Evaluation of Elephant Game

Problems with Code

For this project, my biggest problem with the coding was with Miss-labelled instances not matching up to the original code. In my game there's about 14 interactive instances which rely heavily on all the code matching the specific names of the instances. As my instances had quite long names; such as 'ellysnorkel_pic' for Purpo's snorkel, it came frustrating when I'd misspelled a single instance, I would have to search for the mistake through a lot of lines of code. Given the chance to do the project again, i would've simplified the names of these instances to reduce the chance of me making a typographic error. Also, I replaced code that requires you to monotonously repeat yourself (which would increase the chance of human error) like this:


function myPlay() {
_root.ellypic_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.ellymuffs_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.ellyphone_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.ellybling_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.ellybrolly_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.ellyglasses_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.ellyhat_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.ellyscarf_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.plane_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.sun_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.ellysnorkel_pic.replay(_root.myindex);
_root.myindex++;

if

(_root.myindex>=_root.ellypic_pic.no_pos() && _root.myindex>=_root.ellyscarf_pic.no_pos()
&& _root.myindex>=_root.ellymuffs_pic.no_pos()&&

etc...


with more simplified code like this:


function myPlay()
{
var finished:Boolean = true;

for (myObject in _root.positionObjects)

{
if (_root.positionObjects[myObject].replay(_root.myindex))
finished=false;
}

if (finished)
{
clearInterval(_root.myinterval);
}

else
{
_root.myindex=_root.myindex+1;
}
}

Problems with Design

My initial problems with designing Purpo elephant and his inventory stemmed from the fact that I hadn't really used Macromedia Flash before, and i found it difficult to draw anything realistic with the drawing tools included. I settled on the idea of making this game look very "cartoony" and simple, afterall, It is a game for kids, so it isn't really something that held the project back.
I based Purpo on another cartoon elephant by Jerry Cogan (which can be found at here). This gave me the basic shape for Purpo, and also gave me a guideline to the sizes I could use for his inventory of items.