MDDN 352, Project 3, Reflection

This project I would actually say has been one of my favorites  App development is something I wouldn't mind getting into in the future, and learning java script will definitely help me if i am to look down  that line of work. As for the group for this project I thought that we all worked really well together and I wouldn't mind working with them again. We all managed to keep on each others good side and always respected each others work which is something I am really grateful for.

As for going further with this app. Joss and I want to enter this in that competition that the department of conservation are doing. If we do enter it though we are going to have to change several things with the sever. Especially make it that you can access it outside of the university. Joss also wants to work on the art again. I dont really see much more that he can do on it but I asked him to try and keep the same layout.

I put our video on vimeo and I have already got comments from people asking how they can download it as it is something which they say they would use. As a designer this is the best thing to hear, knowing that people actually like your work and what to get it feels amazing. So hopefully once we complete it fully we can upload it to the google + store and maybe even itunes if we figure out how to do that. Im not sure if it is going to be a problem if we also use this app in that competition but I will ask Kah once we get it all finalized.

So overal I would rate this project a success and I am really proud of the outcome and hope that everyone else enjoys it if we end up realeasing it.

MDDN 352, Project 3, Final Presentations

We just had our final presentation and it actually went really well. We started off by telling the audience about the app and who we were. From then we went straight in to showing them the video which Joss and I made which shows the usefulness of our app.

Check-It App video from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.
We believe that this video shows a lot about the app and shows how useful it actually is. From then we gave the tutors each a phone which had the app on it as well as some products (some which were on the database and some that weren't) for them to scan and test out the app for themselves.  The feedback we got from our app was very good and we are all really proud of it. Along with the video we also had to hand in a poster which we made for a competition  which we are actually thinking of entering. The poster is A1 so I apologize if you cannot see it on this blog.

Also like MDDN 343 we had to write an individual report saying what we did on the app.

Here are also some screen shots of the app in use and showing some parts of it

MDDN 352, Project 3, ANOTHER NEW LAYOUT!!!!!!!!!

So this app is due in a couple days. It was about 90% done and there were only a couple of small touches which we needed to do and most of them were from the server side. And then Joss decided to do ANOTHER layout. This time it is a lot different than the old ones. He realized that we had sort of gone off track with us wanting to have everything easily accessible. We showed our app to Ben Jack and he said that he thinks it would be a lot nicer if we had only 2 buttons per page. So that is what we did.

For this new layout we made a new button called recycling. This button goes onto another page which is where all the things that the user needs for the recycling part of the app is.

The about button goes to a page where it give information about the app itself. Originally we wanted there to be several sets of data on that page

• Number of Scans personally
• Number of Overall Scans
• Number of Recycling bins taged personally
• Total number of bins taged
• and the most recycled type of product.

We weren't able to implement the personal onces because that is data which we have to set with the phone and we would have to use caching to be able for it to save that information. We almost got it working but we ran out of time so we decided to take it out.

The other 3 are in the app though and are working properly

Well back to the main screen and when the user presses the Recycle button it takes them to this page.

From this page everything is pretty much the same. The only difference is that on the page where you either get a successful scan, this is where you find the database button. We wanted to add it in there because it gives the user a little extra bonus which you can only get once you have scanned and recycled a product.

Adding this new layout was kind of annoying as it means that there was a lot of our java code which wasn't being used and was making the app slow. It took a bit of time to get rid of all the unnecessary  code but I eventually got it out. After this most of the app is done and all that we need now is to make the video and prepare for our final presentation

MDDN 352, Project 3, another new layout, Dropdown menu and Scroller

So Joss has once again decided on a new layout. I did tell him that if we were to get it done at least a couple days before hand in that I would put it in. So well yeah thats what I did.

This layout is almost of linear and even though it was quite annoying to implement I do have to admit that it looks good. Everything works exactly the same as it did before. Something which we also decided on is that on the top of our page instead of just having a white line separate the logo from the rest of the page we are now going to have a filled bar. The colour of this bar is a slight grey which is also what we are now using for all the image and text colours to keep it consistant.

Something which we found out from when we were doing some user testing is that some people didn't really like was that if they scanned a product which wasn't in our database that it would just say that the products not found. So what I came up with is that we should have a choice for the user to input their own data on products that weren't found.

So what happens is that if a scan is successful it will go to this page.

