The Last One

       Well, throughout my e-Comm career I have grown and learned so much about technology and myself. I have taken away all kinds of things including the technological skills that I have developed with the Adobe programs. I have also learned real life applications such as talking with clients, like I did with the Olathe Arts Alliance, to learn what they want, how to collaborate with clients to make sure the finished product is the best it can be and how to handle my time wisely so I don't end up scrambling before deadlines. e-Comm has also taught me how to work in a group both leading the project and following along with others. These are all skills that I will take away from e-Comm and put to good use when I go to college and take another big step towards my career goals. Of, course those skills didn't come easily and many of them were obtained through trial and error.

       My greatest strength would probably have to be my ability to problem solve. It has helped me in many situations and that ingenuity has saved me from many deadlines. My greatest weakness would probably be how easily distracted I get. It usually doesn't take much to make me look away from what I am doing but working in e-Comm has helped me to focus a little bit more when I am working on something important.

       Using the knowledge and skills I have obtained through e-Comm, I will go to college and pursue a degree in Computer Sciences. I will then use that degree to help me get a job where I can continue to use my skills.

       One thing I would change would be my level of concentration on what I had done in e-Comm. Despite my amazing skills, there are still a few that I lack due to my easily distracted mind. If I had managed to focus a little bit more I probably could have felt even more prepared for what is to come.

       All in all, I have enjoyed every second of e-Comm and if I had to do high school over again I would still choose e-Comm every single time.

Jake Smith

Senior Project: The Finale

       Well, here it is... the collective series of all of my hard work over the past month. The game that I have made has been completed. It is finally complete with a title screen and people have played the game with positive feedback. After working out the last couple of kinks, the game was loaded to the server and is now playable right here. I chose this just because I wanted to use code that was also interactive, so a game. This finished project is the product of several weeks.

       The process for this started out like any other. I wanted to make a game that wasn't sci-fi just because I always seem to go that route. After that I wrote down a story that had many different twists and turns. Then after working with javascript for a while I decided to just make the game in dreamweaver with html to make things easier. All the images were made in either photoshop or illustrator. Once it was complete, I had several people test it and the feedback was positive.

       Along the way I learned that just using javascript does not work when making a game. I also learned that there are more than just the obvious uses for coding.

       Now that the main project is done I will hopefully come back to it and alter it so that it can work on different devices. If I had not wasted so much time in the beginning on javascript and making the images, I probably could have at least attempted to make the game responsive.

       Either way this is still the last e-Comm project of my high school career! I am so excited to end this year and move on to college. Whispers are floating around that I will be getting a laptop for graduation so that I may continue with my passion.

Until I decide to write again,

Jake Smith

Senior Project: The Reboot

So close and yet so far...

       I am close to finishing this project. The images have taken much longer than I thought. Right now I am scrambling to compile everything together so that all the images can be transferred to the HTML file. That is where the actual gameplay will occur. I suppose I could try to make a story without any of the images, but I fell like that would make things seem very boring. Really not much has changed since the last update except that I found out that I have an extra week before I want this to be finished. So, that was awesome. It's nice to know that I have a little bit more of a buffer before the deadline. That doesn't mean I'm going to slack off though. I am still going to try and get everything finished by the time of the next update; that way I have some time to tinker with stuff and fix any bugs.

Jake Smith

Senior Project: The Series

       Four weeks out of the way and it finally feels like I am making some amount of progress. Last week I had said that the code I learned didn't seem to be working, so even after trying (and failing) to get the code to work on the learning program, I realized that maybe javascript wasn't the direction I needed to head in. So instead I have been working on making pictures to display in an HTML5 game. YAY!

       This will make things much easier because HTML is code that I definitely know I can make a game of sorts out of. It will take a lot of show/hides and z-index changes but at least I don't feel as lost anymore. The other half of this week that I didn't spend hating Javascript, I spent on illustrator and photoshop to make the images for the game. There are times that I really wish I was a better artist, but I did what I could.  The game will look rough due to the realistic backgrounds being bombarded by weird cartoonish creatures.

       I guess I can't complain, at least I'm making something that I don't completely hate. It will probably look weird but at least I can say that I had fun making it.

Jake Smith

Senior Project: The Trilogy

       Yes, once again it's that time of the week. Coming in with a new update, I am glad to say that after several weeks of learning and falling behind by about a few days... I still know nothing! After spending some time on Codecademy; I finally began to start coding the beginning of my new game.

       I actually changed the story entirely just because I didn't really like my first option. The new story line will be based off of the main character waking up and finding a human shaped and sized flower standing in his/her room. The rest of the story is still half baked at this point but now I have a basis that I like. The rest will probably be made up on the fly or if I actually end up having any time I might be able to plan something out.

