Here is the article I mentioned in class. It's two years old. Extra Credit points to whoever can find updated information on the situation. I'm pretty interested and haven't found anything yet.
Here are links to the orbital simulations that we looked at in class, in case you want to mess around with them some more:
Also: We didn't get around to chatting about it in class, because I wanted you to have some time to get together with your groups, but don't forget to consider the implications of non standard orbits, axises, and rotations. Consider Uranus, so tilted as to be pretty much perpendicular to it's revolutionary orbit. Consider the distance of your world from it's star, and how long it takes to orbit said star. What implications do the orbital lengths/axis tilts have on seasons, and what implications do those, in turn, have to life on your world? Life would be quite different on a planet that went through a winter period that lasted an entire generation's life span!
Several of the projects in the Casual Games class feature a replacement for the mouse cursor. Depending on how you implemented this, you might run into the dreaded "flickering mouse cursor" problem. It was a bit of a puzzler at first, but here's a quick walkthrough on how to solve the problem...
I've had a couple of students ask me what the easiest way to figure out which key the user pressed is. So I wrote a quick and simple sample program that does that very thing.
I've added it to the sample code page.
Hopefully it explains everything thoroughly, but if any questions remain, please let me know!
Hey Gang,
Here's the video that Jesse found of that gameboy from the first Persian Golf War.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBeTXPaewMo
What's even more amazing: This totally is a different gameboy than the one I saw images over before.
Next week (week 9), we will be doing the playtest that we were supposed to do today. Make sure you have a complete rough draft version of the instructions for your game, as well as the game itself. You will be testing by passing the instructions to the group, and watching to see if they can play right without your intervention.
The final version of your instructions are no longer due next week, but the following week.
You should be making significant progress on the presentation of your game. Remember, it needs to be portfolio quality by the end of the quarter.
For the rest of the quarter, you will be working on two projects.
The portfolio site will follow the same essential format as the Children's site and the Tourism site. That is, next week, you've got 3 layouts due, and we'll be critiquing them and sending you to your final destination. You'll have to have the entire site done by the end of the quarter.
The second project will be the completion of one of your two previous sites. You have the option of taking either your children's site or your tourism site and completing five pages of it. These will not be publicly critiqued in class, so if you want feedback as you work on it, you'll have to ask for it. This is also due the last class of the quarter.
For this assigment, you must design a kiosk interface. We're going to do this one a little bit differently than any of the web interface projects we've done so far, so make sure you read through the instructions carefully. (more…)
Due next class, you must have the rough draft of your design document done.
The details of the narrative section of the group project can be found below. Due next class!