Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 11-8 / 11-14

1. What was planned?
*Finish Undo System
*Practice for 8 hour startup Web Application Competition

2. What was done?
*Lots of practice for the 8 hour startup competition
*Won the 8 hour startup competition!!!

3. Problems encountered?
*Splitting time up, had to just work on Ninjitsu Sea Pirates this week, only seem to be working with a two man team, which is giving us even more work. Teammates are not following through on assignments.

4. What did you learn this week?
*A little bit of practice goes a long way, presentation and polish also go a long way.

5. What's planned for next week?
*Get back on to Bunny Generals, not that the competition is over, and my birthday is out of the way, can get back to work on it.
*Writing a two essays for the DOE grant. (I should have payed attention in English class, I like numbers)

6. Hours worked.
*Not sure exactly a lot but not on Bunny Generals so not sure what to put, at least 15.

Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 11-1 / 11-7

1. What was planned?
*Mainly Finish the Undo System
*Test for bugs
*Playtesting

2. What was done?
*Developed a system to Undo the actions made by the player after a mistake is made, however it does not function as I want it to so playtesting will tell whether it is helpful or not.
*Found a couple of bugs, fixed the bugs I found, got a couple of unexpected functionality if someone just banged a bunch of keys on the keyboard.
*Only had one person playtest and use the undo system, and depending on the situation it moved the algorithm ahead instead of back, I think I just need to change some values here and there.

3. Problems encountered?
*Undo System no as easy as originally thought
*Need more time competition approaching, working on 3 projects and preparing for a competition

4. What did you learn this week?
*Some interesting debugging techniques, Visual Studio is great

5. What's planned for next week?
*Just to get the Undo System working so I can playtest, the Undo System should be the last bit of feedback that was received about Bunny Generals

6. Hours worked.
*About 14

Amanda's report 11/02-11/06

1. What was planned for this week. Code cleanup. Prepare lecture on DarkWynter’s HUD and Event System for the serious games class.

2. What was done. Both.

3. Problems encountered. None...other than prepping lectures takes bloody forever.

4. Plan for next week. Deliver said lecture on Monday.

5. How many hours worked. 15

Amanda's report 10/26-10/30

1. What was planned for this week. Halloween Game night. Code cleanup on the engine.

2. What was done. Both though there was more work done for the Game night than anything else.

3. Problems encountered. Game nights.

4. Plan for next week. Finish code cleanup.

5. How many hours worked. 20

Amanda's report 10/19-10/23

1. What was planned for this week. One click install, work on the parsing some more, final engine prep work for the turn in to Reality Works, deliver lecture prepared last week. Proctored the discrete math test.

2. What was done. All of that.

3. Problems encountered. One click install - not entirely certain that it works the way it should. Just have to wait and see what Reality Works says.

4. Plan for next week. Clean up the disaster of a mess that I had to make of my code base in order to hack in some quick fixes.

5. How many hours worked. 30

Amanda's report 10/12-10/16

1. What was planned for this week. Fix that camera and one click install. Fix parsing on third level. Meet with my high school mentee and get her started on her project.

2. What was done. Camera...I just dropped it. It wasnt going to work for me in a reasonable amount of time. Parsing on third level ... flaky but it works. Spent two hours with my high school mentee and she is well on her way. Prepared lecture: How to build a .Net compiler into an XNA game, parse student code, launch an XNA game from a form, build data driven surveys in XNA and MS Forms, how to integrate Nuclex into an XNA game

3. Problems encountered. Camera.

4. Plan for next week. One click install, parsing, deliver the lecture.

5. How many hours worked. Short week so only like 10 or so.

Eagle Week 11-1

What was planned for this week
Finish GRFP application
Plan two lectures for the serious games class.

What was done
Lots of work on the GRFP; lots of good advice in the days before final submission.
Help many students with their applications.

Planned the lectures for serious games class on Sunday....

Problems encountered
Two tests due at the same time as the GRFP is a huge headache.
Doing work on Sunday.

Plan for next week
Work on the EDM IRB.

How many hours worked
40

Eagle Week 10-25

What was planned for this week
Get more work done on GRFP; help other students with GRFP

What was done
Crunch time; students started coming to grfp meetings.
Have basic drafts of all essays, still working heavy on everyone's research proposals

Problems encountered
Feedback exists in small bursts; helping students more than getting helped.
Lots of tests next week at the same time as GRFP due date

Plan for next week
Do lecture prep for the serious games class.
Do IRB for the EDM project

How many hours worked
40

Eagle Week 10-18

What was planned for this week
Find a project planning tool.
Get GRFP drafts and receive feedback on them

What was done
Worked with evie and decided on using Assembla
Worked on GRFP, went to meetings to help other students work on GRFP applications

Problems encountered
The program cost money and someone has to pay for it.
Not many students attended the GRFP meetings.
Not getting much feedback on my essays

Plan for next week
Continue to work on GRFP; help other students work on their apps

How many hours worked
20

Eagle Week 10-11

What was planned for this week
Stress test the jung tool and get matt and shaun set up with the tool and ide

What was done
Everyone on EDM vis should have access to the working copy of the ide and jung tool
Created a first draft of my GRFP research proposal

Problems encountered
Keeping contact with pslc mentor is difficult; limited feedback on GRFP proposal.