       I digress though, like I said, I still feel like I'm a little lost on what exactly I need to do. After I began to make my own, the problems started immediately when I realized that all of my questions and choices began to show as pop ups. That isn't even close to what I need it to be. My main goal for right now is to figure out how to get things to actually show up in the document. My side goal will probably be how to continue to display the part of the story that the user is on if they accidentally (or purposefully) put in a wrong answer.

       I suppose right now I have the basics, but I need to learn the more advanced stuff pretty quick. E
ven if I can't manage to find out how to make things appear in the document, I don't think it will be the end of the world if it's a pop up game, right? No?

Jake Smith

Senior Project: The Sequel

       Yes, that's right! Its back with an all new adventure, from the same creator of Senior Show: The Game, I bring the next chapter of this story into life. When we last left our main character, he was relearning javascript, but now he is doing... the exact same thing. The code to learn took much longer to learn than he thought.

       Really the lessons are taking much longer than I thought and I over-estimated the knowledge I had retained from learning this the first time. On the plus side I actually have an idea for what the story will be. I wanted to make it creepy and mysterious, but every time I came up with an idea it was something I had played before or ended up being science-fictionish. As much as I love sci-fi, I knew I wanted to stay away from that genre because I wanted to branch out and explore other interests. So, after inadvertently watching some inspiration on Netflix, I finally came up with the main idea for the story. The setting is a creepy old house/mansion and the main character (the player) is trying to escape knowing that their is someone else in the house trying to hunt down the main character. I know this isn't an original idea but I figured that I could take a general story line and twist it around using my own imagination.

       Really that is all I have for this update, hopefully I will be able to start coding the game before next week. So, until then you all have a great day.

Jake Smith

Senior Project: The Game

       Hello and welcome to my final e-Comm project for my last year of high school. I will soon never have to worry about high school ever again! I am so excited! But for now I have decided to learn just a little bit more before my freedom. For this final project we were told to make a project that demonstrates some new skill in an area that we have covered, and if you read the title, you can probably guess that it's going to be a game.

       I enjoyed using live coding when we did our javascript unit and I wanted to continue using javascript to make a game. In order to make it much easier on myself it will be a text-based game; that way I don't have to show how bad I am at drawing and animating. It is hopefully going to look something along the lines of one of my favorite text-based games You Find Yourself In A Room or YFYIAR. Of course, my game won't use such strong language or be as graphic.

       So far I am trying to relearn some of the coding we first used in the unit. It is always painful knowing that you have done something before but can't remember how it was finished in the first place. Still ever so slowly it is all coming back to me; from variables to if else statements and more.

       Soon I will come out with an update on how things are progressing and hopefully by then I will have a storyboard to put on here.

Until the update,

Jake Smith

A Flash in the Pan

The Flash Story

       Once again it is time to talk about Adobe Flash. Perhaps one of the greatest things that will never be remembered in history. Despite its obsoleteness by today's standards, when it first came out, Flash was revolutionary. It brought web-based videos, animation, and interactivity to the world wide web. It was also guaranteed to work on any computer of browser.

       Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and Flash has been in rapid decline since about 2007. Apple decided not to support Flash in its latest model of iPhone with Steve Jobs claiming that Flash was "overly proprietary" and with HTML5 right around the corner, it quickly became outmoded. Flash did not simply fade away though; games and videos that many tech giants displayed used Flash kept it alive.

       It still wasn't enough. In 2011 Adobe finally realized that Flash was dying, and nothing could be done about it. They decided to move on to HTML5 with Edge Animate. Several years later, in 2015, hackers began injecting surveillance software into the Flash Player. Facebook called on Adobe to set a death date for the Flash plugin. Instead, Adobe discontinued Edge Animate and renamed the professional app to Animate CC. It was a weak compromise that would use HTML5 but still support Flash content. At this point Facebook was the only one who still really used Flash but even that is diminishing with its release of an HTML5 update. Even Google Chrome, the most popular web browser, announced that it would no longer support Flash as a default.

       Flash is dying, slowly being archived by internet historians who are painstakingly storing as much Flash that is unable to update as they can. Soon it will no longer exist, the once celebrated program it used to be now sits, waiting for its untimely end.

Afterthoughts

       Well, that is certainly a depressing story, at least for Flash it is. All in all, the author of the article Gone in a Flash is basically saying that Flash is in the past, it's time to look to the future. Personally this has no effect on me because I have never been one to use Flash. I started messing with coding long after the fall of Flash. While it may seem depressing for those who loved Flash, the rest of the world has moved on and has embraced the next big thing. Well, at least until another better updated program comes out.

Until next time,

Jake Smith