03/01/11

Today I had a productive lesson in which I created the final page of my prototype, with buttons giving the user options to either start the mini game again or return to the very beginning of the storybook; if the student wishes to end the game, it will be on this screen that they will simply close the programme. I then edited the basket graphics used in my mini game by giving them thick black outlines around the shape of the item; this gave greater differentiation from the eggs and the basket. As before the two shapes were merging into one and making it hard to determine where the basket ended and the eggs began; this new design will allow the users to see easier what items they have placed into the baskets.

In order for my scoring system to work I needed a counter in place in order to time how long it took for the student to finish the game; I used the following code:

timer = 0;

countup = function(){
timer++;
}

countupInterval = setInterval(countup,1000);

This code was placed on a layer seperate to the layer on which I created dynamic text with the variable of 'timer'. This allowed the code to refer back to the dynamic text in order for a base on which the text could be displayed- this created a timer that automatically begins as soon as the mini game opens- it will count up until 1000 at which point it will stop- a huge time frame for the student to complete the task.

I then realised that on my mini game in order for a hit test to work, the eggs would have to be movie clips and not buttons as I had originally created. I therefore created new movie clips for each egg and had to replace the code in order for each item to be dragged and dropped, and then gave each appropriate instance names again so that the coding worked. Next lesson I need to figure out how to allow the game to progress only if each egg is touching the correct basket. Once I have completed this I can then move on to my scoring and find a way to transfer the final number when the 'finish' button is pressed and display it as the child's score- then hopefully relate this number to a title such as 'egg-cellent' and so forth.