Contact 23.10.14

Since this was the last studio we would have before the tradeshow and application due date (to zones), today's class was obviously dedicated to working on the game. Tasks were allocated today to make sure that each remaining segment in the application would have responsibility from someone:

• Bill will take responsibility of the scoring/ranking system. This includes managing the necessary items required for the ranking to work, such as user information/performance.
• China will be the designer who would be in charge of the game's CSS. This meant that everything from the gaming interface, colour combinations, font etc were managed by her. 
• Soobin's job was to manage the database which any external (nonTrove) sources would be attained from, including each maps' coordinates of each animal's location (longitude and latitude) and the users' details (names for the highscore & ranking etc)
• I took responsibility for the maps. This meant that i had to find each animal's location and match it with longitude and latitude values on the map via circles or other means. 

Other components of the application such as the retrieval of sounds and images were kept last as we needed core aspects in the game first and we already had the articles as a hint (and upcoming maps). 

At the start of the contact session, we shared what we had all completed over the course of the week. China's success over the progress bar was shared, Bill's attempts of map markers, my maps and circles from yesterday, and Soobin's encounter on a website which provided a tutorial on how to make a quiz using HTML5, CSS3, PHP, MySQL, jQuery and Ajax. 

The site which he shared, (http://www.smarttutorials.net/quiz-application-using-php-jquery-ajax-mysql-and-html5/), was insightful enough as to inform us about the different possible usages for the different programming languages and even provided the author's folder available to download (containing the files in which they used to construct the quiz). 

During the contact, China asked a tutor about the lives system and in no time the lives system was fully functional. This was uploaded online to the group's space. While the tutor was with us, we also took the opportunity to ask about the different map files and how it was possible to make it all into one file. This was when the database idea was introduced.

For the remainder of the contact class we worked our own way into our assigned tasks. Occasionally we discussed matters as a group to hear different opinions and perspectives on decisions, such as whether the 'proceed to next question' button was really necessary in the game instead of having users redirected to the next question regardless of the in/correctness of their answer.

During this time i realised what polygons actually where!.!?! Even though i found out yesterday about the endless alternatives for markers, i thought that polylines (which were basically just lines) and polygons were the same thing (even though i knew polygons were 5 sided shapes, which still doesnt have anything to do with what it is). After two hours of indecisive decision making (yes, the whole of the contact session), i finally decided to abandon my hours worth of circles to move onto polygons (in the economics course im also doing, it states that when considering alternative opportunities, sunk costs (stuff that was already wasted/used up, e.g. the 5 maps with circles that i had spent hours on), should not be considered when deciding, only results from each decision etc. and that benefits should outweigh costs etc etc blah etc i dont want to retell a random economics lecture on here). SO after this, yes i decided to discard my circles for polygons.

This was my first practice on polygons. 

I dont think ive mentioned this yesterday but i used google developers to help me do all this (https://developers.google.com/maps/). Looking back on a previous post about over a month ago, a workshop i attended suggested google developers for this kind of stuff, and Bill used it too to help with the placement of his markers. 

Then for some strange reason it was already 1.50 and the contact class had ended. Time actually goes by so fast sometimes. After the contact we all agreed to work on the application together as a team. I can see that this post is getting a little lengthy so ill make the team-working-together-in-a-lab-after-the-contact another post.