First Meeting

For this meeting, my intent was to discuss my ideas and how realistic some of my expectations were. Given my limited experience in this area and my ambitious nature, I felt it would be immensely valuable to have someone with more experience let me know what aspects would take more time than expected and what would be outside of my abilities in the timeframe we have.

So far the most difficult part is knowing what technologies out of the all the possible ones i have seen would be best to choose and use for this project. Some guidance in this area was something i was hoping for and ultimately received.

Covered in this meeting:

I explained:

• The mechanics of the application and my vision of how it would operate / the style of presentation of information within the app.
• The distinction i see for this app between "game" and "simulation".
• Core features to be included. 
• Potential additional features.
• Technologies researched and my current limitations in them understanding of them.

We discussed that for this project it would be best to:

• Keep scope reasonable for now. 
• Get the basics working and expand accordingly. 
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• Have communications between the web server to update game information (require wifi?) if to be on webserver, maybe use php to communicate with database to get/set information/stats within the simulation. 

For the following week we concluded it best to:

• Research and compare technologies, such as Unity, openGL along with researching new alternative game engines. {}This included reporting on the pros and cons of all and how they might/might not work for my project. 

• Use the above findings to decide on a game engine to use. 

• Additional to the apps previously researched that served to inform users on various plants and vegetables, to find and install games of a that deliver information/ do what I am trying to do in a similar way. I will report on similarities/differences, how they chose to do things, my findings and opinions on their relevance to my project. 

• I will focus some effort on getting accustomed to intents and screen changing in the Android SDK.

• Decide on screens, splash screens, where to load into etc. 

• Decide if it is to be an android app or a web application: Choosing android app means i am bound to Java via the Android Studio, where as a web application allows me to use more versatile languages, but will be more limited.

• Local or hosted database: This will determine if a server required to host online services, or if the app can operate completely local to the device.

• Think about if object information will be populated before shipping the app out vs if the app should continually contact the web server, allowing new vegetables to be added
• A web service could be setup using PHP(or something else) and MySQL to manage data persistence and to offer a secure mechanism to allow users access data...http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/267023/Send-and-receive-json-between-android-and-php    --  http://www.androidhive.info/2014/01/how-to-create-rest-api-for-android-app-using-php-slim-and-mysql-day-12-2/

Random findings post meeting.

localisation - stripping out code base to allow expansion to multiple countires/languages etc

raindrops, to reduce power, have each rain drop linked to x amount of ther raindrops, dividing down total amount to be calculated

Have each tile is a GameObject; read the map data from an array, using two nested loops for x & z (y is up). When instantiating them, store a reference to the tile in a simple array. Store the number of the index on the tile itself, along with the X & Z from loops. The tiles move themselves into place.

blender 3d tool