Plan for next week
Concentrate on GRFP until the essays are completed.

How many hours worked
20

Eagle Week 10-4

What was planned for this week
Create an example project in JIDEA with JUNG
Get an educational license for JIDEA

What was done
Contacted JIDEA team and got a license for our project
Created a small example project in JIDEA with jung that
could show some of the abilities of the program

Problems encountered
JIDEA is great, some of the jung documentation is a little weak

Plan for next week
Get started on some NSF GRFP work
Stress test the jung tool

How many hours worked
20

Eagle Week 9-27

What was planned for this week
Edit John's Thesis
contact pslc mentor
Find a suitable Java IDE
Try to connect jung to a new java project

What was done
Contacted mentor to discuss continuing my pslc project
found JIDEA for java ide

Problems encountered
netbeans is hard to work with existing liberies
eclipe does not have built in GUI editing, these will not work for our needs.

Plan for next week
Get an example project up and working in JIDEA with jung

How many hours worked
20

Eagle Week 9-20

What was planned for this week
Look into existing Vis tools.
Look into continuing my PSLC project.

What was done
Tons of mindless grading for logic class.
Looked at existing tools; there are a few that might be good.
Most are in java, there are a few in C#

Problems encountered
Tests were not always in the lab.
Working in Java would require a better IDE, Netbeans and Eclipe are both options.

Plan for next week
Contact pslc mentor.
Help do edits to john's thesis.

How many hours worked
25

Eagle Week 9-13

What was planned for this week
Create a first draft of the SIGCHI paper.

What was done
Created a draft of the SIGCHI paper; sent it to Dr. Barnes for review.
Spent a ton of time doing revisions.

Problems encountered
The AC in the lab is broken!!
Limited feedback before the due date.

Plan for next week
Look over a few existing visualization tools for the EDM Viz group.

How many hours worked
40

Eagle Week 9-6

What was planned for this week
Attend lots of meetings and plan for the semester.

What was done
Sat in on the EDM Vis group's meeting; attending several other meetings.
Starting drafting and doing literature reviews for a SIGCHI paper.

Problems encountered
Lots of meetings; SIGCHI conference is different than where we have published in the past.

Plan for next week
Create a first draft of the SIGCHI paper
How many hours worked
15

Eagle Week 8-30

What was planned for this week
Prepare example games for the Serious Games class.
Get ready for the start of the semester; including building google cal etc

What was done
Submitted the games to Dr. Barnes; set up my gCal for the semester.

Problems encountered
Two of my classes have changed class times; this is a pain.
Have to do lots of running around to register for the GAANN class due to these scheduling errors.

Plan for next week
Attend the Computer Science Department retreat.
Attend at meeting on the start of Peer outreach group for STARS.

How many hours worked
15

Amanda's report 09/28-09/09 (two weeks)

1. What was planned for this week. Camera fixing, more level testing of the third level, began prep of the engine for RealityWorks. Hold office hours for the discrete math class for their test.

2. What was done. All of that plus the games repitches in the serious games class.

3. Problems encountered. The third level parsing is not working correctly. Have to fix that and the camera...

4. Plan for next week. Third level parsing, one click installation, camera.

5. How many hours worked. 24

Amanda's report 09/21-09/25

1. What was planned for this week. Grading 2175 test. Finish the secondary camera in EleMental and test the level. Game night.

2. What was done. Graded the 2175 test. Organized the Game2Learn group taking the course so that we could meet in order to revamp the original team layout and redo all of the game pitches to be more applicable to the idea of the serious games course (also to make the teams more equitable).

3. Problems encountered. Camera!!! Also, the whole revamp of the class was brought to my attention while at Saucer...

4. Plan for next week. Repitch for serious games, camera, test the level.

5. How many hours worked. 24

Amanda's report 09/14-09/18

1. What was planned? Work on getting the secondary camera some more. Wrote the third challenge class and scaffolding code.

2. What was done? Third challenge complete and works...not real happy with the parsing but need to check out a better way to do it anyway. That secondary camera might just get dropped.

3. Problems encountered. I cant copy and paste in the blog browser...

4. Plan for next week. Figure out what to do with the secondary camera. Test the third level as extensively as possible. Change the events over to the new level format.

