MDDN 352, Project 3, Development

So far Eclipse hasn't really been that difficult to try and learn. I actually think that this would be a lot easier to make an app than flash builder would be. The only downside to it is that I dont think that it exports onto IOS devices so we are going to stick with Android devices for this project but we might try and expand if people like this app.

At the moment I am just trying to get the layout of our app sorted. 

Joss has made 4 icons which represent the 4 page of our app. He has also has laid them out how we want them to look like so that I can make it look like it in eclipse.

We thought that we would go for the plain white and green colour style because we are focusing mainly on recycling. We also want to make everything to be able to be excessed with using only 2 clicks to get to any page. 

Implementing these into eclipse though was actually a little of a challenge. I am using a relative layout which means you set every image to be relative to something, ie. scan barcode icon is always set to the left of the statistics button. Something which eclipse doesn't like though is circular dependancies. by that I mean I cant say that the scan barcode icon is the the left of the stats button, and also say that the stats button is also only to the right of the scan barcode button.  This doesn't sound like that it is much of a big deal but its only a problem when there are other images in them like the bar which is at the top of the screen.

We have also just been told that our beta presentation of our app is now on the 7th of June. Unfortunately that is the day after the Advanced Game Beta so I have a lot of work to do to get all of these working by then

MDDN 343, Project 3, High Character

Francis has finished the Mudbox high polly version of UDDU and it looks really good. At the moment it doesnt look like he has any eyes but the higher level does and once we put on the normal map onto it then it will look even better than it does now

Now that I have this model I can fully work on animations, I think that I have figured out the reason why the animations were screwing up before, and if it is the way why I think it is then it will be really stupid and would of meant a real waste of a weekend where I was working on those animations.

Our team have also had another meeting the other week but unfortunately I could not attend because of other commitments. From what I have heard of is that we have had some contact with Katie and that she said that she has uploaded the model as well as animations for the guard onto dropbox but we still cant find it up there. This is kind of annoying because I started working on a guard which will be in my next blog post but also that she has done the animating but then this means I can work on other stuff swell.

MDDN 352, Project 3, moving to Eclipse

So after a very long weekend trying to get that barcode scanner working it still hasn't been able to work. We downloaded everything which we needed for it to work but it still hasn't which was really frustrating.

I had a chat with Ryan and he came to have a look at the code to see what was the problem. He also said that it should work, BUT when he couldn't figure it out he read a line of code which made us realize that this wasn't code for a barcode scanner but a barcode generator. We extremely shocked when we saw that and it did feel like a complete waste of a weekend.

So since that we weren't able to get the barcode scanner working in eclipse we have decided to move to eclipse.

So once again I am going to be learning another new language in this paper. Over the next couple of days I plan on just watching some tutorials and getting to know how to use java.

Ryan told me of a great tutorial channel which focus's completely on android development.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2F07DBCDCC01493A

So while Joss continues to work on the art of our project I plan on getting to know this program. 

MDDN 352, Project 3, Barcode Scanner

So one of the main things which we want to do for our app is to have a barcode scanner working. In flash builder we have already managed to get a QR reader working but thats all it does.

Here is where I got the code and tutorial on how to get a QR reader working.

http://www.remotesynthesis.com/post.cfm/adding-a-qr-code-reader-in-flex-on-android

This works perfectly fine and Matt said that he can hook it up so that once you scan something successfully it will go onto another page instead of launching what it does at the moment.

Finding a barcode scanner though is actually a lot harder. Between me and Joss we have decided that he is going to focus on getting the art working and I am going to work on the flash builder side of our app.

We have found a tutorial which we think should work.

http://code.google.com/p/flexbars/source/browse/#svn/trunk/examples%253Fstate%253Dclosed

After having a chat with Richard and Ryan they both said that this should work.
All of the Network Engineering students said that we should move to eclipse because they know to use it and they already have a barcode scanner working in that.

I have decided that I am doing to try and get this barcode scanner in flash builder working but if I cant get it working by monday (27th May) then we are going to move onto eclipse. Eclipse uses Java which is something that I havent used before but I think I would be able to pick it up withen a couple of days

MDDN 352, Project 3, Group Discussion

We have had a good group meeting after our initial presentation.

In the meeting we found out that a lot of our network engineering students have done similar stuff which we need for our app in previous assignments. Unfortunately in those assignments they used a program called 'Eclipse' which is a program which we have never used before. What we have Decided to do is that we are going to try and work with flash builder and see if we can get what we need. But if we cant we plan on moving to Eclipse and trying to work with that.

Regarding roles what we have at the moment is that the network engineering students are going to make the server working and make it that when a button is pressed some information is going to the server and sends something back.

On the design side Joss and I have already been working on icon ideas.

Here are 3 icons which I have made that I thought could look nice in our app.

I have tried to get an image which represents the icon so that the user definitely knows what they are.

From now though I am moving slightly away from the look of the app but more on how it feels and the user interface. At the moment I am trying to get a barcode reader working for our app. I have found a couple tutorials which I going to try and follow that should hopefully give me a barcode reader.

This is something which is really important in our app because it is pretty much the main feature and it is something which we want to get in the app asap.

MDDN 343, Project 3, More asset design

Because I got really frustrated with the animating of our character I have decided to leave it until I get the low level from Francis

Some more assets for what we need are boxes which are double the original box.
We dont want it to be different than the other boxes so I am keeping the same design. What we are planning on doing is changing the texture of the double boxes.

I really like my box design because it is really different from other boxes which I have seen made in the past.

In one of our scenes we have our character UDDU jump onto a pipe which falls down and crushes some guards which is bellow it. The pipe is a real simple model but will looks a lot better once we add the texture to it. I modelled it off the air vent pipes which we have in the 4th floor media lab at te are.

The middle part of the pipe is separate from the ends so that the center can fall off and leave the 2 ends attached to the wall

In the beginning of our game UDDU starts off in a jail cell. In one world the cell has glass and in the other it doesn't. I didn't want to make a typical jail cell that we have in prisons but something which looks like it could hold a alien. I took inspiration from the jail cell from the Avengers movie where they hold Loki.

When creating this I made it into 3 different parts.

The Frame, the jail cell itself and then the glass. 

The glass will be transparent so that you can see through it. I think that once this has been texture that it will look really nice and.

There are afew other assets which I need to make like lights and doors but at this moment animations are more of a priority.

Also we still havent heard much of Katie and I really hope we hear from her soon because we are getting to the stage where we really need to have all 3 designers working a lot on this project. We had a chat with Kah and Stu during our last play testing session and they said that for now to leave the stuff which we have given to Katie and if we haven't heard from her by our beta presentation then it would be best to do her parts and think of it as if she isn't finishing the course.

MDDN 343, Project 3, importing animations into Unity

with the walk animation which I just finished I tired to put into Unity.

I really dont like Unity at the moment because it really doesn't like me with trying to import fbx's.

When I import the FBX into unity the character box comes out with a black character. When I click onto it I cant even see the character and when I play the animation nothing happens. I bought it into the default unity game and what comes up doesn't even look like my character.

The object which is in unity is just a random object rather than my character.

I exported the walk animation 12 different times with having the exact same problem. Each time I re rigged and animated the character. This got me so frustrated because it took about 4-5 hours to re rig and animate the character.

Once I thought that I had fixed it and the character was imported into unity properly and the character looked how he was meant to another problem came up.
This time what was happening what that for some reason the camera was being animated instead of the character. So the character was in the right position when in Unity but still wasnt animating.

After this happened I started to get really frustrated with what was going on so I decided to move to more asset creation to give me a break from animating.