Here goes - I present an alpha of Daughterware

[dranonymous]

Well, after bugging everyone for so long, I decided it was time to share my work in progress. :o

2playercoop.com/dware12sept.zip

or the new small version without background music

2playercoop.com/dwaresmall.zip (only 1.8 meg)

The large one is a 12 meg dl, so be aware of that. Its mainly due to the current music tracks. I’m working on getting them swapped out, as they are ripped from CD, and getting them into ogg format.

The game is for children, ages 3 - 5’ish. Don’t expect any explosions or such.

Its not webstartable right now. No flames blah3. I know its the preferred way, but just not yet. I will get it setup that way later.

Things to know -

• To go back to the main menu press Q.

• Make the 3 shapes match the goal shape in the shape area.

• The area where images flip isn’t done. In fact its getting overhauled into a match making area, so you can mostly ignore it for now.

• There is an editor for making the dot2dots. If anyone would like to contribute some artwork, I can send you the editor.

• I’m going to add printing to the drawing area.

• I hope to sell this for say $5 (US). If I make even $10, I’ll feel like it was a success. The goal is to make something fun, educational, and help me polish my programming skills.

I’d really appreciate any feedback on the mechanics of the game, problems you uncover, praise, etc.

Ok, so - you may begin your reviews.

[Malohkan]

Dude I totally rock at the shape matching game

However I did notice some of the shapes, for example with the triangle, the base line wasn’t straight horizontal when if you coded the coordinates for the shape it most certainly should have been.

Also, use antialiasing! There’s surely not going to be a pain to performance by using it and it would be very nice in all the areas.

I thought connect the dots was very well done, in the last two (I think those were the ones) the numbers and dots were hard to read on the background. Maybe try a drop shadow effect to help with that.

Also, if you plan on selling this, make sure that there is much more content to it. I managed to view everything you had in there in about 5 minutes flat

There are two minimize button things. One of them I clicked, and I was able to restore my window by clicking on it in the taskbar. The other I clicked, and I could never get the window to restore

Also, there needs to be some sort of stuff, maybe at the bottom, for traversal, like a Back button to go back to the main menu. The only way I could find to get back to the main screen was to reload the program. At any rate just having the Q button isn’t intuitive to me, so I’m sure little kids aren’t going to find it any more intuitive to click Q to go back.

Lastly, how about progress saving? I imagine if you have a LOT of connect the dots games, no kids going to want to play 50 of the 400 ones and close it only to find he has to start back over again. It would be neat though to maybe have a way to traverse through the games you’ve already played, and have the game automatically keep track of the ones you’ve unlocked so that the next time you go to play you start back on the last one you left off on.

I think that’s all I have to suggest for now, keep up the good work!

[dranonymous]

Thanks for the info!

To adress some of your input -

• Content: Yes it definately needs more stuff. I have to get the framework in place and then the content will continue to come in. I plan on having about 20 or more dot2dots.

• Anti-aliasing: The dot2dots already are, but doing the shapes is a good idea. I guess I didn’t pay attention when I was doing some of that stuff.

• Shapes: I plan on adding maybe 2 more shapes - moon and something else.

• I will be adding an on screen navigation button to go back to the main menu. I agree that Q isn’t intuitive. My daughter now thinks all programs ‘work’ by pressing the Q key.

• Dot2Dots: If you look at the backgrounds for that area, they indicate which dot-pack you are in. The one with the background that says Test is just for me to test all the types of dot2dot files. They won’t be in the final version.

• Full Screen: The final version will be full screen. A must for younger children in my mind. There won’t be any minimize for them to click.

• Progress: I am thinking of a way to track a child’s progress, but not the way you are thinking. I was thinking more along the lines of: how many times did they click the wrong number in the dot2dots. How much time did they spend drawing and what color do they pick most often. That sort of thing. Since this is an educational game, you can’t really ‘win’ per se.

Thanks for the comments again! I’m glad you’re such a champ at the shape matching.

Dr. A>

[MBrenaman]

I was going to try it out but sadly I use a dial-up connection and 12megs would take several hours just to try it out. Sorry…

[dranonymous]

Since I’d rather get more feedback than not, I’ve pulled the audio from the game, so the other download is only 1.8 meg.

It won’t seem as fun without the background music, but you’ll still get the gist of things.

Regards,
Dr. A>

[MBrenaman]

Pretty cool, definently not my age group ;). If antialiasing doesn’t slow it down to much it would probably make it look even better.