5. Hours worked. 12

Amanda's report 09/07-09/11

1. What was planned? Work on EleMental code - secondary camera, changing the code challenges, mini map, and event code.

2. What was done? Code challenges are changed.

3. Problems encountered. Secondary camera...harder than I thought.

4. Plans for next week? Get the mini map working, make the third challenge, do something with the secondary camera.

5. Hours worked. 12

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

Rachel Brinkman - Week 8

1. What was planned?
- Finish networking, polish game.
- Finish user study and conduct a pilot study.
- Finish research poster and write research paper.
- Give presentation

2. What was done?
- Made poster
- Finished and gave presentation
- Finished user study
- Networking correctly sends level information, devices correctly receive it (reworked array passing)
- Holes display correctly - the positions are correctly randomly generated
- Reworked some of the enumerations to make things easier

3. Problems encountered?
- Art was never finished for the game. :( We had to make some rough substitutes instead.
- Mutable arrays are just pointers, so passing them across devices is a minor disaster, because the memory addresses don't line up. To fix this, we had to encode each object in the array separately, instead of the whole array.

4. What did you learn this week?
- Learned more about the way that mutable arrays actually work.

5. What's planned for next week?
- Finish the game
- Write paper
- Make real poster for STARS

6. Hours worked.
~70

Rachel Brinkman - Week 7

1. What was planned?
- Finish state machine and all game mechanics for Table Tilt (hole detection, scoring, timer)
- Integrate my code with Evie's

2. What was done?
- Finished most of the state machine - level loading is still waiting on the packet information from the server.
- Finished hole detection, scoring, and timer.
- Reworked the physics system, did some code cleanup and added more comments.
- Added some of Christie's art assets.
- Wrote rough draft of final presentation.
- Wrote rough draft of user study.

3. Problems encountered?
- The networking is still not quite to the point of integrating with the level loading and ball transfer, but it is very close.
- Some of the art assets need to be tweaked.

4. What did you learn this week?
- Learned about some different containers and array structures in Objective C.

5. What's planned for next week?
- Finish networking, polish game.
- Finish user study and conduct a pilot study.
- Finish research poster and write research paper.

6. Hours worked.
45

Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 7-15-09

1. What was planned?
*Run Study with camp students.
*Work on more challenges for heap game.
*Run study with 2215 students or any students willing.

2. What was done?
*Ran Study with Camp Students
*Set up appointment with Souvenir to evaluate Bunny Generals
*Done with heap challenge and almost done with gameplay

3. Problems encountered?
*No students from 2215 have showed or scheduled for the study, I don't think we can offer any incentives, maybe it should sound more fun on our flyer.

4. What did you learn this week?
*More about how the DarkWynter Engine works and how to use it effectively
*Dictionary's are the greatest thing since sliced bread!

5. What's planned for next week?
*Finish Heap Gameplay button drag and drop interface
*Implement terrain mods for swapping of Arrows
*Modify Log Parser for newly implemented in game Pre/Post test(Bunny Generals)

6. Hours worked.
*40+ hours

Rachel Brinkman - Week 6

1. What was planned?
- Return the Dance Tool to a stable state
- Help Evie run a user study on the Dance Tool
- Work on integrating Evie's and my work on Table Tilt

2. What was done?
- Helped eliminate some critical bugs - the Dance Tool was stable in time for the study.
- Helped Evie run the user study.
- Worked on the state machine for Table Tilt.

3. Problems encountered?
- Did not really have time to do much integration on Evie's and my work on Table Tilt, due to the crunch on Dance Tool.

4. What did you learn this week?
- The iPhone does not have a state machine system that I can build on, so I will have to write one from scratch.

5. What's planned for next week?
- Finish state machine and all game mechanics for Table Tilt (hole detection, scoring, timer)
- Integrate my code with Evie's

6. Hours worked.
40

Rachel Brinkman - Week 5

1. What was planned?
- Go to AIED conference in the UK

2. What was done?
- Went to AIED conference, attended as many workshops and talks as possible.
- Also worked as a student volunteer - loaded conference bags, signed people up for the conference, directed people to the different conference rooms, and ran mics for the keynote QA sessions.

3. Problems encountered?
- None, but there were some near misses at the Chicago O'Hare International Airport. They don't have enough signs.

4. What did you learn this week?
- I learned a lot about the the cutting edge research questions in the area of AI and Education and some of the potential answers to those questions, such as the study of metacognition, empathetic agents, affect detection, and scaffolding.

