Video

Wow, its been over a year since I finished Trombone Hero.  I just found this video of it and wanted to post it on the blog:

State Diagram

Here is a UML state diagram of the program.

Class Diagram

Here is a UML Class diagram of the project, done in ArgoUML.

Friday Post 7-8

These past two weeks I've been diagraming out my program to demonstrate understanding of software engineering principles. I've been reading up on UML and the different diagrams you can make with it, and I find it to be very useful in visualizing code. Definitely a skill that I think will be useful later down the road.

I did a class diagram and am working on a state diagram. I will post both diagrams as a companion to the project when I get around to it.

Next week will be finishing up the diagram, final testing, and preparing for my presentation the following week.

Friday Post 6

Last week I must have been really out of it.

Fixed the sound bug where it wouldn't play twice; all I had to do was set the frame position to 0 before playing. Found that after looking at the documentation for all of 30 seconds.

I fixed timing quite a bit too. It turns out I was starting my timer at the beginning of the constructor, so it was doing all the file io and initialization on the clock. Dur. Put the timer start as the last thing, and what do you know, it works.

There are still some minor timing issues, which I will investigate next time, like dealing with the discrepancy between rendering and audio playback. I also want to try the Java Mixer for synchronization of the two tracks, but I'll have to read up on how that works.

Tests today yielded positive results on both the screen and the monitor.

Friday Post 5

I've been slacking on the posting lately.

Today was one of those days where I worked a lot and got a little done. I've been having timing problems, which is so important to the game. The problem is not that it doesn't work, but that it is inconsistent, so sometimes it will break badly.

I think the problem is in my sound manager class, because there is a certain amount of lag involved that could be throwing off the timing. The blobs seem to be moving at the right speed and in the right intervals, and the data in the data file seems correct, so I guess it must be the sound. If its not the sound, then theres a problem with how I'm placing the blob. I bet its a combination of both.

Next time I will re-work and optimize the sound system. In addition to fixing the timing, there is also a problem with playing small interface fx, as they won't replay after playing once.

Friday Post 4

Today was a groundbreaking day for Trombone Hero. I officially have the trombone working! Using a test run, the trombone performed accurately and fluidly. I wanted to implement a mic to record breath sounds so that you would "blow" into the trombone, but I was having difficulty, so went back to the original plan of adding a button. Today I recorded the backing tracks for the trombone sounds to "Love Me Do".

Next time, I have to work out some potential timing issues with the projector screen and get the music mixed and implemented. After next week, I should be ready for presentation.

Today was a good day.