#technical 4

[sharonjordan]

Image quality on Android

I've been concerned abut the quality of some of the images when viewed on the Android device. The images look fine on the mac/pc, but on the android device there is banding on graduated backgrounds and poor image quality on other images such the stars used for helping to count the sums.

I have tried to look into this, but have been unable to find any reasonable solution that works fully. I also noticed today that the background image that came with the device also has some banding on it.

I believe the problem is related to image density rather than resolution, but at this stage I feel that it required more indepth research to resolve adequately which will not be achieved before submission.

It's added to the bug list!

[sharonjordan]

Directory issues on Android

I noticed yesterday that the images for the sums in the blast off app were not loading when the app was deployed to my Android device, even though it was working well on the mac and on the website.

I tried adjusting the image sizes to be the exact size, but this made no difference.

The solution came from checking back through previous versions that I knew had worked and looking at the differences.The key difference was will the directory structure because I had started to tidy up the images folder. When the images were in the images folder it worked, but adding them to any sub directories didn't work - but only on the Android device so that path in the code was correct.

Therefore I have moved all the number images back into the images folder as a solution to the problem.

[sharonjordan]

display chain issues

The issue:

items added to the 'my things' section and made into dragable items were remaining on the screen when you moved away from that page.

It was not possible to reference the name of the item that was added as a child of the stage because all references to it (including the variables) had to remain within the function in order that each item in the array was added to a new sprite and made dragable independent of the other options.

The solution:

I tried various options for removing the child but had lots of errors. A set of traces helped identify the position of the items in the display list and I used  'removeChildAt ' to reference the object directly. I put this within a loop so that as more objects are added to the array the code will automatically cope with removing more items.

The last error to overcome related to the changing position. Initially I used removeChildAt (6+i) because the first item was always at 6, then the rest followed. But as one item is removed the others move further up the list, therefore an item at 7 will move to be item 6 if the previous item 6 is removed. Therefore the final code that worked is

removeChildAt (6)

this may change if more elements are added to the screen so I will keep an eye on this.

[sharonjordan]

Snap shot of the updated database table.

[sharonjordan]

adding more columns to the database

I wanted to store the totals for each section as well as the overall number of points, so following the example of how I store the points I have updated the database with 4 additional columns, amended the php file for add_points and amended the flash client.

Initially the points storing system stopped working altogether, and using traces in the flash client I was able to pinpoint an error in the PHP code I had added.

Reviewing the PHP, I assumed the issue was with the update query, which I had initially written as follows:

$query = "update users set points='$newPnts' where user_id='$userNum';";

$query = "update users set games_pts='$newGamesPnts' where user_id='$userNum';";

$query = "update users set read_pts='$newReadPnts' where user_id='$userNum';";

$query = "update users set music_pts='$newMusicPnts' where user_id='$userNum';";

I looked back at the following link to find out the correct way to run this query - which should be one query not four.

http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_update.asp

The corrected code now works!

$query = "update users set points='$newPnts',games_pts='$newGamesPnts',read_pts='$newReadPnts',draw_pts='$newDrawPnts',music_pts='$newMusicPnts' where user_id='$userNum';";

[sharonjordan]

Points and scoring

Today I have integrated the add_points.php into myplayroom files by adding a function to storePoints n the scripts and calling it at the point where the user ends a session (currently at the home screen, but I also need to add script for this event to happen if the window is closed at any other point).

function storePoints():void {     trace("assembling store points call");     //make new variables object     var dObj:URLVariables= new URLVariables();     dObj.unum = sys.currUserid;     //set it's properties to new points     dObj.points = sys.currPoints;     //send to server     db.call("add_points.php",dObj,storePointsResponseListener); }

This worked in terms of updating the server with no errors, but it highlighted an issue with the script for adding the points during a session. The points appeared to be  adding as a string rather than a number - ie if the starting score was 10 and 10 points were gained in a game, the total points displayed was 1010 rather than 20.

Before the server was updating a new points score, the scores appeared to be adding correctly within a session. This was always from a base of 0, so was undetected as 010 would always be displayed as a number 10.

To fix this issue, I have changed the way the points are added each time they are awarded. I have created a new function addScore() to contol the process and ensure that the datatype stays as a number.

function addScore(){     var oldTotal:Number = sys.currPoints;     var newScore:Number = points;     var newTotal:Number = oldTotal + newScore;     trace("add score function - old total: " +oldTotal);     trace("add score function - new score: " +newScore);     trace("add score function - new total: " +newTotal);         sys.currPoints = newTotal;     trace("updateCurrPoints function: "+sys.currPoints);     totalPoints_txt.text = sys.currPoints; }

[sharonjordan]

I'm loading images dynamically as bitmaps for the drag and drop functionality on the play area screen, but need to convert each bitmap to a clickable/touchable item so that it can have the drag and drop functionality.

This link provided useful information about using sprites for such a task. I haven't really used sprites in my work to date, so it is good to understand a clear purpose for them.

[sharonjordan]

Ian has given me lots of help with the PHP issues I was having, and the files are now returning  old and new points:

old stored points: 0 points to be added: 10 new total: 10 result=error&text=

But the database is still not being updated with the new value.

I used this source to check the php code and have noticed a couple of small errors and fixed them - but it's still not working.

$query = "update users set points=$new_total where user_id=$userNum;";

I think the issues could be with the query because I don't think that it is currently targeting the database directly, based on a comparison with the addUser function in the user_db.php file. But being unfamiliar with the syntax of PHP, I'm not too sure what to change to correct it.