Press release #9: War of Ages

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Blacksburg, VA; April 17, 2015 –

Big things are happening in War of Ages this week. First of all, out mid-level prototype is complete and ready to be tested. We will be sharing the prototype with anyone who is willing to play to get as much feedback as possible. Once we finish testing we can solidify our balancing plans and ensure every game will be fair and fun. We have decided to run our prototypes with limited numbers of units in order to pinpoint balancing problems. With fewer units in play, there are fewer variables to cause problems.

Our prototype isn’t the only big news from our team this week. Progress on the game has been swift this week. In the last week the team has made the complete game board, with random mountains and lakes scattered throughout, making each game a unique experience. With the map generation, we have also developed the visuals for the grass, water and mountains. The mountains even utilize the 3D and pop out of the map. Once the map was complete we were able to implement unit movement too. When the user clicks on a unit, it becomes selected and highlights the spaces around it that it can move to. This movement range takes into account the terrain, and other units. In order to move you have to click a space next to the selected unit and it will move there and change the highlighted spaces where it can move(since it has one less move this turn and is in a different spot). According to programmer AJ Fritsch “The game has been coming together faster than we thought. It looks like it will be a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to release it”.

Next on the agenda is to implement turns so that units can only move on their turn, and their movement range will reset after each turn. With the implementation of turns we can then add in the mana crystals to restrict the number/type of units spawned each turn. After all of this the last step to finishing the game is to add in the mines and the bases. These features should complete the game, leaving the only programming left to be menus.

With this exciting news, you should be expecting to be able to join the battle within the next couple of weeks.

For more information, contact Joe Wileman @ wjoe113@vt.edu

Press release #9: J5 Releases Prototype to the Public

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Blacksburg, Va., April 17, 2015 – J5 has completed and released a high fidelity prototype of the Gaming Social Network for others to test and evaluate!

J5’s Gaming Social Network application prototype will allow users to have a hands-on experience and get to test out some of the main features of the app.

Team member Daniel Rusz said “We wanted the prototype to give us insight on what features were easy to use and what we needed to refine. This way we don’t have to make major back end changes when creating the final product”.

J5 plans to use this prototype to get feedback from a select group of testers that will run through the application and complete set tasks. The feedback they receive will help the team know how well their features work in practice and the final product can be modified to better meet their goals.

Team member Iyaz Shaikh said “We are simulating the social interactions users will have right now, but after listening to our testers responses and perfect our front end design before continuing”.

The final stages of development left for J5 is to add in their application’s networking capabilities. Although users can only interact with sample friends in this prototype, the final product will allow users to communicate with one another to establish the social network. The final product will be presented in front of an audience on May 4th at the Moss Arts Center!

J5 – “Let’s Play Together” Contact person: Lucas Eckert <lucase93@vt.edu>

Press release #8: AddHawk Creates an Evaluation Plan and Prepares for Testing

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BLACKSBURG, Va., March 20, 2015 – AddHawk is a group of Computer Science students taking their Human-Computer Interaction capstone project to a massive scale. They begun working on an application called PixelPusher, a massive crowdsourced display in Lane Stadium, using all the attendees mobile device screens as pixels.

Updates on PixelPusher:
addhawkLogoThis week the AddHawk team began the development of the Android and web platforms of PixelPusher. These two platforms are the team’s first steps toward a high-fidelity prototype, which should be finalized within the next week. To give the high-fidelity prototypes the functionality that they require, an API was developed to allow for communication of data between the server and the client-facing applications. The aesthetics of the prototype are of great importance as well, so the team also spent time designing a batch of icons for the front-end of the application on both platforms.

In addition to focusing on more front-end facing features of the high-fidelity prototype, the team debugged and worked out kinks that were causing issues on the server side of the system. At this point the system is able to serve requests at blazing fast speeds, which imbues the hearts of the AddHawks with optimism and joy.

“We’re super excited about how fast the requests are able to be processed on the backend of our system! The Phalcon PHP Framework is light as a feather and we’ve been seeing speeds that are up to seven times faster than a Ruby On Rails based API. We hope that since it’s this fast at the moment that it will scale well when we begin moving on to evaluation of the system with real people,” said PixelPusher developer Christopher Wood excitedly.

A Look Into the Future:
In the upcoming weeks the team will finish production of the high-fidelity prototype for both the web and mobile platforms. This finalization of the prototype involves connection of the front and back ends of the PixelPusher system in order to be able to present relevant tasks and functionality that the system should be able to accomplish.

