User:Prakhar/Weekly Updates

TYPING TURTLE

This page summarizes various activities that have been a part of the development process of game based typing turtle activity.

May 1-May 7, 2008

• Introduction period with my mentor Mr. Wade Brainerd and co-developer Ms. Kate Scheppke
• Laid out plans with my mentor. Kate will work on basic typing activity and I'll work on game-based typing activity.
• Studied various current typing games like TuxType.
• Wade conducted a survey to examine our present technical background.
• Wade prepared a short tutorial for us to refer to equip ourselves with required technical skills.

May 8-May 19, 2008

• Went into university exams. No progress.

May 20-May 27, 2008

• Started reading about Sugar HIG and Sugar Activity Tutorial
• Switched from Ubuntu to Fedora.
• Emulated the Sugar environment on my PCs.

May 28-June 4, 2008

• Started working on the game designs.
• First mock-ups released.
• Received my XO-1 on June 3
• Dedicated 2 days to explore the XO environment.

June 5-June 11, 2008

• Attended a Python workshop which really set the tone for the project.
• Almost final mock-ups released. Still scope for improvement.
• Converting the mock-ups into Python classes and methods.
• Documented all the work on wiki.

June 12-June 19, 2008

• Started working on Python and PyGTK by referring to respective tutorials.
• Working on art work required in the activity interface.(like turtle, bubbles etc.) mock-ups will be uploaded soon.
• Browsed the source code of existing activities in XO. I was unable to comprehend the code due to lack of python experience

June 20-July 3, 2008

• Learnt Python from byteofpython.org and the official tutorial from python.org
• Studied PyGTK tutorial from pygtk.org and completed all the related exercises
• Studied JSON from json.org
• This period involved learning all the technologies related to the project so that I can start coding.

July 4-July 12, 2008

• Again browsed the source code of existing activities in XO. I could easily understand each and everything.
• Studied the Activity Tutorial again and also the latest Sugar Handbook from OLPC Austria.
• Successfully completed my first activity- "HelloWorld" as per the guidelines in above mentioned two tutorials :)
• Finally started my project- TypingTurtle.activity. A great relief for me :) But it was just the beginning of a roller coaster ride ahead