At the moment all that is on this page it the barcode of the product and some information about it. Also if you press the database button then it will go to the database page (which I will talk about more later in this post) and the page which it goes to will be depended on what type of product is scanned. The way which we did this is the same way in which the indented image is being chosen when a button is pressed. And of course if the user was going to recycle that product then they would press the recycle button at the bottom of the screen. When that happens a little bit of text pops up saying thank you for recycling.

But if there isnt a product on the server then it will go to this page.

Originally we had a grey boarder around all the text throughout the app but when we got all of the pages together I decided to take it out and keep it on a green background. Well on this page what happens is that if you press the button where it says aluminum it will pop this up.

Here you chose what category that this item that you just scanned goes under. Once you have done this once again you press the recycling button and some text will pop up saying 'successfully added onto our server' It also changed pages to the page where a product was successfully added.
At the moment the drop down menu doesn't even look like a menu so that is something which I want to sort out before final hand in which is coming really close.

Now what happens when you press the database button is that you go onto a page which gives you some interesting facts about the products which you are about to recycle. Here are two of the facts which we have in our list.

Having a drop down menu took me quite awhile to implement but when I got it I realized that it was actually something really simple. First what I had to do was make and array named 'type of products' and then make an array list named which had the names of what I wanted in the drop down menu.
Something which got he held up for quite some of it was that in eclipse a drop down menu is called a 'Spinner' this was really confusing but once I figured that out it was actually quite easy. In the spinner there is an id called entires and prompt which. Entries is where the 4 choices are and prompt is where that first array name goes. So all I had to do was reference those arrays in those 2 places and it worked.
I was quite embarrassed about how easy it actually was to do after I got it working.

We have at least 6 different facts like that for each of our 4 types of recyclable products. To show these facts what I have put in is a horizontal slider. So all the user needs to do is swipe there finger across the screen to show all the other facts which are there on the page. A couple of the other guys in the groups said that I should get rid of the grey boarder around the facts. But me and Martin decided it would be good to keep it in as it shows the user that it is different than the rest of the app. While your swiping it also shows a small grey tab which shows you how far along the facts you are.

Doing the Scroller was actually a lot harder than I thought that it would. Something which made it extremely hard was that all the images weren't all the same size so I had to go back and export them all again with the right sizes that I wanted. Once they were all the same size it was a lot easier. In eclipse there is something called a horizontal scroller and all I did was add a horizontal linear layout within that scroller and had all the images in that linear layout.

Something which is also happening on that page is that under where it says 'Aluminium Recycling Facts' it will tell you how many Aluminium products have been scanned in the past

MDDN 352, Project 3. New layout and user feedback

So coming from the beta presentation we have actually changed several of our icons and most of the pages have been put in.

Over the past week I havent been able to do much work on the app because I have had hands in for MDDN 314 as well as MDDN 343. But now that both of those projects are all done and dusted I can focus all of my time on making this app work and look good.

The networking students have done some stuff to the server so that most of the information which we need is going to be ready for us to put in.

So here is the new layout which we have got into eclipse and everything is working perfectly fine at the moment.

This actually looks a lot better than the original and it definitely tells the user that it has something to do with recycling. Even though we all like this layout and we have also implemented indenting when the button is held down, Joss still doesn't like the look of the app and wants to change the icons again. At this stage we only have a week to go and if he keeps making changes like this than we just cant have them in. There is a lot of code which is depending on the size of the images as well as the layout so it wont be a easy fix to just change the image. I have decided that if he wants to make new icons again then he can but he has to get them done by at least 2 days before hand in so I can make sure that these changes dont effect anything else in a bad way.

The vibrating has been put in and whenever the users finger leaves the screen when they push a button than it will vibrate for 1 second. It wasn't that hard to implement. I had to make it that the vibrator had permission to be used in the app and then just set a vibrator variable when the page is created. Along with that I just had to set when the vibrate will go off in the java. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.
We also found out that not everybody likes it when the vibrator goes off so we have decided to make the user be able to turn it on and off if they wish. To do that we overrode the actually button on all android phones which you use when you want to see other options. Here we but the choice to turn the vibrating on and off and if we have time we are also going to add sound onto that as well.

One thing which we are all quite confused about it what actually happens when the about or database button is pressed. There has been quite abit of confusion with if they are both actually the same thing. When Joss first pitched us the idea what he was saying is that the about screen goes to a page which tells you some stats about the actual app, like how many times have this app been downloaded, or how many scans have there been. The database button will go to a page which tells you about the information about the products which were scanned.

