You should bookmark this page. I’m going to put much of the information for the class on this page instead of directly in Blackboard. This is for a few reasons. One is that you will lose access to Blackboard classes soon after each class ends and the second reason is that even if there are problems with Blackboard you should still be able to get on here and get the information.

The first day of class is mostly introductions. You will get to know me a little bit, your classmates and get an overall picture of what we will be doing in the class over the course of the semester.

This is not an easy class and will require attention and effort on your part. However when you bring both of those to class and add some of your own interests and creativity you will come out of the class a better programmer, one who can feel confident tackling new challenges and tasks in the future.

You will need some files for today’s class. Here is the files for the introduction exercise we will be doing. Download and unzip the following file:

courseintroduction.zip

You can come to class on Monday. It is an optional day and I won’t take attendance, but if you’re not done yet I encourage you to come.

Today I am going to take some time in the beginning to talk a little bit about how to think about and break down the functions you need to make your game code work. Specifically I’ll be looking at how to end the game. However a lot of what I’m going to cover applies in general to the process of going from an idea of what you want to happen to the code to make it happen.

Here is a zip file with the Flash ActionScript files we will look at. Specifially we’ll be looking at Game.as
finalprojectexample4.zip

Also here is a link to some pages with some diagrams we will look at.

http://www.teachingmultimedia.com/mmp420/gamebreakdown/GameBreakdown_v1.htm

Also remember I’m available by email if you’re getting stuck between now and Monday.

Here is the files from class today. We added the shared object to the game so we could allow sending of messages and finished the timer so that it swapped turns when the time ran out. We also added code so that you could only press the button if it’s your turn.

At the end of class we fixed a problem with the timer where we had errors if there was a big network lag. We solved the problem by not starting the timer on both games. Instead we start it on one game and then on each TIMER event we send the new time to the other player so they can update the time.

Also I added code to countdown at the end Here is the line for count up (in the TIMER event handler timerHandler)

timerCurrent = myTimer.currentCount;

and this is for counting down

timerCurrent = myTimer.repeatCount – myTimer.currentCount; //count backwards

And here is the files:

finalprojectexample3.zip

Most of the code is in the Game.as file

finalprojectexample2.zip

The invite code is not complete yet. We didn’t get through properly handling if they click yes (setting the variables, sending a message back to the inviter, handling that message …) and there is nothing handling the no click either.

FinalProjectExample.zip

You should have a Flash file with the basic screens and classes for those screens (not everything needs to be fully functional at this time. When following along you can use this so you can directly apply what we are doing to your final.

Because we are doing this in class I will post some of the materials we create during the process after class.

Basically we will be going through:

Vague idea of what to do: invite a user to play a game

Specific description of what happens: focus on Events, Information, Actions

Linking that description to code (Event handlers, functions, variables/properties/parameters etc.)

Writing the code

How to Show Help : Basic
FMS_ShowHelp

How to show help with Tween
FMS_ShowHelp_withTween

How to transition from one screen to the next
FMS_Screen_Transitions