The development of the game so far

I have spent a lot of time on this project and not enough of it has been on updating this blog so this is my attempt to summarise what I have done so far.
I worked on the design and the overall feel of the website and game at the beginning and some of the previous posts show that part of the process, since then I have undertaken the role of actually getting the game to working. I researched lots of online tutorials for webcam games and it became very clear early on that what we are attempting with this game is a lot more adventurous than the majority of webcam games out there, there was not going to be some easy tutorial to follow that would solve our problems.
I developed an idea to try and take aspects from a webcam tutorial where a ball moves across a screen and registers hits when you move over it and combine this idea with various other aspects from the world of flash gaming action script. With lots of trial and error I managed to get the webcam registering movement in the right areas, and then I managed to get the registration of that movement to move our controllable objects. So things were going quite well. I then had to develop a way of making the carrots grow when they came into contact with both the sun and the rain cloud, this was the hardest task and after I had pulled out most of my hair I managed to get this to work. The next task was the timer element and score system which was quite easy to do and I can now say officially today the game is working and it just needs the instructional animation adding, this part is being developed by my colleagues and the website that we are developing as part of our project is also nearly finished.
I would also like to point out that this project was designed for use on the Hull city centre big screen, but due to the Hull City Councils decision to turn off the screen this will no longer be the case. This has been very demoralising and upsetting, it shows in my opinion the lack of interest my home city has in moving forward as a technological social centre for the community and it leaves me with worries about my creative future in this city. I have never wanted to leave my home town but if Hull continues to be repressed in terms of forward thinking is it the type of place where a creative mind can thrive?
This project was set in conjunction with the BBC’s ‘Diggin’ initiative and our contact at the BBC was Jeremy Buxton. I would like to thank him and our tutor James Field for arranging this opportunity, it has given us a little glimpse of work in the big wide world, not only the highs but also now the lows. Although we only had a couple of meetings with Jeremy his positive attitude shone through and this gave me a huge boost of confidence to take into this project. It is a shame that due to the council’s decision other students may not get to work with him as I feel my experience of meeting him has been invaluable. I would like to wish him good look with his future endeavours and I hope to work with him again someday.
Check out my website.
http://www.pjshakesby.com/