5. What's planned for next week?
- Return the Dance Tool to a stable state
- Help Evie run a user study on the Dance Tool
- Work on integrating Evie's and my work on Table Tilt

6. Hours worked.
40ish.

Bethany Miller - week 6 - 7/16/09

1. What was planned?

• complete more heap challenges
• do bunny generals study with high schoolers
  

2. What was done?

• two challenges done in heap game
• pre/post test completed for heap game
• parser for all pre/post test results
• online bunny generals surveys and tests
• high school study participants provided constructive feedback
  

3. Problems encountered?

• high school students weren't eligible participants for study, even though they did provide feedback
• bunny generals pre/post tests had errors and need to be redone
  

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)

• how to use forms
  
• gained experience in a trial research study
  

5. What's planned for next week?

• get eligible study recruits for bunny generals and implement changes in pre/post tests
• create more challenges for heap game
• find a way to implement game play within heap game
• correct log errors

6. Hours worked.
40

Thomas Phifer - Week 5 - 7/8/09

1. What was planned?
-- Work on SNAG project have more features added
-- Work on Dance Tool project, document bugs and fix features

2. What was done?
-- Added points features to SNAGEM
-- Documented bugs and fixed features of Dance Tool such as the file system

3. Problems encountered?
-- Still cannot work on the iPhone project because my Macbook is in use by the GIG
-- Subversioning the Dance Tool is a little confusing.

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
-- Better time management skills
-- Learned more about PHP and MySQL while working on SNAG
-- Learned more about JavaScript and C# while working on the Dance Tool
-- Better Documentation Skills

5. What's planned for next week?
-- Meet deliverables deadline for week 6

6. Hours worked.
--50

Bethany Miller - week 5 - 7/7/09

1. What was planned?
Work on heap game and do study on bunny generals

2. What was done?
Teachers were contacted and we have permission to speak to Professor Goodrum's class to recruit students. Also, we have a summer camp of high schoolers coming for testing bunny generals. The second level of the heap game was also finished and we have moved on to the third level. Pre and post tests have been made and implemented into the game itself. Instructions for the first two challenges are also done.

3. Problems encountered?
Creating the heap took a lot of work. Creating the pre and post tests was very time consuming because of having to actually draw out the heaps to be visually accurate, and then saving each separated picture which gave many files to be used.

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
I got the best possible review of heaps possible by creating the pre and post tests.

5. What's planned for next week?
- finish testing for bunny generals
- find way to analyze bunny general data
- make progress in other activities for heap game

6. Hours worked.
40

Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 7-7-2009

1. What was planned?
*Complete another challenge for the heap sort game.
*Contact professors for class visits.

2. What was done?
*Contacted Professors.
*completed heap challenge
*working on next challenge

3. Problems encountered?
*Takes a little time to find the correct places in code in the DarkWynter Engine

4. What did you learn this week?
*More stuff about how to use the DarkWynter Engine.

5. What's planned for next week?
*Run Study with camp students.
*Work on more challenges for heap game.
*Run study with 2215 students or any students willing.

6. Hours worked.
*40 hours

Christie Week 4 and Week 5

Reflection

1. What was planned?

* oversee documentation efforts for Dance Tool

* work with Tyler on art Needs for Dance Tool

* create art documentation for the Dance Tool

* create art for Rachel's game idea

* work on xml for the Dance Tool

* comment the Dance Tool

 

2. What was done?

* documentation

- submitted 3 revision requests for the fdd

*Art requirements:

- created a splash screen for DT

- started art design documentation

- created opening "scene" for Table Tilt (rachel's game)

- work with Tyler to create buttons

*xml

-recursion

-located and removed false code

 

3. Problems encountered?

When I first heard I had to do recursion I was a little nervous but I have worked through it.  I've struggled some with working with code that isn't mine.  I value the practice however, as I am beginning to see that programmers are frequently building on top of somebody else's code.

 

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)

I have learned the importance of comments.  Evie also gave a very interesting analogy for recursion which has illuminated the concept.   I have learned the importance of a functional design document, and I have learned a lot about project management and working under deadlines.

 

5. What's planned for next week?

* User Testing for  DT

* art revisions (ongoing)

* additional debugging on the DT

 

6. Hours worked. *80 (40 week 4 and 40 week 5)

Antoine Campbell Weekly Post 6-22-09, and 6-29-09

1. What was planned?
* -Review the returned IRB Paperwork
* -Put the finishing touches on Selection Sort
* -Implement Quick Sort or Merge Sort
* -Set some goals for functionality for the first study
* -Implement all tutorial screens
* -Start on Heap game with Amanda
* -Finish a Heap Challenge
* -Make a Program to evaluate logs

2. What was done?
*Revised IRB paperwork and received Approval
*Finished Selection Sort
*Decided no to implement Quick Sort in the prototype
*Finished the Prototype version of Bunny Generals for the study
*Finished tutorial screens for Prototype
*Began Working on Heap Game
*Finished first Simple Heap Game challenge
*Put off Logging evaluator until later
*Finished Selection Sort

3. Problems encountered?
*Coding Quick Sort was very complicated compared to the other sorts
*The Dark Wynter Engine is large and took a while to learn what classes we should be in
*Finals week messed with our plans to run the study, we have to delay a week until classes start again.

