IDAT 102: The completed result of Flennis!

After days of trying to weave my way through thousands and thousands of code, and then trying other solutions (in terms of pre-existing examples that are similar to what I'm already doing) online, I've then found an excellent solution that worked better than mine. It turned out that the game needed a bit more of a 'hands-on' approach, and the keyboard input didn't work out good for the game, so instead, I've changed to a mouse-based input that works by moving the mouse up and down on the tennis court to move the racket to hit the ball to the opponent. I've also made a few changes to the original design, which mostly involved moving the game's logo to the bottom left of the screen, rather than in the middle, to accommodate the 'Round's up' text, which occurs after either the player or the opponent reaches a score of 5. I've also included a clock at the bottom right-hand side of the court, which uses the system's time as external influence.

Also, the colour of the court has been changed to a warmer shade of green to match the astroturf/grass colour that most tennis courts have, and proper court markings have been added, in addition to a backdrop for the scoreboard to increase legibility of the numbers. I've also decided to ditch the graphical movie clips in favour of ActionScript-generated shapes because I wanted the game to be more lightweight, whilst at the same time maintaining the replay value of the original. As for the rest of the detail, I've done improvements to the game's source code to make it more challenging (smaller ball with a higher score limit, but at a slower FPS than the original to avoid it becoming a 'speed run', where the game is finished quickly without even realising the outcome).

In conclusion, the game came out as a result that I've expected from the start, but at the same time, it improved on what my original specification included.

You can play the game here: www.elnormo91.co.uk/Flennis.html

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO PLAY: To move the paddle, move the mouse up or down. Try and get the ball behind the opponent to score.

Enjoy!

IDAT 102: Flennis concept drawing

Here's a drawing of my Flash game project so far:

As I've discovered that the collision test points would not be realistic on the handles of the tennis rackets, I decided to remove them, leaving only the upper part of the racket, which is the most obvious point of contact that rackets have when the ball strikes it. However, I don't think that the user would notice as the game is still as addictive as the Pong game was, and still is, in the domain of basic online games worldwide. The custom logo I designed for the game is just a backdrop of the court's astroturf surface, and therefore, does not affect the ball.

IDAT 102: It's pong! No it isn't! It's tennis! No it isn't! It's Flash tennis! Oh yes, in fact, it's Flennis!

As part of an assignment for IDAT102, I decided to go old school with a game that takes the classic side-scrolling table-tennis-based game to another level. As far as I know, I haven't seen any examples of existing Pong games that are themed around actual tennis. Yes, that's right, I've decided to create a game called 'Flennis', which is basically Flash tennis, but maintaining the simplicity and addiction of the classic game that used to grace arcades and homes back in the days before we had PlayStations, Xbox 360s, Nintendo Wiis and the like, but in the time of Atari, its originator, of course. The game uses keyboard control to move the bat up and down to deflect the ball towards the opponent by using collision detection to then make the 'bounce' effect. When the ball hits either the enemy's end or the player's end, the collision detection then registers a score for the enemy and the player, respectively.

At the same time, I'll be combining the look-and-feel of an actual tennis court with the retro look to fit in with the Atari heritage of the game's basis, but also making the game unique in style, and friendly to browser gamers, who like to play games inside their browser because of the convenience that web browsers offer, and the fact that in a work environment, during one's well-earned break, restrictions mean that everything may be restricted to a web browser, provided that Flash and JavaScript are turned on.

IDAT 101: Our online identity crisis: the inescapable truth

Last week's lecture in IDAT101 raised many points about digital identities. How do we protect ourselves in an increasing invasive surveillance society? How do we know about our traces of our identities online? And how do we even escape from it all? One documentary pretty much answers these often-asked questions, and that documentary was Erasing David. Erasing David is about the award-winning movie director David Bond's attempt to escape the eagle eyes of both the government and private companies. He does what is called a Subject Access Request under the Freedom of Information Act to find out more about the amount of data that is being held about him, then a private firm is hired to hunt him down, and he has to escape from them by ditching pretty much every trace of him as possible. This comes to show how almost impossible it is to escape from surveillance of the digital world, and how important it is to ensure that we preserve our online dignities until something is done to legislate against this increasingly-invasive digital world. Failure to preserve our online dignities does have a knock-on effect about our lives, and sometimes even negative repercussions, like for instance, an employer judged a potential applicant based on her Facebook profile (including pictures of partying, implying that the person in question is a party animal), and as a result, she failed to get the job (as far as I know, the profile was even public, and even if it were to be made private, internet spiders would have already cached the pre-private profile). Another case was about a teacher that failed to get into another country as a result of his unusual (but topical to his area of teaching) purchases on Amazon, which I was shocked to hear that even with that, it still has a huge effect on the online identity of that person, but nonetheless, if it was understood (and not misjudged), then maybe Customs and Immigration would have understood about it, and he'd be on his way to the luggage carousel.

SOFT 131 & IDAT 108: JIT (Just In Time)

After the time of Christmas and a few weeks afterwards, the end result of SOFT131's and IDAT108's coursework is now here. Many factors have affected how I tried to get around SOFT131, but after trial-and-error and a few rectifications of the code for the phonics, it has now come all together to form the final piece of the puzzle. Initially, I had problems trying to get the arrays to work, but after I managed, I then had to try and get the sounds to work, however, they didn't seem to work, until I had to change a few things regarding the variables and the syntax of the sound files (file = gender + soundnum[array]), which then resulted in sound. After getting the girl's voices to work, I then changed the code so then it randomly selects between a boy's and a girl's voice, but after changing the code, I was clueless into why it will only play the boy's voice and not randomise between boy and girl (and sometimes even go silent, which turned out to be caused by the randomiser not being coded properly), until I realised that I had to change the scope of the repeat so then it continues for 8 corresponding letters and at the same time also have a wider selection compared to previous. After all that it all works according to the Ronseal method (it does exactly what it says on the tin!) and also according to specification.

The essay was just another story. I was in my depths with my chosen technology as I knew that all the resources will be useful to my essay, and also because I am a huge fan of Apple, I'm familiar with the community side of things and that proved to be a boost when mentioning that the community, in addition to the media, drives the prediction to refinements that results from the first product evolving to add more features that would make Apple the leader in every market they compete in. That said, I have constructed detail that hopefully should result in a very good result, who knows?

These two assignments should pave way to something that is more interesting, whilst at the same time it provides a very good challenge to what I already know and what I will know for the future (at least I do get up for lectures all the time!).

Back to work: things to come

It's been quite a while since I've done an update, but rest assured, I had been busy working on the essay for IDAT108 and the phonics game for SOFT131 (both of which are now complete and are being submitted as of the date of publishing), in addition to starting off the IDAT107 animatic. Christmas has been very good, and although I do miss those homemade chili con carnes and quality Indian takeaways (although I'm pretty sure that somewhere in Plymouth could fill in the gap), I'm glad to be back to uni for many things which will be interesting, and talking of which, there are a lot of things to come, including, but not limited to:

• Bumper video for IDAT107 after the animatic
• Life-sized board game project for IDAT106, crossover with Year 2s
• Beginning work on 3D
• Practicals in IDAT108
• Custom Flash game for IDAT102 (the racing game was just a taster)
• ...and much more

Also, I will start sailing soon, every Wednesday (since there is now a huge gap between SOFT131 on Tuesdays and IDAT107 on Thursdays) and some Saturdays. Looks like 2011 is set to be very eventful and interesting at the same time.