MDDN 343, Project 3, Reflection

This assignment was quite a challenge for me. There were ups and downs during the times which I had with my groups. There were times where we would get really frustrated with one another. But in the end we managed to all put our differences aside and finish the game. In the end I do think the game turned out well. At the beginning it was a real challenge for Francis and I to get things done in time since we were down one designer for a lot of the assignment. But once we all got together we managed to get a lot of work done. It truly does show that 3 is better than 1 or 2.

We had to do an individual write up about the main things which we have done for this project so here is my personal write up.



If I were to do this assignment again there would be several things which I probably would of changed if I were to make all of the design Decisions myself

1. I would change the game to a 3rd person runner like temple run
2. I probably wouldnt have had a story driven game and just make it a time and distance based game
3. I also would have made the puzzles suit the runner type of game I wanted and just kept it to dodge, jump and also phase into the other screen.

There are probably a few other things which I would of changed but I cant really think of any off the top of my head right now.

But overall I think that it all turned out well. From what I heard from people who have played the game, they liked it and as a game designer that is all I can hope for with the outcome.

Now its time to work on Charge 2.0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MDDN 352, Project 3, Boarders and Tags

Something which I want to do in this app is to give a boarder to all of the main things in the app.

This was actually really hard and frustrating to try and get this to work like it shows above. In eclipse there isn't a simple add boarder button like there is in flash builder. What I had to do was whenever I wanted to make a boarder I had to make a new layout within the existing relative layout. In that new layout I made the background grey. And within that I made a text view which I set a background colour to green and the text colour grey. At the time when I did this the text views width and height were 'wrap_content' which means that it will always take the shape of what ever is in that text view, so if I add more lines of text it will always get bigger but will also perfectly fit in the box. Now to get the boarder I made a 2dp margin around the text view. This then showed some of the layout which the text view is in, thus giving the impression that there is a boarder. This was actually really annoying to get working as it took me awhile to figure out that way of doing it.

Another thing which we want for our app is to be able to tag recycling bins. And something which Kah told us in our beta presentation that it could be cool to say weather the bin is for glass, plastic etc. We have managed to get that implemented and gives you the opinion of which one you want to tag. At the moment when you tag it just shows a little flag but what we want to do is have different flags for the different types of recycling bin. This will help other users know what type of bin there is around them so they know which is the one that they need to go to. Apparently this isn't that hard to put in and id assume it would be the same way as our indented images. 

MDDN 343, Project 3, Final Hand in

So we just had our final hand in and Final Presentation. I believe that it all went really well. The game turned out really well and I am actually really happy with how it turned out. In the Presentation we played through the entire game and the audience seemed to like the game play.

Unfortunately I cant upload the game on blogger but we are planning on posting it up somewhere so that people can actually play it somewhere.

Here are some screen shots from in game.

As you can see from these screen shots that our game has managed to come together quite well.

We have also made a trailer for our game which shows several of the key elements of our game.


Sequence 01 from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.
I hope that you (the reader of my blog) can play Upside Down, Downside up sometime and I will post a link on my blog once it is up online for people to play

MDDN 343, Project 3, cinematics

I have managed to fix the walk animation for Uddu and it was just to move the leg back more while walking. Now it looks a lot better and also gives him more of a sway when he walks which looks a lot better in game.

Now what I have been working on lately is 2 small cinematics which we are going to be playing in our game. The first is a video which will play at the beginning of our game whenever the player starts a new game. And the other is a quick one which plays between levels.

We just wanted to sort of have a video which kind of sets the scene as well as something a little humorous to add into our game.

The opening video is just Uddu waking up in the prison cell and then he tests his powers. Because Uddu doesn't talk it was quite hard to show the story.

This is the scene which I set up to animate the video. All up there was about 1100 frames which I had to render for this video.

UNFORTUNATELY the night which I was working on this video. Just as I was about to click Render somehow I blew a fuse in my house and half of the video was lost. The fuse blew just as i plugged my laptop into the socket. It was really frustrating and took me about a couple hours to catch up to how it is now. Again unfortunately the video isn't the same as it was originally and it doesn't really state why hes in jail but I ran out of time to redo the video to how it exactly how I wanted it.

This is how it turned out and even though its not exactly how I want it but I still like how it looked.

