You know, technology's a funny thing. Sometimes it works for months at a time, and sometimes your hard-drive dies and you're left without a working computer 3000 miles from home.
My laptop's a paperweight right now, but luckilly I've got plenty of drawing to do before heading home for a short visit later this week. While there I'll swap out a new hard-drive, make a pot of coffee and reinstall everything. I lost about 4 days worth of stuff, but making it up should move quickly.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Progress!
I spent a big chunk of yesterday in a Starbucks outside of Modesto California. They charge for wireless internet in a lot of coffee-shops out here, which is a shock to me - I'm used to wireless being more of a right then a privilege.
Anyway, as the title of this entry suggests I made some progress, specifically on the HTML side of the game. Throughout the Help Desk Game Development Group's history, several different guys have had the task of turning the images and learning content into a web-based game (Nathan, Chris, and a long time ago a very hard working student named Josh Krohn). Being the least HMTL-inclined of our group (and a horrible speller), I typically stayed out of that side of the process. But this time around is different; since we'll have a lot of animated GIF's decorating the game it made sense for me to take over the super-basic HMTL stuff, because I'll be updating it as the game progresses. What I wrapped up yesterday was splitting my images up into pieces, tying those pieces together in HTML frames, and getting many of the frames swapped with animated GIF's. Let's hope I haven't somehow doomed the project with my meddling.
Anyway, as the title of this entry suggests I made some progress, specifically on the HTML side of the game. Throughout the Help Desk Game Development Group's history, several different guys have had the task of turning the images and learning content into a web-based game (Nathan, Chris, and a long time ago a very hard working student named Josh Krohn). Being the least HMTL-inclined of our group (and a horrible speller), I typically stayed out of that side of the process. But this time around is different; since we'll have a lot of animated GIF's decorating the game it made sense for me to take over the super-basic HMTL stuff, because I'll be updating it as the game progresses. What I wrapped up yesterday was splitting my images up into pieces, tying those pieces together in HTML frames, and getting many of the frames swapped with animated GIF's. Let's hope I haven't somehow doomed the project with my meddling.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Sweating the Schedule
I had a bit of a heart-attack earlier this week when I was under the mistaken impression that my time on this project was 1/3rd over. We set aside 3 months to complete this project, and I thought I was coming up on 1 month of work. Luckily it was 3 weeks and not 4. This concern did motivate me to take a look at where I'm at in the process, and I'll share my findings with you;
- All told there are 12 images that need to be completed. I've developed the rough drawings for all of these, and have begun work on the final drawings. Of those, only one drawing is actually complete, with another close on it's heels. To be honest this worries me, because once the drawing is complete they still require coloring in Photoshop. Both steps are very time consuming, and I would rather be farther along at this stage. The sooner I complete these drawings the sooner Nathan can integrate them into HTML and PHP.
- The games written content is well under way; Nathan has an example of the branching method we'll be using for the game-learning aspects, and I have several one-off journal entries that will be placed around the game.
What has caught me off guard with this process is the amount of time it has taken to get a good workflow setup; I've spent a great deal of time setting up accounts, organizing files, and maintaining the documentation trail (a category under which this blog is included). The good news is that I've developed a personal method that should deliver on my end of the bargain.
- All told there are 12 images that need to be completed. I've developed the rough drawings for all of these, and have begun work on the final drawings. Of those, only one drawing is actually complete, with another close on it's heels. To be honest this worries me, because once the drawing is complete they still require coloring in Photoshop. Both steps are very time consuming, and I would rather be farther along at this stage. The sooner I complete these drawings the sooner Nathan can integrate them into HTML and PHP.
- The games written content is well under way; Nathan has an example of the branching method we'll be using for the game-learning aspects, and I have several one-off journal entries that will be placed around the game.
What has caught me off guard with this process is the amount of time it has taken to get a good workflow setup; I've spent a great deal of time setting up accounts, organizing files, and maintaining the documentation trail (a category under which this blog is included). The good news is that I've developed a personal method that should deliver on my end of the bargain.
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