Trailer!

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1907886903497

Let it be known, iMovie and I, are not friends.

Simulation

So, there are still some major bugs with getting the phones to work and actually communicate with processing. I have put together a simulation sketch of what the game WILL look like (for the most part) when it's done though.

http://acsweb.ucsd.edu/~aashie/MissileCommand/MCSimulationFinal/applet/

The object collision wont be accurate until we get processing communicating with the phones to give live/dead status but otherwise gameplay will be similar to this.


For presentation purposes, to control the missiles you use the arrows. The d key detonates the missiles. The mouse controls the bases, clicking the mouse causes them to detonate.

Documentation

So, I found a friend who can document our beta testing! Hopefully we'll be done and ready to test by next weekend so I can get her to film our project in action!

Woo login

So blogspot hasn't been letting me log in, pretty much since the last time I posted and I have no idea why.

Anyway, Nadia has been working on trying to get the phones to cooperate. It's frustrating. We're having to move things back but it's going to get finished. We're just going to need to move the actual game to later on in the year, closer to the Best of ICAM show. In the mean time I've been working on the score system. I wont be able to actually implement it until we get the phones working and object collision works a little better, but it's definitely going well. I'm going to try to get object collision going this week if at all possible. I've been working on it for weeks, but I think I might have a new idea that could actually work.

Here's to hoping. :D

Visual Interface Prototype

So I've been working with processing and this is what I've come up with so far. To use this, you need to use the mouse to move around and click to detonate. Later the mouse will be swapped out with values from the GPS. This is still only showing one side of the game. I still need to look into object collision to get the base under attack to realize whether or not it's been hit and respond accordingly and add in some score system.

http://acsweb.ucsd.edu/~aashie/MissileCommand/MissileCommand/applet/

Crazy Issues

As Nadia said, we got the Russell Grant, but we can't spend the money on the one thing we applied for. This is frustrating beyond belief. We need to present them with another budget including batteries and glowsticks. Hopefully they'll let us use the money to purchase these, as they are crucial for our project.

I've been trying to hack away at the visual interface in processing and am having all kinds of trouble with it. Every time they update processing, the codes that worked before stop working. We're looking into writing it in another platform but I'm not sure about how to do this just yet, so we'll have some research to do.

I'm also in the process of applying to grad school programs, so I'm completely stressed/busy trying to get everything squared away there. I should have them all sent out by Tuesday and then should be able to calm down and look at the issues we are facing a little more rationally. Hopefully the problems wont be too difficult to work out.

More Updates

So I met with Brett, and someone from Porters/University Centers about how our actual performance is going to go down.

It seems the school wants to have a "TRON" themed dance at Porters this quarter and they think our project fits perfectly with their event. We're still working out the bugs about hardwiring our communications between the server and the phones, but for the most part it seems like it's going to work out nicely for us. If this ends up being the venue, I'm going to skin our visual interface to play along with the TRON theme. Missile Command style already fits rather nicely for the light disk game in TRON, so this shouldn't be too difficult. Using this as our venue will also give us access to laser/lightshows and strobe lights, which will make gameplay more interesting to the spectators watching it unfold.

The current plan is to play it in Eucalyptus Grove just outside of Porters Pub during the event. We will brief players on gameplay and have them sign a wavier and leave their ID card when they receive the phone. The players will have some form of lights so they can see players and see where they are going despite it being dark outside.

Incorporating it with the Tron event should help generate interest as well as give the project an environment in which to incorporate itself into. We still need to firm up technicalities about reception and servers, but it is looking good for us. The people at University Centers seem really excited about the project and this is going to be incredibly helpful in planning the event.

Now we just need to hear back about the Russell Grant and start working through the coding finding out the phone's capabilities.

Update from my end of the woods

It's been a while since I last posted.

I've spent most of the past week working on grad school applications and reformatting my computer to clean it up and make it run smoother. Hopefully this will stop all of the problems I was having with processing runtime when I try to work on the spectator visual gameplay interface. This weekend and next week I should have it to where processing will work again without crashing every few minutes.

We've had to change the system for relaying information to send packets of information instead of just using J2ME. I'm not really sure what this is going to mean in terms of the processing code, so I have research to do before we can plan any serious implementation. In the meantime, I'm going to work on a base wireframe structure of the visual interface in the next few weeks. Hopefully if I can get that running and cleaned up to look nice we will be able to just modify the code to represent the information packets we are sending it.

Also, we are meeting with Brett, and IT people tomorrow about using PC or Porter's pub for a venue. Lets hope all goes well and that works out.