4. What did you learn this week?
*Heaps
*Dark Wynter Engine stuff

5. What's planned for next week?
*Complete another challenge allowing students code to modify the heap level in real time
*Contact professors to recruit students and get permission to visit the classes

6. Hours worked.
*80 hours(two weeks)

Thomas Phifer - Week 4 - 6/29/09

Thomas Phifer - Week 4 - 6/29/09

1. What was planned?
-- Work on SNAG project have more features added
-- Work on iPhone project, get an app to transfer
-- Work on Dance Tool project, organize and delegate tasks
-- Low Ropes Course

2. What was done?
-- Successfully figured out how to transfer an app to the iPhone (which is no small feat)
-- Successfully organized and delegated tasks for all projects and gave leaders and subordinates for each task and set weekly goals and deliverable
-- Cleaned Dance Tool code and improved functionality
-- Went to Venture's Low Ropes Course and improved teamwork skills

3. Problems encountered?
-- Still cannot work on the iPhone project because my Macbook is in use by the GIG
-- Apple's App transfer process is excessively tedious

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
-- Better time management skills
-- Learned more about the iPhone SDK and Objective C while working on the iPhone project
-- Learned more about PHP and MySQL while working on SNAG
-- Learned more about JavaScript and C# while working on the Dance Tool

5. What's planned for next week?
-- Meet deliverables deadline

6. Hours worked.
--60

Thomas Phifer - Week 3 - 6/24/09

Thomas Phifer - Week 3 - 6/24/09

1. What was planned?
-- Work on SNAG project have a prototype ready for Charleston
-- Work on iPhone project
-- Work on Dance Tool project
-- Go to Charleston to present about research

2. What was done?
-- Made progress with SNAG by adding poster voting system and registration system
-- Made progress with the Dance Tool project by documenting more bugs and keeping up the functional design document
-- Went to Charleston and presented SNAG

3. Problems encountered?
-- Cannot work on the iPhone project because my Macbook is in use by the GIG
-- Server problems with Codendi, got them fixed though

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
-- Learned more about what STARS is especially during the Charleston trip.
-- Learned more about the iPhone SDK and Objective C while working on the iPhone project
-- Learned more about PHP and MySQL while working on SNAG
-- Learned more about JavaScript and C# while working on the Dance Tool

5. What's planned for next week?
-- More organized goals for all the projects
-- Get an iPhone App transferred to my iPod

6. Hours worked.
--60

Bethany Miller - week 4 - 7/1/09

1. What was planned?
Finish up Bunny Generals and begin working on the heap game

2. What was done?
All bugs were fixed on bunny generals. There is now a working version ready for testing. Teachers have been notified, but recruitment will not be able to start until next week because of exams. First activity of heap game has been created and I did the dialog for instructions.

3. Problems encountered?
Publishing bunny generals did not work as planned, as well as recruitment. We didn't realize it was exam time, so this hindered our schedule in finishing testing this week.

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
I became more familiar with XML files and learned the importance of searching for bugs before actually showing the completed project to others.

5. What's planned for next week?
- start testing for bunny generals
- find way to analyze bunny general data
- make progress in other activities for heap game

6. Hours worked.
40

Rachel Brinkman - Week 4 - 7/1/09

1. What was planned?
- Learn about the capabilities of the iPhone accelerometer and build a limited prototype of the table tilt game (by this Friday)

2. What was done?
- Worked on table tilt prototype - got the app working in landscape mode, found an alternate way to draw using the CoreGraphics framework, and got simple ball physics working on one iPhone.

3. Problems encountered?
- Making a multiple-view application in landscape mode is actually not possible. There is a key that can be set in the Info.plist for the project that is supposed to force the orientation to whatever you choose, but it does not seem to have an affect unless each view controller also gets instructions. Even then, only the primary view will change, and not the secondary view. After searching around for a while, I discovered that landscape mode for multiple views and view controllers is not actually possible. Applications that appear to be this way are actually just faked - one or more of the screens is just an image that makes the user think that the screen has rotated. This is different than in-app rotation by the way - it is very possible to take a portrait app and rotate to landscape when the user turns the iPhone. However, this was not what I needed. I ended up creating a landscape splashscreen view and a portrait game view, but the user will assume that it is still in landscape, and so they will still hold it that way.

- Another problem that I had was with drawing, although the fact that the device was not drawing was actually indicative of a larger problem. Basically, the flow of control for the program had entirely disappeared, and the timer that I had created within the main thread of execution was never being called. I discovered that when using .nib files (so basically any time you are using multiple views), all of the objects are archived inside the .nib, and so the initWithFrame method is never called. This method contained all of my timer initialization code, and since it never ran, nothing was happening in the program. The fix for this is to use the awakeFromNib or initWithCoder methods instead.

