Week: 8

Date: 25th May - 29th May

By: Yani

This week I just received my laptop back...missed it!...but bad news...my trial flash expired...so I can't really do much...also, I have been focusing more on my GAUD assignment which is due soon...I really have to catch up man!

The meeting with NHB last week went fine I guess...We talked about our updates..And we talked about what we intend to do for the marketing side...Peifen gave some really good suggestions...I need to come up with a proposal soon!!..sigh...so many things to do!!!....chop chop Yani!!...

May 29 2009 WEEK 8

Name: Wee You

Did some research on Actionscript 3 and programming of the frames. Because of the nature of the level, a lot of manipulation of frames has to be done. For example, currentFrame is used to check the currentFrame of the movie clip. It is an access-only variable. I used it for checking whether the terrorist caught the player.
However, more research is required as I do not know how to switch between frames.

May 29 2009 WEEK 8

Name: Peifen

I’m still researching on my level 8. Tried quite a number of way but none works. It seems to me that there is some linking error. Maybe I should look more into my linking part. After a few days of no progress, I’ve decide to leave it here first and come back later. I’ve started level 9.

Week: Eight
Date :25 May - 29 May
Name: Mei Yi

I am finally done with the lantern animation! It's really simple. I hope everything works well. But I will still have to amend some more things in that scene. I am now proceeding to the next scene. Have to do research on mooncakes and lantern festival stuff. I will have to draw mooncakes and lanterns in a park, where normally families celebrate the lantern festival.

We are rushing our drawings as soon as possible. I hope to finish it earlier so that we could get things done on time.

Week: Seven
Date :18 May - 22 May
Name: Mei Yi

This week I have done a lot of research on lantern making and its required materials. I had a tough time finding the appropriate ones. This is because one of the game scenes required making a lantern. So player will have to follow instructions and build the lantern step by step. If I make it too difficult, I am afraid that players will have a tough time understanding it. I would also have problems animating the lantern making process. If I am going to make it a hard one, I will have to spend a lot of time on the animation. So finally I found one of the simplest way of making lantern which is also easy to understand. I have also half completed the animation.

We also had a meeting with the National Heritage Board people on Friday. One of the guy commented that having the terrorists idea was pretty innovative.

May 22 2009 WEEK 7

Name: Peifen

I’ve finish all 5 stages of level 8 with real graphic. However, I am researching on how to link them up. Chong ming suggest link by swf but I’m don’t really know how to do that. Hence, more research to do. Progress is kind of slow as on top of this, we still have 3 modules to finish.
Meet up with NHB this week. They seems pretty impressed by us. As we already thought of marketing strategy. Yani gave an idea of holding a competition and I gave an idea of emailing schools to promote our game since emailing is free and we could just get hold of email address from MOE website.

May 22 2009 WEEK 7

Name: Wee You

Level 3 is made up of 4 scenes. This is new as the previous games were all completed in one single frame. I realize that when I put all the 4 scenes together, they just keep playing at 60 FPS, because of the way the timeline work.
After doing some researching, I learnt about the function stop();. This function can stop the frame and hence we could play each frame and switch when I want.

Week: 7

Date: 18th May - 22nd May

By: Yani

This week I'm still struggling with level 3...mostly because my laptop is with the doctor(comp technician) now...can't get much done...but we did narration recording this week!!!...yeah!!!....hahaha...i kind of loved it....enjoyed it even....Begum did the recording...

So this week all was not really lost...I did the narration recording..there's lots more to be done!!...there's the dialogues,the bg music,the effects...excited bt at the same time worried!!...hope I can finish on time..

We need to go to a meeting with NHB later on...a lil bit nervous...

Week: Six
Date :11 May - 15 May
Name: Mei Yi

This week i am still struggling with level 4 drawings. I was stumbled by a few problems while drawing, and thinking of the animation in those scene. I would have to discuss and sort this problems out with the programmers, as they know what can be done. So i have decided to draw all the scenes first and the more detailed ones would need to be done after discussion with the programmers. One of the drawings to be done is Sir Stamford Raffles, I have done research on his images and there are two different results. I am really puzzled on which is the closest picture of him. One is in a traditional clothing with him having his body in half naked and the other showing his statue in Sinagpore. For this, I would have to discuss with Begum and Yani for their preference.Seems like our artist progress is slowing down, nevetherless we have set to finish all the drawings in the next 3 weeks. I doubt we can do it, but no matter how I am still trying very hard to complete as many drawings as possible.

Next friday we will be having a meeting with NHB and Rapture as NHB would like to take a look at our progress and more details. Hopefully by done i can move on to level 6 for more drawings! I wish to complete my drawings as soon as possible!

Week: 6

Date: 11th May - 15th May

By: Yani

The pressures of the projects are taking a toll on all of us now...I'm a little drained but with everyday that passes, it'll be closer to the end...haha..looking forward to that...This week I have done the 3rd level but there's still much to be done..Haven't really completed level 3...a little bit worried..scared that it will disrupt my timeline...but this week I was down with flu...had to go to the doctor due to the 'hoo hah' of the swine flu...turns out my throat was infected...anyway I can't really do much but hopefully I'll pick up the slack next week...

