Fortune Hunter progress update

As the school semester comes to a close here @ RIT, we find ourselves out of dedicated team members through classwork. I'll still be remaining active on the project as I always have, and anyone wishing to help or ask questions can reach me @ jam2707@g.rit.edu. Some of the critical obstacles we need to overcome are still within the programming realm, but there is plenty of work for all. To my knowledge, there are no definite future plans to continue Fortune Hunter through the winter season, though we may end up with a few CS students from Florida (crossing fingers) and a few minor updates here or there from myself. There may potentially be a class next quarter that will have the ability to work on it, but again that's speculative. I have, however, added more information to our wiki (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fortune_Hunter) and updated our trac list (https://fedorahosted.org/fortune_hunter/report/1) tremendously. Tasks are now listed for many future releases from now. This will add a lot of structure in the work-flow, which is great. There's still a whole lot more stuff to add to it, so I'll be doing that in coming weeks. The trac list will be open for public edits very shortly, with the release of Fortune Hunter 3.0, which will occur within the next day or two (will notify again after release). That's all for now - I'll post again when the release is out. This release will rid the project space of old-code (from the prototype) and begin the actual game progress track henceforth!

Fortune Hunter Update

So here is an update on progress of FH as of a few days ago. The porting of the lose-condition into the game is completed. Instead of leaving the battle when your HP reaches zero, you now successfully restart the level (with the same inventory for now). The merchant system is currently under reconstruction from the ground up. It has been redesigned and is slowly progressing on the code side. A basic class has been added to the repo in MAFH2, but it is not functional or complete yet. We are still seeking a coder or two to help us fly through the scripting part. The coding has proven to take a lot longer than expected so far. Most likely we will fall short of our Release 4.0, but not my much. We are still planning on the important aspects/elements to be there. The further changes are going to probably then trickle in, with the next major release occurring after the localization process. So again, if anybody is interested in checking out the game, please shoot an email to jam2707@g.rit.edu.

Updating Fortune Hunter Wiki

I am currently in the process of parsing through and updating information on the Fortune Hunter wiki. I'll post again when it's (more) complete ; )

PS and note to any planet subscriptions - I just noticed some of my posts have been resurfacing on the Planets; I didn't notice this was happening and I apologize! Just ignore what's there for now and it shouldn't happen any more.

Thanks,
~KnightMearh (Jon)

Nicholas Negroponte on Colbert Report

That's right! If you haven't heard, Nicholas Negroponte was a guest on the Colbert Report on 10/25/10 promoting the cause. Hopefully they'll pull in some money which will help distribute XOs worldwide to places where the need is great. If you haven't seen yet, click the link above, but first prepare to be entertained!

Fortune Hunter Development Track

Okay folks. Following is a development track list for Fortune Hunter to the end of 2010. Hopefully we'll be hitting all our marks, but we'll at minimum be getting to a new release soon(ish). Just to mention it, we'd love to have a few experienced python coders join on at the moment. For more info on the game, you can check out our SugarLabs wiki and git repository. If you want to mess around with our prototype game version on your XO, you can obtain it from Sugar Activities. Also note we are working on a sister application, Fortune Maker, which is a tool to generate custom user content. Info on this can be found through the above links as well.

- We are currently working on implementing the lose condition and merchant systems back into the game.

*  ~ denotes blockers to release version

Week of (10/24 – 10/30)

Continue reimplementation of merchant system ~FH4

Continue reimplementation of lose condition ~FH4

Week of (10/31 – 11/6)

            Finish reimplementation of merchant system ~FH4

            Finish reimplementation of lose condition ~FH4

            Begin reimplementation of slider puzzles ~FH4

            Begin matching content from previous FH to new FH ~FH4

Week of (11/7 – 11/13)

Finish matching content & tie up any loose ends at this point ~FH4

Finish reimplementation of slider puzzles ~FH4

            Prepare and Release FH4 on 11/12 ~FH4

            Start localization process ~FH5

            Globalization review ~FH5

Week of (11/14 – 11/20)

            Playtesting ~FH5+

            Redesign FH elements ~FH5+

            Successfully read and generate FM custom content ~FH6

            If localization finished (or ASAP), prepare and release FH5 on 11/19 ~FH5

        Fortune Maker-

            Update GUI ~FM2

            Improve functionality & redesign ~FM2

            Successfully output FH maps ~FM2

            Prepare and release FM2 on 11/19 ~FM2

Pythonistas Meeting @RIT

Hey all! Just returned from a meeting of the Pythonistas hosted at RIT's Innovation Center. I mentioned the group in an earlier post, so I won't get into it. The meeting went well, the RIT students presented projects they have been working on and tried to relay code concerns to the python enthusiasts. As such, we had a chance to talk about Fortune Hunter, which I will blog a lot more about soon. I would like to point any readers in the directions of all of the presentations so they can see some very neat open source projects and potentially help out in some way.

Here is the link to check out all of the developer's blogs at the Teaching Open Source Planet

and here is the direct link to download the Fortune Hunter powerpoint (pptx/ 1Mb) presentation given tonight. It outlines a few immediate goals we are trying for in the next couple months and very briefly talks about the project.

W3C at RIT

    I had the pleasure of checking out the W3C talk this afternoon, held in the GCCIS (building 70) auditorium at RIT. Philippe Le Hegaret [head of World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Interaction Domain] gave an awesome presentation on the future of web development. I'll let you dig into his background on your own, but his presentation covered technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, SVG, Web APIs, and MathML to name a few. He delved into HTML image generation and manipulations (such as image blurring or video rotations), web-based animations and transitions, web-based gaming, and client-side web storage. It was all very fascinating and I wish I was going through all those web development courses I've taken over the years again. He showed some awesome live manipulation of on-screen elements, images, and text all without using JavaScript! Enough talking, let me show you. I snagged the link to his presentation (all completely done using HTML5), complete with interactive demonstrations of all of the new features you can expect to see. It is definitely worth checking out.

http://www.w3.org/2010/Talks/0921-html5-plh/

If you like what you see, you can get at him at
mailto: plh@w3.org
twitter: plhw3org

Dan Ariely Coming to RIT

    I will spare a giant introduction, although this guy deserves it. If you haven't heard of Dan before, probably like most people, he is a behavioral economics researcher and professor at Duke University. He has also authored two books,  Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (2008), and  The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home (2010). His research is both fascinating and pretty relevant to life itself, so I truly hope you can spare a few minutes of your time to check him out.

    At very least, check out a few Ted Talks in which Dan was the guest.

        "Are we in control of our decisions?"

        "Why we think it's okay to cheat and steal"

    I hope by now I, or more likely Dan, has convinced you to come see him at RIT!

    He will be speaking ("Who put the monkey in the driver's seat?") on September 29th, 2010 in the Webb Auditorium @8pm. The event is completely FREE and open to the public.

    Best way to get in is to go find yourself an online campus map of RIT and park around lots E, F, G, H. Once there, make your way to building 7A, the Gannett Building. I'd love to tell you how to navigate that place, but after over 4 years of schooling here, I still have no idea. The auditorium is closest to the southern entrance, I believe. Good luck and hope to see you there!

Al Pacino Coming to Brick City

    Legendary actor Al Pacino will be making an appearance this year at RIT's Brick City Homecoming Weekend as a guest speaker. He'll be giving a talk at 2pm on October 16th, 2010. Check out the official news article here.

Can't wait!!