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Week 6-9 Dance Tool Crunch

 

 

Week 6-9 was just working on the dance tool. Everyone in the lab is feeling the pressure of having a finished product by the end of the summer.

We have already planned a final design for the dance tool. Hanan was responsible for making the user interface for the dance tool and I was responsible for the 3D programming aspect. In other words, I have to make sure that the dance tool had functionality. When we started this project, we already knew that we wouldn't be able to have a fully functional prototype of the dance tool by the end of the summer, but we will have a working version for the final presentations. Even though we weren't able to accomplish all of the goals that we set out for the summer, I was still proud of everything that we have learned over the summer.

For the dance project, I decided what I want to accomplish by the end of the summer:

 

So for the rest of my summer, I will be working on accomplishing the goals on my list. After Hanan completed the user interface, she used Maya to create 3D dance stage and dance props for the 3D dancing avatar. A 3D dancer was already created by Su Hyung Cho using 3D Studio Max. Eve is working on a loader to import the 3D figure into NetBeans IDE 6.1 along with the dancing animations that were already created by Su Hyung Cho.

Week 6 was a very eventful week.  This Tuesday, we had a low ropes course that teaches us the importance to teamwork, communication, leadership, and planning.  It was so much fun to watch students swinging through the trees dumping sponges into laundry baskets and balancing on thin wires above the ground.

On Wednesday, all of the REU and CRA-W students did midterm presentations to show where they are at this point with their research projects.  Hanan and I decide to a presentation together since we are working on the same project.

To see our presentation, click here.

 

For week 7 presentation, I went over my progress of the dance tool.  I already knew how the drag and drop operations work.  Using my knowledge from the shapes applet, I created the drag and drop buttons so that if the user drags a button to the scripting panel, it looks like a notepad instead of a button.  My next step is to find out if I can drag and drop a button onto another button. That way, the user will be able to drop commands into the button or notepad.  I must also make sure that the notepad is expandable.  For my literature review, I read a research paper title “Engaging Girls with Computers through Software Games”.  The paper addresses the issue with the lack of girls interested in the field of computer science.  The proposed solution in this paper is to make more software games that are appealing to girls.

For my game review, I chose Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.  It was my first game for the SNES.  To find out more about the game, click here.

To see the presentation for week 7, click here.

 

We covered week 8 and week 9 in one presentation.  At this point, with the dance tool, I am able to make an expandable notepad where the user can drag and drop commands into.  I have also finished the notepad generator and I am in the process of finishing the notepad deletion button.  I have also figured out a way to connect a function to how to program a function into a button.  For example if a user wants a cube to rotate to the screen, I figured out a way where the user can just drag the rotate function button to the scripting panel to rotate the cube.  Since we are still in the process of figuring out how to load 3D models into NetBeans, I have to do testing with a cube. For the literature review, I read a very entertaining research paper titled “Game Over: Learning by Dying”.  The purpose of this paper is to discuss the game called “Game Over: The Most Inaccessible Game in the World”.  The purpose of this game is to teach the importance of accessibility when it comes to game design.  The game teaches accessibility by having game levels that demonstrates some of the basic mistakes that games designers can make.

To see the presentation for weeks 8 and 9, click here.

So I have most of my goals accomplished at this point.  The only task that is left to do is to summarize this whole experience into a final paper and a final presentation.