On Schedule

We are moving forward with our Fortune Hunter Project.  My first task was to fix the "transparency bug."  All of the enemies in the game are drawn as simple 2D figures with a pronounced black outline, or should be.  The black outlines were not showing up in the game.  I took all of the enemies into Adobe Photoshop and changed the black lines into a very dark gray, which looks black.

This was a very tedious process because Photoshop is on Windows, so I had to restart my computer, and then play through the game until I found an enemy every time I wanted to test my fixes.  It was particularly frustrating because if I missed a single pixel, then there would be a noticeable white dot somewhere in the enemy.  I also set up the rest of the concept enemies that still had backgrounds, and took out those backgrounds so that they can be put into the game as well.

I'm looking forward to POSSCON this weekend.  There are three people that I am particularly interested in seeing.  When I was looking through the people that would be presenting, "Mad Dog" stuck out.  He looks like a mad scientist, and I think that alone will make him interesting to talk to.  Also, he has been very influential with Unix, which is an integral part of open source.  He seems like a strong advocate of open source projects, and I would like to know how he finds time to work on projects and still make a living.  Actually, I would like to ask all of the speakers about this.  Walter Bender from One laptop per child will be there.  Not to play favorites, but I am most excited to see him.  Since I'm working on the sugar labs/OLPC project, this will be cool to see the guy who started the whole thing.  Also, he was involved at the MIT media labs.  I am interested in getting into interaction design and the creative side of computer science, and the MIT media lab is legendary in that area.  I would also like to talk to another guy who might be there on Thursday from the MIT media lab.  I think that will be the main part of his presentation, so that would be really informative for me.  I can't wait until next week!

My next task will be to start looking into adding a visual to the lightning attack.  I am really looking forward to this task.  I loved working in the graphics package in python programming class; I got really into the program we had to do on a jack-o-lantern and spent way a ton of time on it. My jack-o-lantern with flashing eyes was voted best in the class :)

I am excited to see what the other group members have done this week when we meet today.  Every Thursday Brittany is going to report back our weeks progress.  Fortune Hunter project is looking good so far, but I think my next endeavor will be much more challenging.