Sayed Omran

The test is very close there are no enough spacing.

the photo very small, need to be bigger

the color used well.

Feedback Day 

On Sunday, Mr. V gave us a feedback on CMS, and that did not go well. I can say Mr. V expected from us to do much better than we did. Actually, the problem is, we were not have a leader to lead the group, and everybody was do what he/she do. Ameen was working on organizing the website, specifically the category and technical things. I were working on technical things too but in different field. I was working on the style and the design of the magazine.

When I showed Ameen my work he told me to show Mr. V what I did and he added what he did. Honestly, what Mr. V saw is just a style sheet, nothing more. In addition, when he was giving us the feedback, I were not know he was looking for almost final work.

Horse Racing Visit

On Friday, our group decided to visit several places to gather information, and build contact with them. The first place we visited is Rashid Equestrian & Horseracing Club. We arrived there and we were almost blind, we do not know where to go, or it is OK to take picture on not, but thanks to god, we met a good person there, his name Adel. Adel gave us a plenty of information about the place also gave us an access to several places there, like stable were they take care of the horses before go to the track.

We stayed there until 3 races, the atmosphere was very exciting, you can see people shouting of the names of the horses, especially when the horses come near to the end of the race line. Well most of that because they allow gambling there.

After that, we went to Saar to find a horse race track we heard about, but we could not find it. Instead of come back, we visited a stable near to us called Twin Palms Riding Center.

Testing CMS (WordPress) on local server

This Sunday Mr, V gave us feedback on the proposal, and he suggested to meet as a group and discuss about the feedback. However, the other thing we did in the class. We created a group on Wiggio to make a schedule for the tasks. 

Business Problem

We just have came back to polytechnic with new interesting subjects. This semester I will post about Content Management Systems(CMS).

  Recently, we have been given a problem to solve. We are a web company that the business has been slow. Therefore, the manager asked us to create a new project that doesn’t cost the company too much to develop. Moreover, the manager asked us if it’s possible to find a way to generate income.

I love working on Adobe illustrator, but I hate when I have to deliver the work in short term, especially because the cut scene of our game should be close to reality, which means the graphic needs more details.

This week I started working on the cut scene. I think it is the third one. First of all, I did a research, I browse many arts. After I got an idea, I began drawing using Adobe illustrator. I took hours until I finished my job. But finally I am happy with the final result.

Animatic of Cut Scene

Animatic - Intro Animation

<< -- Tutorial - Controlling A Player Character -->>

This is an other way of controlling a player character. Different from what Mr.Owen taught us.

Basically

- Create a Folder and inside the folder create three things

- Folder name it "images"

- File ActionScript name it "KeyboardControl"

- FLA file and write in the class "KeyboardControl"

- Create png character inside images folder, it should be like this "character.png"

and write this code in the ActionScript

package

{

import flash.net.URLRequest;

import flash.display.Loader;

import flash.display.Sprite;

import flash.events.KeyboardEvent;

import flash.ui.Keyboard;

import flash.events.Event;

[SWF(width="550", height="400",

backgroundColor="#FFFFFF", frameRate="60")]

public class KeyboardControl extends Sprite

{

//Create the game character objects

public var characterURL:URLRequest

= new URLRequest("images/character.png");

public var characterImage:Loader = new Loader();

public var character:Sprite = new Sprite();

//Create and initialize the vx and vy variable

public var vx:int = 0;

public var vy:int = 0;

public function KeyboardControl()

{

//Load the image and add the character to the stage

characterImage.load(characterURL);

character.addChild(characterImage);

stage.addChild(character);

character.x = 225;

character.y = 150;

//Add event listeners

stage.addEventListener

(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, keyDownHandler);

stage.addEventListener

(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, keyUpHandler);

stage.addEventListener

(Event.ENTER_FRAME, enterFrameHandler);

}

public function keyDownHandler(event:KeyboardEvent):void

{

if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.LEFT)

{

vx = -5;

}

else if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.RIGHT)

{

vx = 5;

}

else if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.UP)

{

vy = -5;

}

else if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.DOWN)

{

vy = 5;

}

}

public function keyUpHandler(event:KeyboardEvent):void

{

if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.LEFT

|| event.keyCode == Keyboard.RIGHT)

{

vx = 0;

}

else if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.DOWN

|| event.keyCode == Keyboard.UP)

{

vy = 0;

}

}

public function enterFrameHandler(event:Event):void

{

//Move the player

character.x += vx;

character.y += vy;

//Screen wrapping

if (character.x + character.width < 0)

{

character.x = 550;

}

if (character.y + character.height < 0)

{

character.y = 400;

}

if (character.x > stage.stageWidth)

{

character.x = 0 - character.width;

}

if (character.y > stage.stageHeight)

{

character.y = 0 - character.height;

}

}

}

Introduction

Macromedia Flash MX, the previous name of Adobe Flash, before Adobe purchased Macromedia Flash in 2005 and incorporated with Adobe’s Creative Suite. Adobe Flash is a multimedia software that is used to create animation, videos and high interactive games or other content usually for web. Back days, flash was mostly used as a splash for a website or animated advertisements. After a while, people started to build flash websites. But all that was in the past time and the glory days seems to end and Adobe Flash is facing a gradual decline in web content. Recently, what is appearing on surface, that is Adobe Flash going through very tough time, and probably the new technology is going to replace Adobe Flash at least from web content. So, before taking the decision of using Adobe Flash to build a website, you should be aware of the advantage and the disadvantage of using Flash as a web content. Besides considering the alternative software and logical languages.

