Digital Archaeology Project & JavaFX: First Impressions

For the Digital Archaeology Project I am working on, the Computer Science students in the group were given the weekend task of tinkering with JavaFX. So far, things are going well!

JavaFX was described to me as a language that allows us to do some interesting animation and visual effects, all while allowing us to build off of our knowledge with Java. It seems pretty robust, but I've only looked at a few code examples. Getting it going with Eclipse was fairly simple. I followed this tutorial Oracle JavaFX Tutorial and was able to work along side it very easily.

I have some plans outside of staring at a computer monitor tonight, or else I would continue on with these tutorials, but that is where I plan to get back into it tomorrow.

I haven't mentioned it in this space, but I am working with a few other students and professors on developing a digital archaeology simulation (a game) for 4th graders. I wrote a quick summary of our work so far, which can be found here. I'm not sure how to use this space in conjunction with a class-wide, shared blog. I'd like to keep working in this realm, as it's easier to wrap all of my thoughts up onto one page. I could also post to both spaces simultaneously.

I like the progress that was made today. I feel for the non-Computer Science students with the prototyping that we've done this week. They've done a great job so far, but the process can be frustrating initially. Those of us who were around for Morgan's Raid last fall were subjected to our fair share of prototyping, and, as Dr. Gestwicki would and does say, you do it so you can throw ideas out. It really saves you time later. Looking back, I wish we had done a bit more prototyping in Morgan's Raid at times, but with this project I think the Anthropology students are getting a good experience. One of them mentioned in a reflective post that they didn't think they would be doing so much design - that they enjoyed getting to take part in it. I'm glad they will have the opportunity to give a lot of feedback. CS people tend to be min/maxers, power users, so we might be more interested in the numbers side of things. A fresh perspective could really be huge for keeping the game fun on a surface level (I made an archaeology joke!).