- DEPLOYMENT. Deploying to an actual device was a nightmare - Apple has a lot of different certificates that you need as a developer before you can deploy your app, and even when you have created all of them, there are lots of little things that can go wrong along the way. Thanks to Evie and Thomas for helping me get that working!

- The accelerometer is also a problem right now. I can access the data from the three axis correctly, but am running into trouble with the math that ties the readings to the physical movement of the ball.

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
- Learned a lot more about views and .nib files
- Learned an alternative way to draw on the iPhone
- Learned some about the accelerometer on the iPhone
- Learned more about Objective C

5. What's planned for next week?
- Finish the prototype by this Friday
- Go to the AIED conference!

6. Hours worked.
40

Bethany Miller - week 3 - 6/24/09

Bethany Miller- week 3 - 6/24/09
1. What was planned?
- complete logging
- add quicksort
- fix tutorial

2. What was done?
- new tutorial screens
- fixed bugs
- IRB approval
- contacted teachers and posted flyers for study

3.Problems encountered
Quick sort has been more difficult than we thought. Other problems were encountered during game play that had to be fixed so it put us a little behind on working with quick sort.

4. What did you learn?
We had to review quicksort in order to be able to implement it.

5. Whats planned for next week?
- finish up Bunny Generals
- conduct study with participants
- announce to classes
- start on next game

Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 6-22-09 & 6-29-09

1. What was planned?
* -Review the returned IRB Paperwork
* -Put the finishing touches on Selection Sort
* -Implement Quick Sort or Merge Sort
* -Set some goals for functionality for the first study
* -Implement all tutorial screens
* -Start on Heap game with Amanda
* -Finish a Heap Challenge
* -Make a Program to evaluate logs

2. What was done?
*Revised IRB paperwork and received Approval
*Finished Selection Sort
*Decided no to implement Quick Sort in the prototype
*Finished the Prototype version of Bunny Generals for the study
*Finished tutorial screens for Prototype
*Began Working on Heap Game
*Finished first Simple Heap Game challenge
*Put off Logging evaluator until later
*Finished Selection Sort

3. Problems encountered?
*Coding Quick Sort was very complicated compared to the other sorts
*The Dark Wynter Engine is large and took a while to learn what classes we should be in
*Finals week messed with our plans to run the study, we have to delay a week until classes start again.

4. What did you learn this week?
*Heaps
*Dark Wynter Engine stuff

5. What's planned for next week?
*Complete another challenge allowing students code to modify the heap level in real time
*Contact professors to recruit students and get permission to visit the classes

6. Hours worked.
*80 hours(two weeks)

Christie's Week 3 Reflection

Reflection

1. What was planned?

* complete iPhone tutorial

* brainstorm about the STARS game

 

2. What was done?

* iPhone app

- merged views

- objective C tutorial

* updated website

* Paper and Game review

 

3. Problems encountered?

I am becoming more familiar with Objective C within the iPhone framework, however I found the interface builder to be a bit confusing.  Working with Eve helped me become more comfortable using this tool.

 

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)

This week I learned a lot about our team from spending time together at Charelston which was nice.  I am constantly learning more about the iPhone from working with it so much.  Also, planning for the STARS Conference Game has given me insight into project planning and project management.

 

5. What's planned for next week?

* Finish iPhone Tutorial

* Maya tutorial (personal)

* Planning/Coding for the STARS game

 

6. Hours worked. * 40

Rachel Brinkman - Week 3 - 6/23/09

1. What was planned?
- Finish the iPhone tutorial
- Build a prototype of the conference game (this week and next week)
- Begin work on the Dance Tool?

2. What was done?
- Worked on iPhone tutorial - added 3D transitioning views, multi-touch zooming, and a single tap changes the color of the cube. Also added a light source.
- Developed and pitched an iPhone/iPod Touch game idea for the conference. The working title is Co-op Table Tilt Game. The pitch and screen mockups will be posted soon to the Codendi Game Ideas Wiki.

3. Problems encountered?
- Ran into trouble with registering multiple touches on the iPhone - wasn't sure if it was an error with the simulator or the math. The simulator seems to register the first touch as the origin and then calculates the second touch as a distance ratio based on the first touch's position. This led to wrapping issues near the edges of the window, and unexpected behavior when not zooming on a diagonal from the origin. The math for determining whether to zoom in or out simply takes the two touch points and runs them through the distance formula, and depending on whether the distance between the two points is growing or shrinking, the image is scaled up or down, respectively. However, when we deployed the app to the iPhone, the problem was actually exacerbated, so it probably isn't a problem with the simulator. The math seems sound, so it must have something to do with the registration of the touch positions. Perhaps using the distance formula is the wrong approach, given the way touches are registered?