Intro Cut Scene from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.
The second video is Uddu in the elevator which is what he enters to finish the level. I wanted this video to be a little scene but for it to be funny. All that I have done in this video is used the elevator model which I was given to by Katie and animate the frame of the elevator and have Uddu with his idle animation. And to add the humour factor I want to have some really cheesy elevator music. This video was a lot easier to do and this one came out how I wanted it to.

  Elevator Scene from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

MDDN 343, Project 3, Doors and animation Update

Our game is finally starting to take shape and it is actually looking alright. We have put in the animations for Uddu. Ryan managed to figure out how to import the animations without doing it the strange way in which he wanted to (thankfully). The animations transition between one another really well and it looks really good. I still have a problem with the jump fall animation and I want to see how it looks without it and if we can keep it out. Also the walk animation needs a little bit of tweaking because at the moment it looks like he is marching. I think all I need to do is to bring is back leg back more when hes walking.

As asset wise we are finally starting to get textures thanks to Katie. Since the beta she has always been in communication with us which is awesome. She also had the same problem with the guard animations which I had but I showed her how I fixed it so she got them working fine.

There are only afew more assets which we had to make. Me and Katie split the ones which we need so that we are both doing them. I have been working on a door which will be put in several places in our game. I want to make a sliding door which looks like it is something which could be in a government facility and also be secure.

I took inspiration from these doors which I found online

I like the way which they have pieces which kind of click together so that is what I tired to replicate and I think I managed to go a good job of it.

I really like the Look of the door. When the doors open they will be hidden withen the walls which will be next to it. We have decided to use rectangles from unity to be used as the walls and add textures to them. This will be good because then we wont have to stretch models to fit the exact way which we want them to and the texture wont also stretch. This is also because our walls come right up to the camera so they dont really have an end point from the viewers eyes.

Door Open

MDDN 352, Project 3, Beta Presentation

We just had our beta presentation for our app. We had most of the functionality done. Every button which you press goes onto another page, even if it just goes to a page which doesn't have anything useable or relevant on it yet. This is the layout of the main screen of the app which we showed.

The Barcode button goes to the barcode scanner and when you successfully can a product it goes to a page which tells you the barcode number as well as what type of recyclable product it is. At the moment we are only working with cans so it only tells you that it is a aluminum product.

We had 4 different cans so that does show that you can scan other stuff. Unfortunately the counting system wasn't implemented for the beta which is kind of a disappointment because we really wanted to have that one in to show the tutors.

We got google maps working in our app. At the moment it finds your current location (as long as GPS is on) and also if you want you can tag your location. The tagging point of our app is meant for if you are by a recycling bin you can tag where that bin is so that other users can find that bin which you have tagged. We got that aspect implemented properly so that is a good thing.

The About and Statistics button done just go to pages which show the icon for that page.
All the back buttons work and sends the user to the main home screen.

We got some really good feedback about our app and all the tutors and lecturers like it. They really liked the barcode scanner aspect. The art of the app could use some touching up because what we realized the day before the beta is the just looking at the app without knowing anything about it is that you would have no idea that this is an app for recycling.  That is something which we definitely need to change for the hand in.

Another thing which we were told we need to do is have user feedback whenever you press a button or when you successfully scan a product. I was thinking that we could either have the phone vibrate or if a small sound plays, or even both. We were also told to get rid of our boarder which we have around our app. Kah said that it isn't necessary as most people do know that the edges of the phone are the end and nothing usually goes past that point unless it is something important and its meant to be there.

Overall I think that the beta went well and we are quite on track for getting the app done by the final hand in. Going forward from this we are going to get all of the pages working and flowing nicely. We will have a lot data in our database for more products as well as the art looking a lot better and be relevant to being about recycling.

MDDN 343, Project 3, Guard

Our game is based in a government facility. UDDU has been captured by the government and is trying to escape. Along the way he has to try and avoid guards. The job of modeling a guard was given to katie but we hadn't heard from her in awhile.
I started to model what I think that could be good for a guard incase we run out of time and we havent got the models from katie.
I thought that because the scene is a government facility that most people would think of the men in black. I thought it could be cool if they had sort of robots patrolling the facility.

