James Blades - Smile/ Frown

This application allows the user to play a simple game of random numbers. They click on the stage and it creates a random number and then it increments either the frowns or smiles depending on the number made. Its purpose is to show that even a simple waiting game can be interesting, by giving the user a sense of time (the sun and moon orbiting the center smiling or frowning face). Once each rotation is complete the user can click and play again.

This application has the fleeting sense of time which gets the user excited and wants to play more, but needs to wait for the “day” to pass so they can have their next turn. It also allows them to think they are in more control of what happens than they actually are; after all they don’t do much more than click (not that that is a bad thing). The game is very basic, and can help children learn to count in a more interesting environment than standard classrooms. Additionally they get to play again and little animations play as the game progresses.

The artwork for this game consisted of importing a few vector pieces from Illustrator into the Flash file’s library and placing them in a movieclip (the reset buttons, and scoreboard artwork are both examples of art from Illustrator. For the reset button the feather is a custom brush, however it was made from an existing symbol.) as well as doing some minor artwork in Flash itself (the smile/frown face). The font used for the reset button and the splash screen is called iNked God, located here: http://www.dafont.com/inked-god.font. Other than that the artwork is pretty simple.

The math in this application consists mainly of the math.random function, which selects a pseudo-random (as it is a computer the random function is likely based off the timestamp and mouse position, meaning it is not entirely random) floating point number between 0 and 1. From there we map the number to an integer and compare it to our predefined values for either a frown or smile.

The code behind this application consists of event listeners which are used to look for mouse clicks on the screen and act based on the portion of the game you (as the player) are currently in. It then changes, adds, and removes various portions of the artwork on the screen to change states (for instance, when you win/lose the reset button is added, as are falling smilies/ frownies, when you play the game again, they are removed).