- I originally planned to have each face of the cube be a different color, and when the user tapped a face, it would change that face's color. Unfortunately, although I could get the screen coordinates of the tap, it is not possible to select a particular pixel and get its color on the iPhone. Unless I cast a ray and intersected it with the face, I wouldn't be able to determine the location of the tap. Since ray casting seemed like overkill, I opted to just make the cube one color, and tap on the cube to change the entire cube's color.

- Lighting was very problematic, mostly because the iPhone does not allow most of the typical OpenGL methods for drawing. I enabled GL_LIGHTING, a light, and set the shader model to GL_SMOOTH (as opposed to FLAT). I calculated all of the surface normals and set the material properties, but the cube was still in grayscale. After a lot of hunting around, I found that I had not enabled GL_COLOR_MATERIAL! After that was set, lighting worked as expected.

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
- Learned about the touch interface for the iPhone
- Learned a lot about lighting in OpenGL, and some of the limitations of the iPhone's implementation of OpenGL
- Increased familiarity with Objective C

5. What's planned for next week?
- Learn about the capabilities of the iPhone accelerometer and build a limited prototype of the table tilt game
- Begin work on the Dance Tool

6. Hours worked.
~46

Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 6-17-09

1. What was planned?
* -Finish IRB Paper Work and submit
* - IRB applications with pre and post test
* - include player logging
* - list player sequence of operations
* - add instructional screens
* - include other sorting algorithms
* - analyze number of steps and Big Oh notation

2. What was done?
* -Finish IRB Paper Work and submit
* - IRB applications with pre and post test
* - include player logging
* - list player sequence of operations
* - include other sorting algorithms

3. Problems encountered?
* -Selection sort was a little tricky to program

4. What did you learn this week?
* -Good tips to giving a good presentation

5. What's planned for next week?
* -Review the returned IRB Paperwork
* -Put the finishing touches on Selection Sort
* -Implement Qucik Sort or MergeSort
* -Set somes goal for functionality for the first study

6. Hours worked.
* -40

Christie Thornton's Week 2 Reflection

Reflection

1. What was planned?
* complete iPhone tutorial
* brainstorm about the STARS game

2. What was done?
* iPhone app
- created a 3d cube
- completed a tutorial on switching views
- working on a tutorial to merge views with the cube
* updated website
* Paper and Game review

3. Problems encountered?
I am unfamiliar with Objective C so working with the code on the iPhone app proved to be difficult. After completing some online tutorials I am becoming more familiar with the syntax of the language.

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
This week especially has given me some practice in going to the web and using what others have provided to "teach myself." I am learning Objective C. I have also learned a few tips about presenting from some of the graduate students.

5. What's planned for next week?
* Finish iPhone Tutorial
* Begin work on Dance Tool or iPhone App
* Planning for the STARS game

6. Hours worked. * 40

Thomas Phifer - Week 2 - 6/17/09

1. What was planned?
--Turn in IRB Completion Certificate
--Finish iPhone tutorial
--Get Dance Tool started
--STARS Networking Game meetings/brainstorming/prototyping
--Read paper, review game

2. What was done?
--Completed IRB and turned in the paperwork
--Made progress with the iPhone tutorial; got cube spinning + views switching
--Evie and I got Codendi's "engine" back up and running with some PHP/MySQL and a lot of elbow grease and Chinese food. The Dance Tool is now on Codendi and I have started documenting bugs and helping Evie with the Technical Documentation.
--Our group met with Josh and Dr. D to discuss STARS SNAG Project ideas. We all brainstormed and came up with some good concepts.
--I was able to build a functioning prototype of a conference game where you text someone to "SNAG" them. To make the full connection with the person they must "SNAG" you back. You gain points for each person you connect with. I also created an automatically updating leaderboard page. Link: http://infd.birdnest.org/~phiferm3/STARS09/index.php (will be demoing this in today's meeting)

3. Problems encountered?
--iPhone: Drawing the Cube: I ran into the same situation as Rachel- "Forgot to turn on the depth buffer for rendering the cube, and then when I did turn it on, I forgot to clear it."
Changing the Views: Rachel and I had the same problem here as well; I had the cube view working and I had the switch view working, but when I tried to merge them together rips in the space time continuum occured and everything stop working. Having multiple XIB files is the answer.
--Dance Tool: Evie wanted the Dance Tool project to operate on a centralized location with a project management system. She has had Codendi for a while(a PMS by Xerox) and was unable to use it because of all kinds of network, permission, forgotten passwords, and a broken framework(Codendi is open source). Evie and I worked together to override the password for admin on the server, hacked the source files of the program to fix some errors and finally created a project and moved all the assets to the system. We are proud to say Codendi is online!

