Class 8, Assignment 2: Adding a Scoreboard in Greenfoot

Here are all of my screen shots for the greenfoot and joy of code. It took a while for me to work through some errors but in the end I got it! Here is the link to the final game: http://www.greenfoot.org/scenarios/9811

Here are some screenshots of Joy of Code video 16.  We put a scoreboard into our game.

 Here's a screenshot of Joy of Code video 17. In this one we started a whole new game, with a bouncy ball

Here's a screenshot of Joy of Code video 18. Adding the click of a mouse to the game.

Here's a screenshot of Joy of Code video 19. Class vs. instance methods

Here's a screenshot of Joy of Code video 20. Balls change color in the code!!

Here's a screenshot of Joy of Code video 21. Here we are learning additional image manipulation.

Here's a screenshot of Joy of Code video 22. Streamlining code.



Here's a screenshot of Joy of Code video 23.Fading the balls.


Here's a screenshot of Joy of Code video 24. Adding a 'smoke' feature. Getting fancy now!




Here's a screenshot of Joy of Code video 25. This was a general video about dealing with possible errors that come up in coding. Very helpful

Class 8, Assignment 9: JavaScript Programming Path CLASS DECISION

It seems like most of the class decided to go with Codecademy. I was happy with this because this was my favorite as well. People liked the way that the program took you through the steps with rewards that made it compelling to continue.I also liked the old-school futuristic look, and the way the code lit up when it was right. Also I was familiar with it from another class, so perhaps I'm biased. However the rest of the class seems to agree with me. People seemed to find Kahn Academy a bit confusing and distracting.

Class 8, Assignment 7: World of Warcraft vs JME

While it took a really long time to download WoW, I'm really glad I did. Here are some screenshots of me playing around in it. It has been a long time since I played it (I used to play a little with my dad), and it was fun to play again!

 Here I am just roaming around

 and again. I think my character is pretty sweet. Those are some good looking ears

 Here I am in a tunnel

 On a road


In my opinion, World of Warcraft was far superior to all of the experiences I had in JME. Maybe I was bitter because it took so long to figure out how to even start JME. I thought for sure I was in for a bad experience, but the images and speed were actually pretty good, especially for the brick wall simulation. However it wasn't consistent. I thought the water simulation took a while to load on webstart, and the quality of the image wasn't great. I thought that showcase urban galaxy was a nice looking game, however the level of detail was not on par with WoW.

WoW was better in my mind because of two reasons. Firstly, while it took a lifetime to download, it was well worth the wait! It was super easy to use and get started. Secondly, the image quality and rendering speed was superior to JME. Everything was clear and crisp, and it was also very fast and consistent. WoW was awesome. In my books, WoW was a clear win.

Class 8, Assignment 5: Programming with JME

Here is are some pictures of my programming in JME. Overall I thought the tutorial was very in depth, and it was easy to complete. However, I found figuring out which version I needed to download, and also getting things up and running after the download was a bit of a pain. Perhaps this was just an issue with my computer. Also, the download took a lifetime haha.

 This is me starting the tutorial by copying the code into the syntax box

This is me about the run the code! 

Here is the result! It took me a while to figure out how to screenshot, so it is hard to tell, but the box is 3D

Class 8, Assignment 4: Exploring JME

This is what happened when I tried to use the applet. Looking on the google group, it looks like everyone else had this issue too. This happened on multiple browsers. 

This is using the testbrickwall simulation of the JME webstart. I found the controls were a little odd, but I figured it out without much problem

 This is using the sunbeam simulation of the JME webstart. I thought this one was very pretty

 I think this one was the water simulation. Nothing too special about this one.

 Here I am using the showcase. I chose a game called urban galaxy. I thought it was pretty boring, but the colors here are nice.

 Starting on a mission in urban galaxy

 Here I am flying around urban galaxy. I thought this was fine, but nothing special overall. The thing I found the most tricky was the lack of instructions on how to get all of these webapps working on my PC

Class 7, FINAL PREPARATION: Choosing a JavaScript programming track.

