Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 10-27-09

1. What was planned?

*Implement Point System

*Implement Undo System

*Add all help messages to message boxes

2. What was done?

*Point System Done

*Help Messages Done

*Still Working on Undo System

3. Problems encountered?

*Having to redo all the player actions in order to get the undo to work, going to try a stack based Undo class that recalls all the objects state rather that just the last state.

4. What did you learn this week?

*It is possible to make an online live PHP editor using AJAX, an amazing technique

5. What's planned for next week?

*Finish with the coding of this game, run a study ASAP

6. Hours worked.

*About 12

Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 10-16-09

1. What was planned?

*Implement Prototype Point System

*Remove lower HUD and place specific help into popup message window

*Design an undo system to allow players to make mistakes and revert their actions

*Add instructions to all levels(XML) no more tutorial screens

2. What was done?

*Added level instructions to XML for levels

*Still adding all help messages to pop up message window

*Implemented a prototype point system(needs a little refining

*Attempted a Undo System

3. Problems encountered?

*To implement the undo system the player controls and actions need to be more generic

4. What did you learn this week?

*Working one less day a week at work will allow me to get a lot more work done.

5. What's planned for next week?

*Modify point system and undo system

*hopefully show to Dr. Barnes and get some feedback

6. Hours worked.

*About 14

Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 10-1-09

1. What was planned?
*Finish setting up the RPG styled dialogue boxes
*Redo tutorial screens
*point/combo system
*Allow players to make mistakes

2. What was done?
*Finished RPG dialogue boxes, reading in from XML
*Added ability to access help at any time.
*Mockup of point/combo system

3. Problems encountered?
*Never have enoguh to time to do everything, working many projects and jobs simultaneously

4. What did you learn this week?
*How to use XPath
*Coding Dialogue box with smart word wrap

5. What's planned for next week?
*Fully implement point system
* Demo for Dr. Barnes
*Figure out some system to revert player mistakes
*Add all the instructional info into each levels dialogue box.

6. Hours worked.
*Only about 6, moved this week

Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 9-24-09

1. What was planned?

*Update Bunny Generals using the feedback received from playtesting, the user study, Dr. Barnes, and Dr. Souvenir.

*All levels only highlight active advisors while others are faded and their values hidden

*Extend HUD on Insertion Sort level

*Larger , better looking characters (Courtesy of Wu's Castle, thank you Mike Eagle)

*Hide the cursor to prevent people from thinking they can use it

*Remove all XBOX controls from the menu screens

*Add names off test to each Survey Form

*RPG style text box, rather than bottom HUD

*Add ability to refer back to tutorial screens or Instruction from within the game

*Selection Sort should start with first element set

*Game should eventually be all inclusive, meaning the survey monkey surveys should be written into a form

*Pre and Post test should ask participants to describe each algorithm in their own words

*Add point/combo system

*Allow players to make mistakes, then revert back

*Don't allow tutorial screens to wrap, only forward or back

2. What was done?

*All levels only highlight active advisors while others are faded and their values hidden

*Extend HUD on Insertion Sort level

*Larger , better looking characters (Courtesy of Wu's Castle, thank you Mike Eagle)

*Hide the cursor to prevent people from thinking they can use it

*Remove all XBOX controls from the menu screens

*Add names off test to each Survey Form

*RPG style text box, rather than bottom HUD(Halway There still working on this one)

*Selection Sort should start with first element set

*Don't allow tutorial screens to wrap, only forward or back

3. Problems encountered?

*Finding and buying a new car, looking for a new house/apt, and trying to fix my Mercedes cost me a lot of time of at the beginning of the semester, now it's catch up time.

*Trying to develop a simple system to pop up the RPG style message system based on certain players events, guess in comes an Event System.

4. What did you learn this week?

*The world would be a better place if we had 36 hour days.

5. What's planned for next week?

*As much of the above listed items i did not complete for next week/week end.

6. Hours worked.

*About 24 over the last 2 weeks

1. What was planned?
I planned to familiarize myself with the literature regarding visualizations, specifically ones that relate to our work. Read a number of papers and other resources, authors' webpages/tools, and see what other works could be used in our own. Primarily what do we like and dislike about other works and how do we incorporate or avoid those in our own work.

2. What was done?
I read a number of papers as well as other literature to get a better understanding of our project. Made some notes that I will bring to our Tuesday meeting.

3. Problems encountered?
No problems. Some papers are more related than others.

4. What did you learn this week?
Miscellaneous concepts regarding visualization. Quadratic curves make a good way to avoid edge overlap in graphs. The pivotGraph paper is a good source for aspects we should be mindful of while making our visualization.

5. What's planned for next week?
Read more papers, take more notes. Think more in depth about the problem that we have and how we can start to create structure for the work-flow in the coming weeks/months. What are the steps necessary in order to complete this project? Design (conceptually), Design (concrete), Implementation, Documentation, Testing, Research Paper?

Rachel Brinkman - Week 10

1. What was planned?
- Fix accelerometer data, finish code for passing the ball between screens.
- Test game
- Write paper

2. What was done?
- Fixed accelerometer
- Finished ball-passing code
- Everything is finished for the game! At least for our first release... yay!
- Finished final paper

3. Problems encountered?
- Sometimes the ball can be lost when it is moving between screens if the vector is reversed while it is traveling. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, the packet is lost for good, because none of the devices think that it is in their coordinates.
- Also, occasionally scenarios can be generated that are impossible. To counteract this, Evie added a swipe gesture to reset to a new scenario. Eventually, we want to change the level generation to better prevent extremely difficult or impossible scenarios.

4. What did you learn this week?
- This summer has been a very positive experience for me, and I learned a great deal about research methods, new programming languages, and design. I also had the opportunity to network with others in the research community both at UNCC and at the two conferences I attended. Because of this research experience, I am now seriously considering a Ph.D. Thanks to everyone at the Game2Learn lab for a great summer!!

6. Hours worked.
~48

Rachel Brinkman - Week 9

1. What was planned?
- Finish the game
- Write paper
- Make real poster for STARS

2. What was done?
- Made real poster for STARS
- Fixed vector network passing
- Multi-threaded the networking so that the accelerometer could run too

3. Problems encountered?
- The networking code was actually preventing the accelerometer updates from running, because they were both in the same thread. Moving the networking stuff to a separate thread fixed this issue. Unfortunately, the accelerometer is currently not giving us real values.

4. What did you learn this week?
- Learned how to do multi-threading for the iPhone.

5. What's planned for next week?
- Fix accelerometer data, finish code for passing the ball between screens.
- Test game
- Write paper

6. Hours worked.
~47