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
--Refreshed a lot of my MySQL and PHP skills.
--Middle school kids are a great source of inspiration.
--Basics of the Objective C programming language
--Basics of the Apple iPhone SDK
--Learned about Codendi; how to use it, fix it, break it
--Learned how to take cell phone texts and take the message and put it into PHP variables in order to do some "text" enhanced web development
--Chinese is also good for breakfast
--Working together is 11.5 times better than alone

5. What's planned for next week?
--Start diving into the Dance Tool with Condendi; documentation, bug fixing,
--Finish the iPhone Tutorial
--Polish the STARS Conference Game Prototype and create the Research Poster Voting System Prototype.

6. Hours worked.
--58

Rachel Brinkman - Week 2 - 6/16/09

1. What was planned?
- Submit final IRB paperwork
- Finish iPhone tutorial
- Begin work on either the Dance Tool or the iPhone app

2. What was done?
- Turned in final copy of IRB paperwork
- Worked on iPhone tutorial - created the cube, worked on integrating Views into the project.
- Brainstormed with the team for conference game ideas, we came up with a cool and achievable concept

3. Problems encountered?
- Forgot to turn on the depth buffer for rendering the cube, and then when I did turn it on, I forgot to clear it, so I was looking for non-existant near clipping plane issues.
- VIEWS. Not all Views are created equal, or play nicely together. EAGLViews, which must be used in conjunction with OpenGL code, do not seem to behave the same as UIViews. They inherit from UIViews, but do not interact with the view controller in the same way. I tried many different ways of integrating the ViewController based project with the EAGLView project, and kept hitting walls. However, Evie found a solution that uses multiple .xib files! It hadn't occurred to me to use more than one, but as I'm working through it, it makes sense. Thanks Evie!

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
- Some OpenGL commands (they have all the man pages on their site, which is really convenient)
- Became somewhat familiarized with Objective C
- Learned a lot about View Controllers and different kinds of Views

5. What's planned for next week?
- Finish the iPhone tutorial
- Build a prototype of the conference game (this week and next week)
- Begin work on the Dance Tool?

6. Hours worked.
~50

Bethany Miller - Week 2 - 6/16/09

Bethany Miller - Week 2 - 6/16/09

1. What was planned?
-Separate classes for level logic
-Add different sorting
-finish pre/post test and submit final IRB paperwork
-figure out logging for players actions
-instructional elements

2. What was done?
-Separate classes for level logic
-Selection and insertion sort implemented
-Different level maps
-Logging of player's moves and time
-Turned in final copy of IRB paperwork

3. Problems encountered?
Mapping went well until the end. The tiles and map size were suddenly resized so the map wasnt coming out the way it should have. After we realized how to fix it the problem was solved, however this was after creating the same map at least 3 times. We wasted some time, but at least the problem was fixed and we have nice new level maps to show for it!

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
I had never done any type of level map editing. I learned how to create the level and actually implement it into the game. It became one of my favorite things to do. I really like the creative side of computer science and hopefully I can do more of it!

5. What's planned for next week?
-Complete logging
-Add quick sort
-Fix tutorial

6. Hours worked.
full 40 hour week .

Antoine Campbell Weekly Report 6-10-09

1. What was planned?
- help Bethany with XNA Basics
- complete IRB tutorial
2. What was done?
- help Bethany finish Space Pong
- IRB tutorial completed
Bunny Generals
- Informed Consent
- IRB Protocol Application
- Professor Recruitment
- Recruitment Poster
- Demographic Survey
3. Problems encountered?
*The physics of the ball bouncing in pong proved to be more difficult than expected
Pre and post test questions for only bubbleSort are hard to think of, however we will also be implementing other forms of sorting as well so questions will come easier when that is finished.
4. What did you learn this week?
*Some more Vector Math, and paperwork requirements for IRB.
5. What's planned for next week?
objective: complete bunny generals
- IRB applications with pre and post test
- include player logging
- list player sequence of operations
- add instructional screens
- include other sorting algorithms
- analyze number of steps and Big Oh notation
or at least most of that stuff
6. Hours worked.
*44

Week 1 - Brinkman

Reflection Questions
1. What was planned?
- Build familiarity with Unity by completing a tutorial

- Build familiarity with iPhone SDK by completing a tutorial

- Complete IRB Certification
- Read one research paper
- Review one game

2. What was done?
- Completed IRB

- Completed Unity tutorial, posted finished game on website

- Read "Experience with serious games for learning foreign languages and cultures" by Johnson, W. L., Wang, N., and S. Wu

3. Problems encountered?
- Steeper learning curve with Unity than expected - the project took considerably more time than originally planned
- As a result of that, I have not started the iPhone SDK tutorial yet

4. What did you learn this week? (esp. computer science, or anything surprising or interesting)
- I learned the basics of Unity and javaScript, and became somewhat comfortable with the Unity API
- I learned about IRB certification
- I learned about the Tactical Language and Culture Training System (in the paper above)

5. What's planned for next week?

- Complete the iPhone SDK tutorial

- Begin work on the Dance Tool and/or the iPhone app

6. Hours worked.
43