Once the prototype is ready, the team will move on to begin evaluation of the system. This evaluation will test users on various metrics that the team considers valuable for the continuation and improvement of the system as a whole. Testing will initially be performed by the PixelPusher developers themselves with a small sample size of around four people. From there on, the team will move on to testing first-time and returning users with increased sample sizes.

Mission Statement:
PixelPusher will allow football fans in Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech to display individual pixels on their phones which are part of a larger image. In this way PixelPusher acts as a crowd-sourced collaboration application that will bring together football fans everywhere. PixelPusher also aims to break the current world record of 400 connected devices. The application will be developed with the idea of simplicity and efficiency at heart, providing a lightweight, seamless user interface to football fans at Virginia Tech.

“AddHawk is an up and coming software development initiative aimed at revolutionizing how a single member of a crowd can have a huge impact on an event. ”

For more information or questions please contact: cmw2379@vt.edu

Press release #8: War of Ages

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Blacksburg, VA; April 10, 2015 – Shapes are forming in War of Ages, as we start developing the units and their podiums. Each unit will have a symbol mounted on a podium. The larger and more elaborate podiums signify higher units. After we have a podium for each unit tier, we plan to start drawing the unit symbols. We decided to go with podiums because they look impressive the more elaborate they get, and that gives each unit more character.

warofagesApr10

(Figure 1: Tier 1 unit podium under development)

Since last week, we decided to completely scrap the 2D board for our original idea of a 3D board. This will allow us to add more dynamic animations to each cube if we have time. The podiums will also appear as 3D objects on a 3D board, rather than top view 2D objects on a 2D board. Our next step with our board is to load the unit podium prototypes and start adding movements.

Our final focus is on our mid-level prototype. Vasily has been developing the prototype for the past few weeks, and he is almost able to implement units and turns. Once our prototype is available to play, we will open it up to the class and friends for another session of feedback. We decided to make a mid-level prototype in order to get it out quicker to our audience before the final launch.

Our main goal in the next week is to finish the board and units in order to start programing the units on the board. Once we finish the units, we will start working on the crystals and making it turn-based. We look forward to the coming weeks and presenting our game to our patient audience.

For more information, contact Joe Wileman at wjoe113@vt.edu

Press release #8: Cumulonimbus Combines Back­-End and Front-­End, Creates Eval Plan

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Blacksburg, VA., Apr 10, 2015 ­- Team Cumulonimbus had the opportunity to visit the Moss Arts Center. The focus of the week is to combine Django and Bootstrap, to get one talking to the other. Finally, they ended the week creating an evaluation plan.

So far, each part has been working by itself. One of us would continue on the front­end while the back­end would be worked on by another one of us. This was mainly due to the learning process ­ both frameworks are new to the team. At the beginning of the week, Tyler mentioned, “We need to have front end and back end talking by the end of the week.” To stay on pace to the schedule, this needed to be done. Cumulonimbus accomplished this goal by Wednesday afternoon.

Although the integration was a great milestone for the team, it’s imperative that they use the momentum instead of letting it die out. Now, the next steps are more concrete. Each part still requires a decent amount of work. The UI currently involves a functional navigation bar. The graphics, which include the icons and color scheme will be provided by Matt’s sister, a graphic designer. The back­-end may require the most work out of the two, since Django is the more unfamiliar framework. The team members are really just figuring the basics at this point. For example, Tyler said, “We’ll need a way to host static files on a separate server. The mode I use to run Django is very simplified. Once I turn on the full service, we’ll need to host these files separately.”

In addition, Cumulonimbus prepared an evaluation plan this week. This is to prepare for the upcoming evaluation for the high fidelity prototype, known as the common prototype. Since they don’t have a client, it’s up to them to figure out a way to evaluate it. Right now, the idea is to test the application during Relay for Life. “Relay is scheduled after our high fidelity prototypes are due, conveniently, and we could recruit our friends to take pictures throughout the event,” says Matt. A couple specifications that Cumulonimbus will look out for will be barrier of entry, ease of use, and any bugs found.

It’s the perfect environment to test the application. With the evaluation plan set, Cumulonimbus will work on completing that high fidelity prototype.

Team Cumulonimbus is a team of three senior level computer science students at Virginia Tech: Matthew Bock, Romico Macatula, and Tyler Haines. All three of them have extensive skill sets in computer science after their years of study. With several semesters of experience in the field of human­computer interaction at their disposal, the team is dedicated to creating the best experience possible for their users through rigorous testing and design iteration. Any questions or comments, contact Romico Macatula at rmac817@vt.edu.

