April 22

  • Well, today's the big day! My presentation is in exactly 4 hours, 38 minutes. The projector works great, and I tested the program and it works, so fingers crossed! I created some backup video just in case.

    As for it not working on a phone, I've discovered that it works when I use WiFi as opposed to the phone provider's internet. Whew!

    Goals for this week:
    - Finish my webite
    - Finish my binder WIP


April 19

  • Well, I think I've figured out all the solvable bugs in my code! I had Chris play it without any help from me and he gave me some helpful suggestions that I implemented. Joe and I are going to practice our presentations on Sunday and I'll have him play as well, just as an extra precaution. I've finished my presentation, too, so now I just need to practice with the projector. I've been working through stuff in the binder, too, so that's almost done!

    Something I have discovered, though, is that the program doesn't work on a phone. I think the two-way handshaking requires more processing capabilities than a phone browser has. I don't have the ability to fix it at this point - it would mean changing the entire way that the handshaking occurs - but it just stinks. I was really excited to see it used.

    Goals for this week:
    - Finish my webite
    - Finish my binder WIP
    - Finish my presentation Done!


April 17

  • Ugh, sometimes I think I belong back in CS 110. I spent the longest time trying to figure out why my user-side wasn't going back to the title page when it was supposed to (when they won or lost a game). My code looked something like this:

    if (input != "")
         do this

    else if (input == "|")
         do that

    I couldn't figure out why the input never go to "that". I finally realized that if input == "|", then it would also != "", and it would never get to "that". Silly me. The simple solution was to flip the two statements around, and it worked. I also solved another issue I'd been having - I created a 'timer' for the user so they only had 10 seconds to answer before the kiosk would check at 11 seconds. It turns out that I wasn't realizing that the user browser needed a few seconds after the initial 10 in order to write to the file, so when the kiosk checked at 11 seconds, nothing was written to it yet. But I solved that in a relatively simple way - after 5 seconds, the kiosk starts checking the file ever second. Through a parameter pass, it keeps track of how many times it's checked, and after 10 checks, if there is still nothing in the file, it assumes the user hasn't answered. It's worked so far, so I'm keping my fingers crossed!

    Now that I think I've finished my project (omigod, I can't believe I'm actually saying that!) all I need to finish is the wrap-up stuff: presentation, website, binder!

    Goals for this week:
    - Set a timer for the user so that they have a limited time to answer Done!
    - Finish my webite
    - Finish my binder
    - Finish my presentation


April 12

  • Met with Pankratz and McVey today - they had some good ideas about how to solve the problem I've been having with the kiosk browser freezing (we think it's because it's trying to read from a file that is at the same time being written to). Their suggestion was to give the user a limited amount of time to answer (with a visual: "10...9...8") and then after that time has elapsed, have the kiosk check the file to get the answer. If nothing is there, the kiosk will read it as a null and move on. This also solves the problem of the user closing the browser and quitting the game: nothing will be written to the file, so the game will run by itself, getting null answers, until the game is over and it returns to the title screen.

    They also had a suggestion for another problem I've been having. On the first question, the kiosk-browser is supposed to write the answers to a file, and then the user-browser reads from it and displays the possible answers. The problem I've been having is that the user-side loads first, and finds data in the file from a previous question, regardless of how many times I try and write "" to it so that it is clear. Their suggestion was to have a 'lock' on the file: I've created another file, which contains a '0'. The kiosk-broswer writes the possible answers to the user_answer file, and then writes a '1' to the lock file. The user_side browser waits until it sees a '1', and then reads from the user_answer file. I have the user-side browser also reseting the lock file back to '0' for the next turn.

    I've already finished the lock file issue, so I'll be working on the timer over the weekend. The end's in sight!

    Goals for this week:
    - Set a timer for the user so that they have a limited time to answer


April 10

  • Getting closer and closer! The user-side browser now resets after the game is won or lost, and the kiosk-side browser displays a message ("Congratulations, you've won the game!") or ("Game over") and after a certain amount of seconds, resets to its title screen.

    I've been having some issues with the handshaking between the browsers, though. Sometimes the kiosk will sort of freeze and completely miss when the user presses a button. It's something I'll have to work on this week, although I'm not even sure what's causing it- Dr. Pankratz thinks it's because one side will try to read a file when the other side is editing it, but I'd have no idea how to prevent it...

    Besides that, the only goal I have to finish is that I want the kiosk to recognize if the user closes the browser in the middle of the game and will reset back to the title screen. That's gonna take some work, though - I thought that trying to catch an 'onclose()' event might solve it, but the only event I can find is an 'onunload()', and that would fire every time a page is directed away (for example- the main page directs to another page that does the work and then redirects back to the main page too quickly for the user to notice, so the onunload event would fire even though the browser itself never closes). So, I've got to figure out another method. Not sure how to proceed.

    Goals for this week:
    - Implement a way that gives an answer's explanation after the user guesses Done!
    - Close the game after the user loses three lives Done!
    - Go back to the title screen if the user closes the browser


April 7

  • Worked some more at it today! Stylized it so that the user side and the kiosk side actually look nice and match each other. Also made it so that the possible answers show up on the user side (rather than just numbered buttons) - I found it to be a little difficult to understand, especially when the answer were just numbers (for example: one group of answers are "5, 6, 7, 8" and when compared to the user side buttons, which were numbered "1, 2, 3, 4" it was hard to understand, even writing it myself. I'm struggling with how to do it, a little, though. Technically, the user-side loads first, even though the kiosk-side is the one that chooses the question, and, thus, the answer....It's a work in progress.

    I've noticed that, although the kiosk connection works, it is a little sporadic and sometimes after a few minutes, the browser gives up waiting for a change and just crashes. Although this isn't my main concern right now, this means that something will have to change to potentially use it as a kiosk - there will be large amounts of time in between users, so this method as is won't work.

    Besides that, I'm very happy with how my project is coming along. I've been documenting as I go, so hopefully I won't have that much to do after I actually finish the code itself (which is good, because the presentations are in a few weeks!)

    Kiosk Side:

    User Side:


    Goals for this week:
    - Re-do the user-side browser: needs a 50/50 button Done!
    - Get a tenative connection going! DONE!!!
    - Take care of what the happens when the user gets an answer incorrect
    - Implement a way that gives an answer's explanation after the user guesses I have one, it just doesn't give the correct explanation...
    - Close the game after the user loses three lives
    - Go back to the title screen if the user closes the browser


April 5

  • IT WORKED IT WORKED IT WORKED. I was actually able to get a connection working! I'm using AJAX to contiuously reread the user input text file every few seconds, and it was actually able to recognize when I clicked a button on the user browser! I'm so excited that I had to write a blog - I plan on working more (and making more progress!) today, but I just had to tell someone!!

    Remember those magnectic "How Do You Feel Today?" things...?

    Updated Kiosk Website

    Goals for this week:
    - Re-do the user-side browser: needs a 50/50 button
    - Get a tenative connection going! DONE!!!
    - Take care of what the happens when the user gets an answer incorrect
    - Implement a way that gives an answer's explanation after the user guesses I have one, it just doesn't give the correct explanation...