Friday, December 12th, 2003: Final Site/Write-up Due Date

Wednesday, December 10th, 2003: Final Due Date

Wednesday, November 19th, 2003: Site created

Monday, November 17th, 2003: Met with I-Ju Liao

Friday, November 14th, 2003: Mentor assigned

Monday, November 10th, 2003: Due: Final team project proposal

From 10 PM to X AM on the due date morning.

Every Tuesday and Thursday and another day each week.

Final Thoughts

Basically, our group set out to make a different type of a program than your normal remake or an exact version of a previously made real-time interactive simulation. We thought about it for a few days, and came up with the idea that we wanted to do something that could be used as a tool for something else; a piece of software that would induce productivity. So our interactive messaging tool was born: WorkSpace. Even the name has the professional ring to it.

We wanted to make a collaborative tool for exchanging information through text messaging and drawing. Initially, only networking and a large portion of MP4 was involved. We started with planning out how the packet was going to look, as well as how many sockets we were going to use, one or two sockets. Eventually, we ended up with a nice packet construction standard, as well as the fact that we needed two sockets. Also, we wanted to throw a little bit of sound into the mix, and therefore, that was also handed to one of the group members.

The task was divided up into three parts: Server, Client, and Sound. Eventually, the client basically became the “main” of the project (handled by Will, the real leader behind this project), while the Server was extremely necessary for handling the multiple users will eventually sign on. Alessandro became the main coder for the server, and created the UserList concept, to deal with the multiple sockets and names that will have to be kept track of. Josh was handed the role of the Sound portion, and he also did eventually finish his part (even though it took him a little longer than expected). Josh was also basically the administrator of the group, doing the minor jobs required for organizing meetings as well as having a large part in creating the website for the initial and final write-up.

This would be the normal start-up process for a user: the user fires up the program, and the program requests of him to put in the host name and the username that he will be using. From there, the user is now taken into the program itself (assuming all goes well with the server on the other side, and if the host name does not have the server running, then the program prompts the user to retry another host name). There, the user can either type or draw out the message that is to be sent. The UserList is also there to remind the user who is online and is available to receive this message. He can also click on a username while in text input mode to send him a private message (this was not implemented fully, but the highlighting of the name exists). Every time an event occurs, from people logging in and out to message or drawing being sent or received, a sound indicates to the user that something has changed.

We were happy with the results of this final project. There were some features that could have been added if things ran a little bit more smoothly (e.g. The sound functions really gave us a hard time in moving forward with the project, which took away a man from the coding of the project), such as text logging, screenshot captures (for the drawing window), and proximity detectors to trigger an away message if the user walked away from the computer. Regardless, it was a stress-filled and huge learning experience that we will probably retain within ourselves as we continue with our academic careers.