To make things worse, my laptop needs to go to the clinic too...

May 15 2009 WEEK 6

Name: Peifen

Yani sent me the graphics for level 8 and I’ve started to do the game. There are some difficulties as I need to align the cards till it could over the ingredient picture. Also, all the stages card are of different size and the number of cards in GDD is impossible to form a square. Hence I need to inform yani about the changes. As I’m writing this post, I’ve already finish 3/5 stages.

May 15 2009 WEEK 6

Name: Wee You

School work + MP is starting to put a toll on us! Because our school work group mates are leaving for MIT in 3 week time, we had to rush our school assignments too. However, I continued researching about AS3 as there are still bugs I could not fix.
Meiyi sent me the graphics for level 3 and I took a look at it. I did a quick pseudocode as the game is rather big.

Week: Five
Date :4 May - 8 May
Name: Mei Yi

I have helped Yani, the animator, with some drawings for her animation. We went through a hard time to find an image for Sang Nila Utama. I seriously have no idea how he looked like and therefore I couldn't draw him out without any reference. We did several research on him, such as clothings and his size. Finally we had an idea of how he is going to be like. I drew him out in different angles such as side view and front view. His clothing was a little problem as I have to imagine how his clothing is going to look like when in his side view. He is wearing the malay traditional clothes in the drawing and it was a slight problem for me as I have no idea how a Malay male wear their clothes. But with excellent assistance from Yani, we finally finished his drawing in a few hours.


Next, I continued with my own drawing for level 4. For level 4, I will have to draw kitchen, and ingredients for mooncake. Currently, I am having some problem with the animation of the ingredients. Hopefully I can finished it by this week.

May 8 2009 WEEK 5

Name: Peifen

This week, I finally finish making a level prototype. It’s only one of the five stages in levels. However , this is alright as the different between each stage is just the number of cards. Anyway, yani offered to do the graphic for level 8 as the artists are too busy.

May 8 2009 WEEK 5

Name: Wee You

This week, I implemented a timer into level one. This timer will not only drop every second, it will also drop whenever the player collects a wrong item. This way, it creates a challenge to the player. I learnt how to use the timer from the help function of Flash. The clear explanation and the examples assisted me in creating the timer.
Also, my past assignments helped me in showing the timer. Because of previous experiences of using Timer in C++, C#, and Java, it was easy for me to adapt and use the Timer in Flash.

Week: 5

Date: 4th May - 8th May

By: Yani

Ok!...My plan said in the previous week seems to work..It's Thursday now and I'm done with the scenes of level 1 and 2!!!...It was pretty fast I think..I thought that the level 2 would drag on till next week but I'm done with 2 levels this wk...Hopefully I could keep it up so I would have ample time for the animation and more importantly, the music and effects!!!...Especially excited for the latter!!...haha...Next week I'll start level 3..

Woo hoo!!!...hahaha...

Week: 4

Date: 27th Apr - 1st May

By: Yani

Wow...time passes by soo fast!...its already the fourth week!...It's been pretty packed for all of us and I'm guessing it'll be even more packed!...We've got our usual module assignments to worry about too...For me, I have been busy with as usual the animation of the cut scenes..I realised that it would be faster if I do all the scenes and then animate...Don't know if it's right but it seems to work for me..Got most of the scenes done for level one this week..hopefully to finish it soon and move on to the other levels...

Back to work!!!...

May 1 2009 WEEK 4

Name: Wee You

I forgot to mention it a few weeks ago, but I was in charge of Level 1, 2, 3, and 4. This is because I have done the level 1 and 2 prototypes. So, while waiting for level 3 and 4 graphics, I have been reading up on the GDD of level 3 and 4 so that I could be ready once the graphics are sent to me.
Also, I found out more bugs for Level 2. When dragging and dropping rapidly, the ingredients somehow disappear. I referred back to the website where I read about drag and drop, and realized the example that the website provided has the same bug as me! Oh no, is it Flash’s problem? As this bug occurs quite seldom, I decided to leave it for now.
Besides the wall collision for Level One, there were also item collisions to be done. While brainstorming about how to do it, I realized that I did something similar during GRDV in year 2. I immediately referred back to my notes and learnt about changing the visibility to simulate collecting of items.

May 1 2009 WEEK 4

Name: Peifen

This week I finally manage to finish the class for the cards for my level8. Now the cards are able to flip. Now I’m working on the gameloop itself, as flash is quite a troublesome software where we need to take the timeline into consideration. Also, when creating objects there’s quite a different between coding in timeline and coding in .as files. As if I code in .as files, I would need to export it to create a class also. Let’s just hope I can see a proper prototype next week.

Week: Four
Date :27 April - 1 May
Name: Mei Yi

This week i started drawing the different scenarios and items required for level 4. Some scenes are pretty similar from the previous levels. So i edited some of these drawings and transform it into another new scene for level 4. It might seem to be pretty easy, but still it is tedious as I still have to edit the small details carefully and then redraw it to a different element.

There are still many drawings to be done. We are really rushing for time and hopefully i can get level 4 done as soon as possible so that the programmers can develop the levels quickly.