Reasons to use flash

Using Flash for online advertising or games is very popular. There are many features that Adobe Flash provides that other alternatives cannot. Besides Adobe flash has a huge number of users that beats all competitors.

Compatibility

When a new technology come out it needs time to get the support from the companies, like for example HTML 5. It took a long time until Microsoft supported HTML 5 in Internet Explorer. On the contrary, Adobe Flash has a great support due the time it had been in the market. According to Rean John, 98% of PCs have Adobe Flash Player. Besides, most browsers support Flash and works perfect on them. Moreover, using Flash cross other platform works great and you don’t have to concern about compatibility, unlike HTML 5 and CSS3. All what you need to make Adobe Flash work on your browser, is to download the plugin from Adobe's website and install it.

Interactivity

Building an interactive website is not an easy way. It usually needs something to interact the user with the web contents, for example, spreading of an advertisement, like a game asking you to shoot 5 ducks to win something and you can aim by using the mouse and when you shoot it plays a sound. This is what Adobe Flash capable of, it can involve audio, video, animation and also ActionScript. Also Adobe Flash gives you the ability to choose to put all these files in SWF file or you can use them as external files, unlike HTML 5 or JavaScript. 

Smooth animation

Animation can be used by many applications or coding languages, but might be the best one is Adobe Flash. Because it based on vector which means the edges and animation will be smoother and lighter than using bitmap pictures. Furthermore, when you want to do something really phenomenal you can build a 3D Flash, for instance what Nissan did to advertise JUKE car. Nissan build a 3D Flash website you can control the car by the arrow key and mouse, also you can open the door and go inside the car and see how the car looks like. These features probably the only one can provide them is Adobe Flash.

Videos

It’s hard to ignore the largest websites that run videos, like YouTube. These websites depend on Flash player to play videos. Adobe Flash didn't become popular for the fact that it can run and stream videos. Adobe Flash also has the ability to compress video flash, which is very important for web content. Beside Flash supports different kinds of video codec.

Reasons not to use flash

Indeed Adobe Flash is a great solution to make an interactive website. But building a full flash website would be a huge mistake to make, because building a website without considering the disadvantage of using Flash could destroy the goal of the website.

Plugin and Mobile issue

One disadvantage of Adobe Flash. It requires Flash Player plugin to view the content. Most designers expect all visitor that who doesn’t have the plugin will download it. In fact most visitors are impatient, when they enter to blank page, usually the next button they press on is close button. Therefore, building a full flash website, probably will be a huge mistake. Besides, the designer should consider the visitors that will browse the website from mobile or tablet like iPhone or iPad. It is hard to ignore the huge number of visitors that will entre form mobiles or tablets. Apple had chosen to not support Flash and their products can’t run flash. Adobe itself knows that Adobe Flash player has no future in mobile, so Adobe stopped supporting Adobe Flash Player in Android market, and announced that it’s going to support HTML 5. Recently Adobe announced new products called Adobe Edge. According to PC Magazine these products came to replace Adobe Flash and support HTML 5. Obviously, Adobe is trying to support the developers whenever they choose Flash, HTML 5 or even jQuery. But also Adobe is trying to keep Adobe Flash alive, so Adobe built a converter that can convert FLA files to HTML 5 to make the developers keep using Adobe Flash even if they want to make HTML 5 files. 

Accessibility, SEO and Usability

When you think of building a flash website, the first thing you should think about is the accessibility. You should be a little concerned, because when search engines try to read the content, it might be hard to get the right information. According to the book “Search Engine Optimization for Flash” Adobe developed a special version of Flash Player for search engines like Google, to make them easily read the content. On the other hand the professional web designer Boutros believes that search engines can’t read the flash content and images properly. These are two different opinion but how Adobe Flash actually work, when you create a movie clip you give the movie clip or the text a description. Search engines can’t read the text or the image you put, they are reading the description you wrote. Besides, using flash has a disadvantage when it comes to usability. When Flash is running on the a browse it doesn’t act like html websites because it’s running by the plugin, so there are certain functions you can’t use inside Flash, like keyboard shortcuts or mouse's right click.

Loading 

The faster your website load, more visitors will like it. Although most Europe have high speed internet but most countries of Middle East have slower internet to load the flash without waiting.

