The Eye of the Storm

image taken fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_%28cyclone%29

Now that we have made significant progress on both apps, Tyrant Ben has loosened his grasp on the Java Turtles. We find ourselves able to relax, celebrate, and even take a moment to look out the window. But we fear that this is only the eye of the storm with the deadlines for both apps coming up next week..


After a full day's work (instead of attending Symposium Day), we have almost finished the desired upgrades for Brick Bash. "Slash Attack", the swiping upgrade, Click Power, and the bomb upgrade, which destroys a third of the brick's health, are all working with no major bugs. In addition to the upgrades, we have attached "Brick Bits", our in-game currency, to the upgrades so that the users can no longer buy upgrades without having any currency. The next step is to decide how much each upgrade will cost and display each cost in the upgrade shop. After we finish the last couple of upgrades and put the finishing touches on the app, Brick Bash will be finished.

Sketch Send is also very close to being done. When a user draws a sketch, each "line" (drawing without picking up his/her finger) is stored as a string value that contains the color, width, and where the line was drawn. Essentially it does so by recording each point at which your finger moved across and then stores that into the string. In order to be able to send a drawing from one user to another, we have to be able to be able to get that string value into Parse.com, have the recipient be able to pull it down and parse through the string so that the sketch is redrawn.