The first workshop for today was spent attempting new things in our to-do list, including the lives system and the maps. Before this, China had spent roughly an hour trying to merge the process bar in with the questions. Long consultations with the tutor proved useless until the workshop was over and the next tutor, aka Khoa, came to rescue. He fixed the problem and stated that the reason it was wrong was because the jquery src had apparently kept overriding the jquery UI. Nonetheless, China and i had a little celebratory cry after it was finally fixed.
*this is where the image for the working progress bar + questions would normally go, but i dont have a picture or anything*
During the time that China had spent doing this, I tried to find our latest version of the game on our google drive so that i could also try to add the progress bar in with China. I realised after 30minutes into the first workshop that we had two google drive spaces which was the reason i was so lost in finding our latest version. It also turned out that our latest-latest version hadnt even been uploaded online yet. It was a little different, as in about three lines different, from the version that i had. Those three lines do make a big difference though. Altogether, ashamed to say, this took up soo much time. I gave up trying to sort out all my versions and folders after about an hour into the first workshop. I literally had 5 of each file on my laptop and my attempt to swap some of them around - all with the same names (e.g. index.html, play.html etc) - had only confused me even more.
That was when i gave up and focused my attention back on the maps that i had started a few weeks back. I remember being able to show the map with the use of my API key. I wanted to add markers in the maps to represent the location in which each animal lived so searched this up. After some time i had successfully gotten up one marker on the map. The API keys were no use in this file.
I took so long teaching myself how to add the markers to the exact perfect place. Here, i used Brisbane as an example. Note that i deliberately made the map to only take up that much space on the page as usually the questions, buttons etc would surround it.
When i started searching up how to add more than one marker, i came across a few tutorials that gave out codes that added markers to several places. In the same tutorials they had also changed the marker image to flags to represent beaches in the example. When i tried this coding however, the flags didnt come up, but this is what i taught myself in that time anyway.
After this i then realised all the possibilities that i had as alternatives to markers. Some include polylines, polygons, rectangles, arrows, user edited shapes/symbols and dashed lines. One of these includes circles! I felt that this was the more appropriate tool to use considering the many places that some animals live in Australia. So i then started to teach myself how to add circles to maps. This was my first attempt (yes i used the United States to practise).
The map i did of crocodiles location compared with the image of their location i found online (in the smaller map).
Emu locations. Even though this one used up like five circles, i found it to be the hardest to replicate of the map i was using to copy off (the smaller one top right). Its so off.
This is the Koala's map. hmmm..
Kangaroo's location. It was also really hard trying to duplicate the brown almost-rectangle shape into circles. This one looks so failed. :(
Numbats. By far the easiest, fastest and my favourite to do. Note that compared to the map i was using to match shows both their past distribution (orange area) and the current distribution (blue).
By the time i was about into my second map and second workshop, China left after attempting the lives system. I believe she did some research (which didnt really prove useful), and then moved on to looking for game like heart images to use. She placed one on the same page as the working progress bar while we both waited for a tutor to come around and teach us how to implement the lives system. The workshop was pretty full though and after soo long, she gave up and left without having asked any tutors. We agreed that we would ask this among with many other questions tomorrow.
Into the third workshop was when i finished five maps of animals and felt extremely bored. I then started looking up maps of where the other 15 animals lived in Australia. I was not able to find some such as a map for wallaroos and goannas. Of course, no map will be made for the thylacine due to its long extinction. For the wallaroo and goanna, ill just search up worded descriptions of where they live and base the circles around that.
After this searching and some portfolio work (aka procrastinating from continuing the maps), the third workshop was over and i headed home. About halfway through the workshop, Bill approached me and asked what the maps i had done looked like since he was also working on the maps. He said that my method was apparently better than his because it showed more than one location as oppose to this attempt to add single markers. Then i left home. Six hours workshopping gets you pretty tired. Unnecessary to this blog, but i coincidentally met China walking out of the building. She was also leaving home (well after heading to the city).
On the bus home, i was notified on facebook in our group chat from Bill that i should combine all the maps into one html file, since at the moment i had each animal with one html file each. Since all the articles were also in one file, he suggested that it would be easier that when we would randomly select a question, it would randomly select one of the files (articles, maps, photos, sound etc). I agreed to try this later at night. China suggested adding them all in an array in one file so that it would be easier to randomly select.
Though i feel that so much work was done today, we still have soo much left to do. And its due in less than a week. Anyway ive written too much today. Bye.
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