Everything ran fine and the only problem I had with the design was that there was no button to go from a game section back to the main menu. So to try it all I had to restart the game several times.

For saving, maybe the player could save thier progress/scrore on every game at once from the main menu.

And as Malohkan pointed out one of the top right window buttons causes the window on my system to just dissapear until I right click and hit restore on its icon on the task bar.

Other then that it worked fine, keep at it and maybe you’ll be able to make that money you were talking about :).

[dranonymous]

Thanks for trying it out.

As a reminder to everyone who tries this -

---------- PRESS Q TO GO TO THE MAIN MENU -------

This will be changed in the final version, I haven’t had time to put it in yet.

I’ll see about the anti-aliasing this week.

Thanks again!

Dr. A>

[Malohkan]

Graphics2D.setRenderingHints(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIASING_ON);

use that at the beginning and never change it, and everything will be antialiased, no biggy.

[kevglass]

Well, I must be a child, I thoroughly enjoyed myself Its all presented very well.

Some observations:

Shape Matching

• Needs some indication of what to do, I didn’t know straight away
• Maybe add some shuffling of the blocks around on completion?

Camera

• Not sure what this one was meant to be about (apart from cute photos :))
• The state of the images didn’t reset once I came out and went back in. (not sure if it was meant to)

Painting

• Its very cool!
• Kids like a fill function, colours large areas quickly.
• How about a save function to a “gallery” which could be should to proud parents later.
• Also might be cool if the parents could get access to the generated images to print out the masterpieces.

Dot2Dot

• Definitely my fave!
• Could do with the dot thats meant to be clicked lighting up
• I really like the variation on the themes/shapes
• Some of the dot colour choices made it hard to read.
• Might be worth adding a “big dot” mode for small uncoordinated hands.

General

• Looks and feels lovely.
• Get rid of the title bar (setUndecorated(true)) it really distracts from the clean layout.
• Keep up the darn fine work!

Kev

[princec]

I’ll wait for the webstart version I’m spoiled these days.

Cas

[blahblahblahh]

[quote]I’ll wait for the webstart version I’m spoiled these days.

Cas
[/quote]
Ditto. ;D

[dranonymous]

Can I make a pathetic plea for you both to try the next version, even if it isn’t done with JWS? I know it’s bad karma and icky, but if you don’t then I’ll lose out on having your excellent feedback until much farther into the game.

Plea plea plea!

Dr. A>

[Malohkan]

I just downloaded it again (the small version) and ran through everything and couldn’t find any changes. What’s different?

[dranonymous]

Its still the same version you played originally. I haven’t had time to work on more. Baby is giving me a run for my money.

I meant the next version, when I get it done. I hope to do some more work by Saturday. I’ll post when the new one is available. Maybe I can have the ogg audio implemented, then I can have a smaller download than the full size right now. The graphics are also going to be reduced, so that should help.

Cheers,
Dr. A.

PS - Thanks for keeping up with this!

[Malohkan]

yeah sure I’ll play when the new version is out Bring it on and I’ll do the testing! ;D

[markush]

Hi!

I’m getting this exception, when I try to start:

java.lang.NullPointerException
        at com.daughterware.swing.SwingUtil.convertToBitmaskType(SwingUtil.java:56)
        at com.daughterware.swing.SwingUtil.loadImage(SwingUtil.java:85)
        at com.daughterware.Dot2Dot.load(Dot2Dot.java:83)
        at com.daughterware.actionPanels.Dot2DotActionPanel.getNextDot2Dot(Dot2DotActionPanel.java:136)
        at com.daughterware.actionPanels.Dot2DotActionPanel.<init>(Dot2DotActionPanel.java:98)
        at com.daughterware.apps.Daughterware.main(Daughterware.java:69)

The loading screen is showing something about audio at that time.

This is on Linux with following java:

java version "1.4.2_05"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_05-b04)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_05-b04, mixed mode)

[dranonymous]

markush - Thanks for trying! The error is being caused when it tries to load an image and then convert it to an RGB. When you extracted the files you should have had the 1 jar file and then a few directories.

I’m not at home so I can’t view the source code right now.

Did you get an image that said Daughterware when you started the app? It would have had a progress bar below it, indicating what stage it was at.

There should be a directory called dot2dots. Under there would be 4 dirs (one CVS and three others). Inside each dir, except for the CVS one, there would be image files and files which end with a .dot2dot extension. Were those present?

