Searching for Other Options

A few quick emails yesterday afternoon all but nixed using JavaFX. Apparently it doesn't work at all with Mac, and our project is attempting to be cross-platform friendly from the beginning .

For our Digital Archaeology Project, we had a few ideas as to what software to use to design it:

• Swing
• GWT
• JavaFX
• Unity3D
• Slick

Swing was quickly eliminated, as there are more powerful options in the list. Slick is what was used for the Morgan's Raid project, so we all are very familiar with it. However, it doesn't have a good solution for creating buttons and a custom interface. Those things would need to be done by hand,which is possible but difficult. So that left us with GWT, JavaFX, and Unity3D. The latter option is a 3D game engine that has some really approachable tools. The downfall is that these tools cost money and aren't very recreate-able without going in and typing things in by hand. In other words, it can't be used in other instances programmaticly, other archaeology sites would need to be redone by hand.

So with Swing and JavaFX out, the team is focusing on GWT and Unity3D this weekend. We know what Slick can do, but the other two options are relative unknowns. I have GWT all set up on my machine here at home and a free afternoon ahead of me!

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!).