Flash Application

This again, was a part of the "Entertainment Computing" module at UCLAN as part of the computer games development course that I'm doing. The brief was to make either an interactive slideshow application, using flash and in specific, actionscript 2, or in the case of some of the game development students in the module, a game using the same language and application. I decided to make a small game. This was my first time using actionscript and flash, and coming from c++ the actionscript wasn't so bad, if not a bit buggy and a bit "out of your control", I also had some trouble getting the hang of the CS3 interface, but after reading some guides about how to use it, I soon managed to start on the application and get some work done. I decided that a simple point and click shooting game would be a nice little project for my first game using actionscript and flash, I also tried to target the graphics and gameplay at my target audience (about late teens to early twenties, probably male, though it doesn't really matter) by making it bright and colourful with some nice animations. To be specific, it was an alien themed game, where aliens are trying to escape area 51, and you have to stop them by using your double barrel shotgun. Work went along pretty fast, and I managed to get most of the features that I wanted into the game, the only thing that I couldn't was outputting a score to the screen, it seems like there is little documentation for flash (or no-where near as much as c++, and not anywhere near as comprehensive). Though all in all, I found it quite fun to do once I got the hang of it.

Facebook Application - Evaluation

In summary, I think that the app design would have had good potential, and I think that the idea in itself was good, it's just a shame that due to technical difficulties it never got off the ground. We had some positive feedback of some of our friends saying that they would like to give the app a go after we finished making it. So it's just a real shame that it never got together, I must admit though, I wouldn't want to try and do something like this again, I dislike PHP quite a bit, it just doesn't sit right with me for some reason, and the FBML language was just horrible, of course, these are my personal opinions and there are obviously people out there who make plenty of money and some decent apps using it, maybe if I took some time at my own pace and managed to find some half decent guides and references, it might make a bit more sense, but not this time.

Facebook Application - Launch

Unfortunately due to the fact that we never managed to get the application finished or working, we could not really have a launch, though as far as I can work out, the errors where definitely due to the host that we where using at the time, because even the test application that you get with the facebook API wouldn't work properly, and I had a look at someone else who had managed to get some basic code working, and the API was definitely hooked up right, to be honest it's a bit of a mystery, and I wouldn't say that I was great at PHP in the first place. Still we tried very hard to get the thing up and running in time and had some very positive feedback on the idea from friends on the course. I think if I was to do this again, I'd definitely have to try and find an alternative webhost, though to be honest, I am definitely not a fan of PHP or FBML, neither are particularly my strong points coding wise, and I think there are some definite compatibility issues between them and different browsers. At some point in the future, I hope that the web coding standards get stricter and all browsers start using the same flavours of html etc.

Facebook Assignment - Implementation

The implementation of the program was very difficult, because the facebook API was very difficult to link into a website, and also the webhost that I was using, was adding extra code to the file on the fly, which meant that even the most basic test program wasn't working. Also there doesn't seem to be as much information on the facebook mark up language (FBML) as is really necessary. So unfortunately the development process was full of difficulties, and it never really got off the ground. We did get quite a bit of artwork done on the other hand, and where quite pleased with the results of the artwork. It was a shame that we didn't, manage to get it off the ground, as I feel that the app could have turned out good, as I thought that the concept was a good idea. We did also try to get the 2D plartformer a go, but soon discovered the limitations of sharendipity as a development platform, and decided pretty quickly that it would be a bad idea to go ahead with development using that app, as we wouldn't have been able to launch it as our own app and would have had to have do it through their service. Also, the game mechanics would have been pretty limited, and it would have been hard to do anything like what we really wanted to. I think given some time and a decent host, the "cabbit mayhem" smiley sending app wouldn't have gone as bad as it went, but sometimes things out of your control just stop things from working.

Facebook Assignment - Design

We have been given an assignment, as part of the "Entertainment Computing" course at UCLAN, the brief that we where given, was to make an application on facebook, that would be fun or useful. At the beginning of the design process we had two different ideas, they where quite different, but revolving around the same theme. The theme was, some kind of colourful application, which was easy to use and fun, so that many people of different computing experience could use it with ease. The first idea that we had was going to be a small 2D platformer, made using an app on facebook which you can use to build small games, called sharendipity, but unfortunately, the application was not really suitable for making . The other idea that we had was a smiley sending application, that would be small and easy to use. We decided to go with the smiley sending app, as we thought that it would be a lot easier to use, and would probably end up being more popular because it would have a lot of re-use potential, as people wouldn't finish the game and not play it again, whilst they might with the sharendipity app. So we decided to build on the "cabbit mayhem" smiley sending application. We wanted the application to be small and easy to use, but as fun as possible, with bright and eye catching smiley designs. The app would be used by people to send small messages over facebook with added emotion to the messages, so some of the "feeling" that can be easily lost in text, can be put back in, such as sarcasm, and silly comments.