler fix up the final version of the game manual. No more blurry jpgs and spelling errors (hopefully.)

This week me jared and kyle met for a coding party. Unfortunately the party resulted in frustration and disappointment. Luckily, necessity is the mother of invention so me and jared both partook in the challenge of fixing the problems we encountered.

The best part is that we both reached similar successful results. A few more minor tweaks for tuesday and we’re ready to rip and roar.

Although jared might say otherwise (and it might be true cause i’ve seen him code and he’s like rainman at actionscript) my version of the solution is kind of awesome.

This week I fixed the Fourmation manual with the help of Kyle. I realized that due to the fact that you cannot take a screen shot higher than 72 dpi, the shots I took of the game aren’t going to be as high resolution as desired. However, I managed to export the PDF as a much higher quality and I also re-saved the images as the highest quality possible. Here is the new PDF.

Next, I tackled some user interface items for our game using AIR. AIR tests were completed a while ago, but we revisit them now to incorporate them into the new game. Our group debated on whether or not to have the “restore” function accessible to the user while playing the game. This would allow users to restore the game to a normal window size instead of a full screen. This works fine when working with the swf because flash allows manipulation and extraction of the keys. However, when using the flash program as an application changes this. You are not able to restore the program to a normal size because the program sets it to full screen. If restored, the game still is at full screen, though it has been restored. We have decided to drop the escape function and just use 2 simple buttons that either minimize or close the window. We do not foresee any situation that would cause the user to have the need to have the window restored. If they need to operate things on the desktop, then they can just minimize the screen. If they want to close the game, they just have to click the close button.

This week we’re going to finalize our presentation material and exactly how we’re going to present.

This week I worked on further simplifying the code and making it run better. I also changed the pdf names to be more relevant. I added a javascript focus to the site as suggested. For example when the user clicks on blog, this website loads up on top of the other windows. I also added a pre-loader so the user gets some feedback while the site is being loaded. we had some problems implementing it with the final html. http://www.thomasbergamini.com/test/Preloader.html

The difficulty with making the site run better was trying different settings. It turns out all the objects had a parameter on them that was not being used, and the parameter was constantly looking for a value. When that was removed the site ran better.
hrs: 12

This week I primarily worked on the multiplayer code. It took me a couple of hours to familiarize myself with the Smartfox server code and I think I have a pretty good grasp on it now. It seems a little buggy, and I have been finding people on forums with similar problems that I have been running into.

I got some of the functionality to work, passing variables around. There are some problems with it but I am sure that it will be an easy fix (probably just missing some minor detail, as always when dealing with new APIs). When I get into the flow of passing variables around it should be up and running in no time.

Check out my latest build.

Multiplayer is going to be difficult, but we will finish it by the end of the week. There are a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration and a lot of variables that need to be constantly updated. I will be working on this nonstop until it is perfect, its starting to make me angry.

This week I finalized the design. I used fewer colors overall to keep a tighter, cleaner appearance. After adjusting the color scheme I worked on the new icon set. Because our site is already chugging a little I built everything in Flash to cut back as much as possible on the overall weight. We were both (me & Tom) working hard on our parts separately and we fell short of incorporating all of our individual work into each others’ code and FLA. Tom got the loader working, but some minor bugs after adding it to my code held it up as one post. You can find the new updated look here.

http://www.toddsmedia.com/fourmation/upload/example.html