Press release #8: J5 Creates Evaluation Plan

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Blacksburg, Va., April 10, 2015 – J5 has written up an evaluation plan for the Gaming Social Network as well as continuing their design of their final prototype.

J5 wrote their evaluation plan this week in preparation of prototype testing. They are asking volunteers to run through a series of tasks and provide feedback and constructive criticism.

Team member Daniel Rusz said “Our evaluation plan is done and we are looking forward to meeting with volunteers to test our prototype”.

Additionally, J5 have been continuing work on the User Interface for their prototype and have made significant progress in that regard. Specifically, the profile and matchmaking screens are done.

Team member Parham Ghazanfari said “We met up to discuss how to go about doing the user interface. From our design patterns, we created the core screens that will enable the user to seamlessly and easily view friend and profile data”.

This coming week, the J5 team will be hard at work finishing a functional high-fidelity prototype so that the public can see what it will eventually look like and maybe even get to try it out!

J5 – “Let’s Play Together” Contact person: Lucas Eckert <lucase93@vt.edu>

Press release #8: Pass It On! Inc Makes Plans for Evaluation; Implementation in Progress

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Blacksburg, VA, April 10, 2015: In the past week the team has continued development on Pass It On!, having plans to have a functioning high-fidelity prototype working by the end of next week. The team has also been working to come up with an evaluation plan for the following weeks so they can continue to make revisions to the system.

Since last week the team has made some major modifications to the interface for the system for what they believe will be a much more enjoyable user experience. Most of the changes have been in the form of a modified menu which they believe will help the site flow better. Changes to some of the page layouts and option menus have been made to make the site more accessible. All of the pages necessary for the site to function have been implemented and currently the team is making refinements to these pages and working on linking them to the servers.

The team has also worked to come up with a solid evaluation plan for the week after getting the high-fidelity prototype working. The main focus of the evaluation will be user interactivity and how the team can improve the site from a user’s standpoint. As a final goal we hope to have a working service capable of account creation, the posting of services, and creating a secure environment for transactions. For our evaluation, we will work with our sponsor and one of his graduate classes to analyze and breakdown our product and its effects on a community.

“I’ve been focused hard and working with Minahm to finish the front end work. I feel like we’ve come up with a solid plan and I’m looking forward to share it with everyone once we have it completed” – Matthew Chittum

“I’ve been learning a lot recently about designing the database for the back end of a web site, but I’ve also been making a lot of progress! The tables are all done for the database and now I’m going to start hooking it up to the front end!” – Joshua White

“Although we had many challenges this week, we were able to get a lot accomplished. We were able to establish the structure of our backend as well as beginning implementation. This week will be very important as our goals will include setting up a login system and finalizing the website design.” -Minahm Kim

Press release #8: Civil War driving tour app prototype in the works, user evaluation plan is in motion

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BLACKSBURG, Va., April 10, 2015 – This week was a productive week for the team Kool Katz, consisting of the three developers, Laura Avakian, Seth Canon, and Ryan Kiel. Kool Katz continued their development of the Civil War Driving Tour app.

Last week, Laura and Ryan were able to make progress setting up version control for their project and creating a skeletal design of the app on Xcode. Additionally, they came up with a solution that would satisfy the client and professor’s needs in that they would be implementing a running feed of comments with each individual site which is in the works.

This week, development continued for the skeleton of the app. The data entry of the tour sites and accompanying information, though a tedious task, is coming along. This will allow the developers to make sure the information is being properly presented on the different app screens.

The team was able to get the screen with list of tour sites working, which the user will be able to select each site from and potentially change up the list of sites to their personal liking. Additionally, the screen that loads the tour information was developed, and will need to be more extensively tested once the data entry task is complete.

Apart from the development, the team came up with an evaluation plan that will be executed in the next couple weeks when the high fidelity prototype is complete. This evaluation plan discusses a variety of questions, standards, and methods of surveying potential users that will give the developers a more in-depth understanding of what the development needs to be focused on. 

For example, the team wants to make sure that users find the app to be straightforward and intuitive, and thus will evaluate how many times the user gets confused overall, and where.

“Right now we are in a really good place. Our high fidelity prototype is coming along nicely and accompanying it is a solid evaluation plan,” says Laura.

Next week, the team will continue development and will have a high fidelity prototype complete. The high fidelity prototype will be what allows the developers to further interview potential users about what they like and do not like about the app itself, and the evaluation plan will be executed in doing so. Stay tuned!

Contact Laura Avakian for any further inquiries.