Alternatives

There are many alternatives you can look into, but all of them are facing the same problem which is they need a plugin to run the contents. Starting from java, Microsoft Silverlight and utility 3D. Might be the best alternative to flash is HTML 5 with CSS3 supporting by jQuery to make functions work with events.

Conclusion

There is no such thing called just one language or software for all website. Using Flash depend on the purpose of the website. There are some websites the best for them using HTML with jQuery like, website always keep updating. Others website the best is using full Flash websites, for instance the website build for special product like a car or smartphone. But as a professional designer, if you looking for a future website, I will recommend using Html 5 with jQuery instance of Flash for many reason I mentioned in the article.

  Reference

Christina Warren. “The Life, Death and Rebirth of Adobe Flash” (2012). From http://mashable.com/2012/11/19/history-of-flash/

Stan Schroeder. “Adobe Stops Development of Mobile Browser Flash” (2011). From http://mashable.com/2011/11/08/adobe-mobile-browser-flash/

Ben Parr. “Adobe Admits: Apple Won, Flash For Mobile is Done, HTML5 is the Future” (2011). From http://mashable.com/2011/11/11/flash-mobile-dead-adobe/

Jolie O'Dell. “Adobe Releases Flash-to-HTML5 Converter, Codenamed Wallaby” (2011). From http://mashable.com/2011/03/07/adobe-wallaby/

Boutros AbiChedid. “Flash Website: Advantages and Disadvantages” (2011). From http://bacsoftwareconsulting.com/blog/index.php/web-development/flash-website-advantages-and-disadvantages/

Rean John Uehara. “What is the Future of Adobe Flash?” (2011). From http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/adobe-flash-future/

Michael Muchmore. “Adobe 'Edge' Tool Could Replace Flash With HTML5” (2011). From http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2389500,00.asp

Michael J. Miller. “Why Adobe is Deflating Flash: HTML5” (2011). From http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/none/290436-why-adobe-is-deflating-flash-html5

I should be working on the graphics this week, and I have no idea how to draw top down character. I can do tracing in illustrator, but the problem is how to show the characteristics of the character from top angle. Therefore, I did a research and it was very useful to me. And I drew the character based on that.

Lucky me, I thought it was my job to do the whole graphics. Mr. Owen told us. The team should share the work. So I gave Amer the option to choose to do cut scenes or the graphics for the game.

This week, was literally the most painful week in my entire life.  I must deliver the sketches to my team this week, and in the same time I am suffering from toothache. I started working on them and I managed to finish just the intro. After that I worked on the animation, though it wasn’t my part. I made the animation by using Adobe Photoshop CS6 because there is a new feature which we can make videos with.

In the next day, I went to Bahrain Polytechnic and I showed my team the animation. They liked the worked and I started to work on the Ending animation. I did the sketches and I asked Ameen to work on animation because I couldn’t handle the pain.

Finally, Mr. Owen showed the class the team’s work. Well, comparing with the others, we were doing well.

Story

The story of the game as seems to me, there is a princess who tries to survive, and she should fight the army of dark lord to do so.

Objective

To win this game, you have to collect the coins besides fighting the enemies and in the end of the game there is a key to finish the level.

Challenge

The challenging side of this game is in the number of the enemies. The farther you go, more enemies you will get.

Interest

The interesting part of this game might not be clear because the difficulties in each level are hard to notice.

Fun

For some people, especially young girls, might be fun that a princess fight to survive.

Graphics

I found the characters in this game well-made and so is other graphics. The characters in this game, I found it well made and the other graphics

Sound and music

The music is quite nice and exciting, but I don’t think it’s suitable for this game.

Animation

The animation of the character needs to be fixed because it seems like there is no gravity.

Game play

The game is controlled by using the arrow keys

Overview

Overall, Survivor is not a bad game if we consider the limitation that the developer has. But there are some missing parts like the interesting part of fun, also there is an error in the character which needs to be fixed.

Rate 7/10

Story

The story of this game is the character that you are playing is a person who involved with the mafia. You have to do some missions to make your business grow. Also because your mission is to kill people or to be a driver to someone, you will make enemies.

Objective

In this game you should do some missions to make your business grow and also to have more weapons and money.

Challenge

The first task you will be given, will be an easy one. The next mission that you will get, will be more difficult than the previous.

Interest

What makes this game interesting, is it very similar to reality, and you are a mafia guy. Also you have the option to choose, either to do the missions or just fool around, drive and kill people.

Fun

The game is very interesting because it mixes between shooting and racing.

Graphics

The graphics of this game is excellent, it’s a 3 dimensions and you can look to the character from any angle.

Sound and music

The sound of the game is taken form the real life like the sound of the cars, people and so on.

Animation

The animation is fantastic like if you are driving the car and stopped the car doesn’t stop directly, like the real life.

Game play

The game is made for smartphones and it’s controlled by using touch screen beside accelerometer.

Overview

This game is my favorite game and it doesn't seem like a smartphones game. It has very big map and you have a huge control on the game also you can do so many things.

Rate 10/10