I didnt work on this much because I was always still hoping that Katie would get hold of us (which she did)
If she never got hold of us I would of taken this model into mudbox and then made it look a lot better than it currently does. But I wouldnt mind working with this for a future piece when I get some free time

MDDN 343, Project 3, Beta Presentation

We just had our beta presentation and I think it went alright. Luckily we have finally managed to get hold of Katie and she has given us the guard model and animations. For the beta all we had was un-animated guards because we didn't have time to put in the animations but it is better than nothing. She has also promised us that she will always attend the times which we set to meet up between now and hand in which is a couple weeks away.

Unfortunately the art is still lacking in our game but now that Katie is back she can go back to focusing on art while me and Francis go back to our originally set roles.

We got good feedback from the guests who came and watched the Betas. Especially from Jim Simmons from Resn. He told us that he really liked how we had the gameplay sorted out and that he didnt mind that the art was lacking since it was still fun to play.

From the Beta we have realized that we still have a lot to do. Francis, Katie and I are planning on coming into the lap to work most of the days next week so we can all collaborate with one another and make sure we are all going well. The coders are also planning on coming in whenever they can to do there parts but we do have a proper all group members meeting next wednesday.

We are planning to try and have our game 99% finished on the Tuesday before Hand in (18th June) so that we can spend all of Wednesday working finding/fixing any bugs which we might find. I think that this is possible if we all get our heads down and focus on it.

Not long to go!!!!!

MDDN 343, Project 3, Meeting before Beta

Our tuesday meeting this week is our last one which we are having up at the kelburn campus. From now we plan on having full working meetings down at te aro.

We still havent got the animations from Katie but Dawn said she is going to try and get hold of her and make sure that she puts them onto our dropbox in time for thursday. 
All of my animations have been given to the Ryan as he is implementing them into unity. For some reason though he wants to do it some really weird way in which I have to cut up UDDUs body into the separate pieces. I am pretty sure that I dont have to do this because Dawn managed to get it working perfectly fine with my project 1B. We are going to wait until after our Beta Presentation on thursday before I cut it up to see if Ryan can figure our how to import them without having me cut up our character.

MDDN 352, Project 3, Changing Pages

So we have our beta on friday and everything seems to be going on schedule. For our beta we want to have our main 2 aspects of our app working.

- The Barcode Scanner working which talks to a server and counts the amount of times that barcode is scanned.
- Maps which shows you your current location as well as tagging working and those locations being sent to the server.

I have been working closely with Matt as he is the one who has got the barcode scanner working. Once we have got all the things which we need for our beta in the app I am then giving the current app to networking students and they are going to add the database aspects into it.
They have already got it working that when you press a button it talks to the server and sends back some information.

I have made the flow of the app working as that when you press any of the buttons on the main page that it goes to another page. Something which is kind of annoying in eclipse is that when you make a button that actually works that you have to make a Java file for that page and thats is where you add all the code which tells the app whats is going to happen. You also have to add that page into the main manfest of the app so that it knows that this page is actually being used in the app. At the moment all I have is that when you press a button that it just goes onto a new page that just has the logo in it for the mean time.

Matt as also integrated the Barcode Scanner into our app. We are using a Zxing Library for it and when there is a successful scan then a screen shot of the app is taken and then goes onto a page where it will show the information, this is exactly what we want for the beta and now we are integrating google maps into it

MDDN 343, Project 3, New animations

Now that I have got the new higher detailed character off Francis I have been able to focus on the real animations for our character. And I have also found out a way in which the Fbx export will always work exactly how I want it to and for it to perfectly go into Unity. 

I had a long chat with Ben Richards and he also was really confused about how it wasn't working. But he lead me to a site in which it gave you step by step instructions on the exact way in which I should do it. In the end it just turned out that I have to select a different Fbx export type (autodesk media and entertainment) and then export it.

I have done the Rigging, Weight painting and contrants with handles about 20 different times on this character so I was 90% sure I knew exactly where everything should go and what they should all look like when they move.

With a high polly it was a lot harder though but I managed to get it sorted.

This time with the animations I kind of cut them up a lot more. They all have seamless transitions when looped which is a real good thing. Also for the jump I have cut that up into 2 sections so that there is a Jump start and a Jump fall. Im not 100% for the fall animation so im going to see what it looks like when we dont have it in game but for now I have put it in.

Something which the Coders have told me is to not have the end point as the origins of the character because they can do that crossfade thing between animations to make it look more natural.

Walk

Idle

Carry

Idle carry

Jump Start

Jump End