Press release #7: Cumulonimbus Tackles API’s

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Blacksburg, VA., Apr 6, 2015 ­ Team Cumulonimbus focused on API research this week, determining the pro’s and con’s of certain technology. It was no easy task since each of us had little familiarity with the API’s that caught our attention.

The main focus this week was figuring out which API’s to use for the front­end and back­end. One aspect that the team pursued was simplicity. Matt says, “The key right now is to find easy­ to ­learn, simple, but powerful API’s.” It sounds very “cliché”, but it’s the truth. For example, would Ruby on Rails be better fit than Django? These were the style of questions the Tyler, Matt, and Romico discussed throughout the process. The certain technologies that caught their eyes were Django and Bootstrap.

For back­end technology, the two main points of focus is on databasing and ease of use. Tyler added, “Yeah, we’re looking for something that’s not advanced and complicated, but something that is easy to start with. Next, databasing and support for website sockets would be the next specifications.”

For front-­end technology, the team did not have much specifics. The biggest concern is support for the mobile version. At this point, there’s really not much “competition” in the front­-end department. “Bootstrap already has a lot of our main functions but more importantly, it supports mobile development,” says Matt.

By the end of the week, Django and Bootstrap appealed to the project’s demands. Now that the API’s have been the chosen, the next step is to master them. Alright, maybe master is too much, but the goal is to gain comfortability using these API’s. The simple way to solve that is to start tinkering around. Now, both of these technologies are unfamiliar with the team, but Cumulonimbus says that they’re excited to learn. “It’s awesome that we get to learn together and not have to depend on one ‘specialist’ for this project. I think this will be a unique experience for each of us,” says Romico.

Team Cumulonimbus is a team of three senior level computer science students at Virginia Tech: Matthew Bock, Romico Macatula, and Tyler Haines. All three of them have extensive skill sets in computer science after their years of study. With several semesters of experience in the field of human ­computer interaction at their disposal, the team is dedicated to creating the best experience possible for their users through rigorous testing and design iteration. Any questions or comments, contact Romico Macatula at rmac817@vt.edu.

Press release #7: AddHawk Sets Up Server and Begins Coding

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BLACKSBURG, Va., March 20, 2015 – AddHawk is a group of Computer Science students taking their Human-Computer Interaction capstone project to a massive scale. They begun working on an application called PixelPusher, a massive crowdsourced display in Lane Stadium, using all the attendees mobile device screens as pixels.

Updates on PixelPusher:

This week the AddHawk team spent a lot of time setting up the back end of the project, more specifically the server. Most of the week was used to get ready to dive head first into coding and creating the application. This included working to set up the Phalcon PHP framework on each person’s computer, retrieving root access to the server, and deciding on what platform to develop the application (mobile or web).

Initially a few challenges were encountered when setting up the server with Phalcon but after some research and consulting with our domain specialist, Dr. Kurt Luther, all of the problems were resolved. As was mentioned earlier, the team also decided which direction it wants to head in with the development of PixelPusher. After discussing the pros and cons of Android, Apple, and a web application the AddHawk team decided to first develop the application on Android and then add different platform options as needed. While the original plan was to develop for both Android and Apple devices, after doing research into the logistics behind retrieving a developer’s license and distributing an application on the iOS App Store the team found that it was not possible in the given time period.

“A developer license for Apple costs close to 100 dollars and the standard wait period for releasing your first app onto the app store is around 6 weeks. Looking at the time we have left in the semester and the resources given to our team, it is not feasible to develop in both Android and Apple.” explains frontend developer Dillon Gresham.

The team also feels that if a web based application is necessary one can be quickly created once the framework of the application has been set up.

A Look into the Future:

The majority of the time in the upcoming weeks will be spent creating an interface for Android phones as well as continuing production of the servers and backend to optimize the application’s performance. A lightweight and intentionally limited interface is focus in these beginning stages of development. Once we get the interface up and running, it will be connected with the backend services in order to allow for preliminary testing and debugging. In addition to this Android interface, the team will begin development of an admin control panel accessible via a web platform. This control panel will then be linked with the Android interface and backend services to allow for communication between these two entities.

Mission Statement:

PixelPusher will allow football fans in Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech to display individual pixels on their phones which are part of a larger image. In this way PixelPusher acts as a crowd-sourced collaboration application that will bring together football fans everywhere. PixelPusher also aims to break the current world record of 400 connected devices. The application will be developed with the idea of simplicity and efficiency at heart, providing a lightweight, seamless user interface to football fans at Virginia Tech.

“AddHawk is an up and coming software development initiative aimed at revolutionizing how a single member of a crowd can have a huge impact on an event. ”

For more information or questions please contact: cmw2379@vt.edu