Final Post

Greenfoot, I believe, was a good choice of a final. First of all, I've had experience with it, both this year and last year. I’ve done multiple projects last year in Castillo’s class, and this year, in the second semester I remember making a couple of games. However, this new Greeps project was foreign to me. I’ve been working on it a lot, even the weekend, only looking at youtube videos for inspiration. I kind of think, other groups are directly using code, because they’re using code which they are unable to explain to me when I ask them how they did it. It seems suspicious, but at least I know that I’m working on it fair and square. Out of this class, I’ve gotten a lot more familiar with JAVA. Especially going to those computer science competitions. Those competitions have forced me to get my JAVA refamiliared and coding straight on the computer a bit better. Even though software programming is what this class is all about, I was kind of hoping it learn more about the hardware parts. My dad is actually a hardware engineer, and he doesn’t program programs directly but he fixes problems in the hardware and things like that. That is actually I’m a bit interested in internetworking next year too. So by the end of next year, I can see what I enjoy more, software or more hardware. I might have liked to learn more languages. Even though I attempted to at the end, I just got caught up with other things like website building for a cricket club. So my computer language knowledge is still in the JAVA range. It would be helpful to colleges and other organizations that I would apply to say that I can program in blank, blank and blank. But I guess it’ll still be just JAVA. A lot of my family members are hardware computer engineers and this hopefully may be passed onto me. Software is something my family or I wasn’t ever familiar with it before high school, but when I saw that the Comp Sci AP was available to me, I figured that it would be very interesting to try out. I ended up enjoying it, and I still do today. But I have realized that when in competitions with people in your or above your skill level, things can get very pressurized and tense. Especially when a code doesn’t work. That is why it would have been better if I became one of those better coders.

15th week

As seen in the picture below there is a website called wix.com which allows very cool websites to be built, but the URL is on their domain, but atleast it's accessible by everybody. This previous week has been dedicated to working on this website, and it's coming along pretty well actually. Wix gives you so much freedom and so many better features than Microsoft's website builder, but then again Microsoft is more heavily dependent on the programming part. Where as wix.com is much more user friendly. The website below is supposed to be about Cricket Club as seen in the website's title. We have a club at LASA, and we don't have any website for it right now. We have a blogpost and a facebook page, but this should be the one source for all the information, and the others' should be for more recent up to date information.

14th week

I've kept adding more and more to my website and have figured out how to make more items on the tab menu. So now I can navigate through the home page, about Ashvin, etc. But what isn't working is that whenever I click on those it redirects me to some page that has an error on it. I've been trying to look up how the correct way of doing it is but haven't gotten much success. So next week, that'll be one of my priorities. Another neat feature I found out about the program is that you can switch from programming mode to design mode with a click of a button. In the design mode, you're pretty much dragging items from the toolbox into the layout of the website. It's a bit easier because it's more visual and you can see what you're doing. It's also a bit faster, because you're not typing out the code individually. However, one would think that it would allow them to have much more freedom, but so far from what I've learned is that there's not much more freedom. It's pretty restricting the way it is because it only allows you to put stuff from the toolbox into the layout, and some of the items don't even work when you just place them into the website, you still need programming in code.

13th week

I continued to work on the website adding a bit of the toolbox options. This week, I had missed one of the day's to make up a DBQ taking the whole class period. This week I even figured out something very open. That I am better than Matt on typeracer and winner vs loser. This was a very important discovery on my part, which now gives me bragging rights over him. Also finally, Micah paid his $2 to me. Also, I finally decided on taking Internetworking instead of Independent Study.

12th week

I only had one class once this entire week due to all the TAKS testing. But on Monday, we continued to work. Its a bit hard to remember since it was so long ago, but I've decided to be making a website, or atleast attempting to learn how to make one. It has come along pretty good until now, and I can change all the text on the screen/page title/etc, but adding buttons/tables/calendars seems easy, but I still have to achieve being able to do those. Hopefully next week, I'll get more time to work on it so atleast by the end of the year I can look back at it.

11th week

For the first 2 days, my race in Kodu Lab has greatly increased, with new terrains and functionality. This week was a combination of a lot of interesting things. Pizza on Wednesday was a nice little surprise and Micah still owes me $2 (reminder to self). On Friday, the new computer science competition was pretty good, since Chance, Skylar, and I have already had experience with these kind of problems. It was pretty unfair how some teams apparently found the solutions online and were pretty much done with all problems and got time in class to chill, while my group worked the whole time and still weren't able to complete nearly as many problems. All I wish for is that in the end, the grades are fair, and we don't get a failing grade because we actually tried to do all of the problems.