A friend tried it on his Linux box and had to kill his audio server. When the app ran though, the window was 1 pixel or so in size. He could maximize and minimize it, but never saw the actual imagery. I don’t think its the same error though.

Dr. A>

[markush]

[quote]markush - Thanks for trying! The error is being caused when it tries to load an image and then convert it to an RGB. When you extracted the files you should have had the 1 jar file and then a few directories.

I’m not at home so I can’t view the source code right now.

Did you get an image that said Daughterware when you started the app? It would have had a progress bar below it, indicating what stage it was at.
[/quote]
Yes, it crashes at “setting up audio”.

There should be a directory called dot2dots. Under there would be 4 dirs (one CVS and three others). Inside each dir, except for the CVS one, there would be image files and files which end with a .dot2dot extension. Were those present?

Yes. Here are the files I’ve got. (without the CVS files):

markus@alderaan:~/download/dwaresmall$ ls -R -I CVS
.:
dot2dots  dware12sept.jar  images  music  pictures  sounds

./dot2dots:
numbers  shapes  test

./dot2dots/numbers:
1.dot2dot  1.png  2.dot2dot  2.png  3.dot2dot  3.png  background.png

./dot2dots/shapes:
background.png  rectangle.dot2dot  square.dot2dot  thing.dot2dot

./dot2dots/test:
background.png  house.PNG     taylor.dot2dot              taylor i love you.png
house.dot2dot   star.dot2dot  taylor i love you grey.png

./images:
balloon._pn     boat10005.png  boat10009.png      green balloon.png   ss1b-2.jpg  stamp8.png
balloon.png     boat10006._pn  boat10010._pn      next icon.png       stamp1.png  tile1.jpg
boat10001.png   boat10006.png  boat10010.png      paint brush.gif     stamp2.png  tile2.jpg
boat10002.png   boat10007._pn  camera.gif         purple balloon._pn  stamp3.png  tile3.jpg
boat10003.png   boat10007.png  cosa7.png          purple balloon.png  stamp4.png  tileImage.jpg
boat10004.png   boat10008._pn  dot2dot house.png  riverboat.png       stamp5.png
boat10005a.png  boat10008.png  firework.jpg       shapes.jpg          stamp6.png
boat10005._pn   boat10009._pn  green balloon._pn  splash.jpg          stamp7.png

./music:
dots song.aiff  image song.aiff  paint song.aiff  shapes song.aiff

./pictures:
eyore2.jpg  eyore.jpg  piglet.jpg  poohpiglet.jpg  test1.jpg  test2.jpg  tigger.jpg

./sounds:
Bell 2.aif  Bell 3.aif  Bell 4.aif

A friend tried it on his Linux box and had to kill his audio server. When the app ran though, the window was 1 pixel or so in size. He could maximize and minimize it, but never saw the actual imagery. I don’t think its the same error though.

I do have that 1 pixel window too, but can’t maximize it.

[dranonymous]

After a 3 week delay, I’ve finally made time to get my act together. ;D Below is a link to the latest beta version.

The New Version!

Here are some of the changes -

• Revamped the music completely, thanks to some great talent out there
• Added in Ogg Vorbis decoding of the music, so I can save space (J-Ogg is the greatest!)
• Overhauled the picture area and made it a memory card one
• Fixed the problem (hopefully) with Linux not starting full screen
• Started the overhaul on the drawing area ( there are some obvious glitches, but its progressing nicely)
• Added in some new artwork thanks to the wonderful help of a graphics person
• Minor stuff (markush, your issue should be fixed now as well)

The download is about 6meg, which is half of what the last version was, and this has twice the content.

IMPORTANT: For 3 areas, there isn’t a button to go back to the main menu. PRESS Q TO GO BACK.

There are some blatant things you’ll catch right away that need some work, but I wanted to get something out before things stagnated.

All feedback is appreciated! (No comments about JWS though, hopefully the next version will have a JWS to it.)

Regards,
Dr. A>

[Riven]

I played a bit with your latest version, and it seems your ‘memory-game’ is not working properly. After turning 2 cards, there’s nothing more you can do: they don’t turn back, clicking other cards doesn’t do anything anymore.

Oh, and in your paint-section: the moon/star-image is not transparant, while all other images are.

When you move any image near the border of the canvas, the thick-black-border will disappear (even when moving transparant sections of images over it).

About your match-the-shapes-section: you shuold make a certain delay if all 3 shapes are correct, to check if the last choice is really made, and was not a matter of luck (clicking the dumb way, until it shows up -> win)

So much for my feedback, no stacktraces