Learn Street

• Love the supplemental videos, they helped me get a deeper understanding of the material and work really well for visual learners (which I’m not but I imagine they would prefer Learn Street).
• If I were on my own time I’d like to try more than one video before being allowed to sign up.
• User Interface is the ugliest. 
• Hated the console and colors.

Code Academy

• Love the badges, noises, trophies and other gamification. I found it super motivating.

• Loved the interface, sort of reminded me of Tron, was very old-school techie.
• The Console was the best of the three, fit the old-school futuristic look really well.
• Was familiar with it from another class and this contributed to my comfort level.
• Like the colors used in the text, like the minimalist aesthetic.

 Khan Academy

• My least favorite by far.
• Had a confusing interface.
•  After some research I learned that Khan Academy was primarily for math, this shows. The interface (especially the massive vocabulary overload below the console, which was extremely distracting), just seems more suited for math than programming.

•  I HATED the console. It was way too small, I couldn’t see what I was doing.

•  I also hated the color scheme. This probably sounds nitpicky but actually was a huge deal for me. The color scheme (mostly just the console) was so bright white my programming (and the visual hints that were posted around it) just didn’t pop and it was much harder to read my code and find my mistakes.

Summary and favorite:

This probably won’t be much of a surprise but my least favorite was Khan Academy. Learn Street wasn’t too bad, but code academy really just clicked with me. It worked well with my learning style, it didn’t shout out what I did wrong but instead helped me figure it out. The other two over-helped I felt (or helped too easily and early maybe would be a better term) and I think that would enable people to “cheat” (by just going straight to the help), which really only would cheat themselves. I also love the interface. I’m probably overly obsessing over it but it felt like something from the tech of my childhood (or the movie War Games) and I fell in love instantly. I also had the added familiarity from my other class. Basically it was a slam dunk as my favorite.

Class 7 Assignment 2: Greenfoot JOC #12 through #15

Below I will show you through the process of making my game through a bunch of screenshots.

 Getting started, this is where we left off!

 Starting video #12, editing my code to add sound.

 Continuing to add sounds to the turtle.

 Next video starting to learn about classes.

 This class lesson really helped me with video #14.

 More classes, its showing me through and I'm following along in my code.

 Shows the end of the class lesson.

 Video #14, now things are getting tricky.

 This video teaches us about variables. Here we start adding a points system.

 Still struggling with the points system.

 Now we are adding a way to win that goes with the points system. It is called Game Over.

 Still programming in victory.

 Testing time (playing games for class is fun!!!)!

 Learning more about the gameover variable.

 Learning more (he is doing everything again slowly and in more detail)...

  Learning more (he is doing everything again slowly and in more detail)...

  Finished with #14! This game is getting HAWT!

 Video #15 looks like a doozy! 20 minutes!?!??! This is gonna be hard.

I messed up with this screenshot and I am editing my code out of the screenshot area...

 Now you see me adding in the bugs, this is getting intense.

Programming the bugs movement.

 Altering my scoring system from previous video to account for the bugs being moving targets (harder to hit).

 Here I've gone back. My code got messed up and I got really confused. It took me about three hours to finish video five because I ran into some bugs (and not the good kind). Even worse in trying to fix them I messed up my code trying to fix things and couldn't get it right again so I had to go through line by line and count my {'s and }'s, then when that didn't work I rewatched video #14 and rewrote everything I added. It was hard work. I only uploaded this screenshot of my agony because I got so grumpy I stopped taking them :*(.

 Back to work, finally got stuff figured out and working on making the new bug respawn a second time.

 Woah this is crazy, now the new bug respawns randomly. This is me coding that.

Victory lap/final test screenshot!



So contrary to what the professor said I actually found two bugs over my long comb to fix things. The first bug I found was that since there was no victory scenario if program in the lettuce section you couldn't win unless you ate a bug. This was annoying so I fixed it. The second took a bunch of tests before I realized what was causing the problem but because bugs give you 5 points and it was set to win at exactly 15 if you went over (e.g. 16, 17, 18, 19) you wouldn't win even though you should have. I mucked around and found changing the == to a >= fixed this problem.

Thanks for reading about my game, I hope you'll play it at...
http://www.greenfoot.org/scenarios/9676