10th week

This week was a week where everyone in the class started up something different, or atleast most of those who work. I am starting to work on the Microsoft Kodu Cup which apparently works really slow and can't hold a lot of memory, making my resources limited for what I can add into the game. Another thing was that at the end of the week, I had looked over the free-response coding for the UIL district at LASA.

9th week

Now this project has come into a standstill, and I feel most of what was needed to be done has been done. For a new possible project, taking inspiration from the current Cricket World Cup, I might be making a much-more-complex game on Greenfoot. Just thinking about how I will make it, seems so confusing because there's just so many factors and rules. Almost, on a coming up weekend there'll be another competition, this time held in LASA itself, so I'm also looking forward to that.

8th week

From last week's difficulty in getting the ball to accurately bounce, some of the problems have been resolved. First of all, the scoreboard works really good now; Holland is yellow, Spain is red, and it accurately counts up the numbers of goals and displays it accordingly. Now I'll either need a timer or a total goal point to prevent an infinite time game, which is clearly not the best idea. The ball bouncing is just odd. We haven't messed with angles which is why it's probably not the most accurate, but there's still a lot of improvement needed there.

7th week

I got the ball to respawn back into the middle when a goal is made, got a scoreboard which I'm still working on, and got the ball to move in direction where the character hits it. A lot of my time was spent trying to get my actor to lift the ball into the air, so I've just decided to make a separate button for that, but that'll be for next class period. The second day of the week in the class, I decided what I would take in my future years in high school and got teacher signatures, etc. And for the first time, the ball is starting to bounce. The code is accumulating to this gigantic mess, but it's still clean and organized enough that I can go through the code scanning for what should be changed and improved. I'm really looking forward to next class so that I can finalize the ball bouncing and hit detection and see how good I've made my program be.

6th week

The two days of the week I worked on my java program which came even farther than last time. Now I have two fully movable players who have accurate gravity on them. It actually accelerates them downwards, so now all I have to do is have them colliding with the ball and other small boundary features as well as the net. On friday, Nathan, Skylar, and I reviewed over some of the earlier UIL competition packets and made a plan of how we are going to solve the problems.

5th week

I completed my original errors and holes in my code for the "bmtron like" game and now it's a pretty accurate and complete game. Now I've started on what Micah has been working on. In this soccer game, I have completed an outline for the entire program, and have added all the actors, now its just to add to their functionality. The gravity aspect has been quite hard, because I'm trying to get my actor to act as if acceleration is pulling it down, not a simple, consistent trajectory. Actually, I finished that the minute we got out of class, so all I have to do is copy-paste the code into the other player and make it so that both can act the same. After that, which is next week, I will be going to add the collisions, which may be the most difficult task to do in this program. It's because the angle of trajectory and speed, and just a whole lot of math is put into JAVA code.

4th week

I have actually been able to complete my project with full success. It was faster than I expected, but I managed to add the features the game is supposed to have. I have four players, and all four players release an actor behind them every instance, and if they collide with the walls or the opposite color's trail, they will be deleted from the screen. The only improvements I still have to make is finding the best trail object picture, not allowing the one own to travel over their own trail, and displaying the blue wins/red wins screen.
Also there is another UIL competition at UT, so I should be planning for that too.

3rd week

Having made an outline for the simulation, I started to wonder how usuable it would actually be. Since I doubted anyone or I would have ever opened that simulation up again, I gave up the idea entirely.

Now I am making a game in Greenfoot which is based off of bmtron. It combines the features from Snake and other games and is quite a complex game. I made a lot of progress this week, and got the outline of the game layed out, and the moving keys for all four players. One problem I am experiencing is to keep them moving. Because as soon as the key that judges their movement is let go off, the actor stops. Instead I want it to be like snake, and continuosly move and not stop. Also I will have to include the boundaries, and if the actors touch each other, they will be deleted from the screen. The biggest problem I might have will be how the actors will need to leave a trail behind them, which is an actor too.

2nd week

This week, I continued to work on greenfoot trying to create a very simple simulation, which may get more complex as I work on it. I am even looking at the programs the book has provided us. Those programs are really complicated and show how much code is needed for an accurate simulation. Also there is a class STAC which I may choose to do next year. It seems like a good continuation of the computer science course in LASA.

1st week

Our group has decided to go our own ways now, since we are not going to work on the typewriter anymore. Matt is going to prep up for the AP exam, and Micah and I will begin greenfoot and even possibly iphone app development. After looking in the greenfoot book, I have found interest in the life simulators. These simulations have many factors involved and is a good way to replicate a real life model, and the more accurate, the more helpful these simulations are to scientists for the real world.