Final Links

http://www.ryanmcphersondesign.com/BFA/watersite/
http://www.ryanmcphersondesign.com/BFA/carbonsite/
http://www.ryanmcphersondesign.com/BFA/garbagesite/
http://www.ryanmcphersondesign.com/BFA/surveyFormSiteIpad/

Questions done!

Another short update. I have finished the questions for the survey (they number 19) and inputting the values that each answer will reflect. I may have to do some balancing to make sure that the values come together correctly (make sure my calculations for footprints are at least ballpark. All of the values are based off data I could gather from various sources, but I had trouble finding full breakdowns of any of the average footprints, so I had to piece a lot of it together.

 I'm not too worried about getting too exact, as my purpose was never to fully and perfectly calculate someone's footprint, but rather to create an estimate and display it visually to get viewers to think more about their daily lives. However, I don't want one person to come along, and input data to find that they have a water footprint of 2 gallons a day, and another person to come along and find out they have a water footprint of 15,000 gallons a day (unless they legitimately eat A LOT[and by a lot, I mean a couple pounds a meal] of meat, which if that's the case, they need to be more worried about their health than their ecological footprint...)

That being said, the water footprint can be surprisingly high. If someone eats a pound of beef, three meals a day, every day, their daily water-footprint from that alone is 5400 gallons a day.

That's an EXTREME case...but there could be someone out there. You never know...

Connectivity!

Just a quick update: I HAVE CONNECTIVITY. More specifically, I found a way to update and read xml.

As it all begins to fall into place...

So I've had a bit of an issue coming up with solutions to some of my issues. ISSUES WHICH I AM NOW REALIZING HOW TO SOLVE!

Problem: How do I deal with the scenes once they begin to fill up too much?
Solution: I zoom out!

Problem: How do I zoom out?
Solution: I make a repeatable image for a background, with "bookends" that all resize as I need it! I HAVE AN EXAMPLE HERE!!!: file:///X:/BFA/garbagesite/index.html (There's a button in the upper right hand corner that I used for debugging this)

This problem also helps me solve the problem how the water and garbage scenes don't look alike, because I'll have to redesign the water scene for this anyway!

I'm getting EXCITED! CAN YOU TELL?! NEXT PROBLEM!!!

Problem: How do I do this resizing thing with the canvas?
Solution: Probably the same way, but I'll have to reset the canvas, and resize the objects in canvas. I might have to do a bit of messing with things, but I'll make it work! I KNOW IT'S POSSIBLE!

Problem: What do I do with the garbage falling? I have the fluid simulator for the other two, but that doesn't work for garbage bags!
Solution: All I have to do is look up a way to simulate gravity with javascript. THERE ARE TONS OF RESOURCES FOR THIS! I FOUND WHAT I NEED IN LIKE FIVE SECONDS! IT'S SO MUCH EASIER THAN THE WATER SIMULATION!! I'll have to figure out how to do collision detection, BUT I KNOW THAT CAN BE DONE! I've seen it!
(example for the gravity: http://codetheory.in/basics-of-implementing-gravity-with-html5-canvas/)

I may be moving much slower than I would like, but I can already tell that things are about to start speeding up very soon!

I'd call it more coding, but I've already done that, so here's "Forms and sites"

So I've got my survey to work (more or less). It needs a few more features, but it now accepts any number of questions and dynamically creates the buttons and assigns functions to the buttons.

I also have it up here(best viewed on iPad):http://digitalarts.bgsu.edu/portfolios/rmcpher/BFA/surveyFormSiteIpad/

I'm also working on the different questions and figuring out how each will relate to each scene, I have a spreadsheet here(it is not an extensive list because I have not yet had the time to enter in all the prospective questions): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlF5TuUPwR8ZdC10OVozLXYtMVlhaDRXRV9CcXdBdGc#gid=0

I am ALSO working on the layouts for the three scenes (something I admittedly should have done long ago) in html. I'll show more on this when this actually yields results.

Even More Coding

I don't have much more to show YET, but I am starting to make good progress on the coding. I've figured out xml to a point that I can extract and process data. (now I just have to figure out how to write data to it)

I've also been working more on my survey. I've managed to make it so that it can dynamically adjust to any number of questions I insert, including only the number of buttons needed for answers, and dynamically setting what the buttons do when they are clicked. I still have to mess with the functionality a bit, but things are starting to move along with the survey to be sure.

More coding

So after far more time spent on it than I'd like to admit, I've realized something about the fluid simulation code I've been toying with:

It's not something I can recode.

It's way too complicated for me to fully understand what it's doing, it utilizes some code that I'm completely unfamiliar with, and if that all wasn't bad enough, it's needlessly confusing code (as in the original programmer didn't clean it up as well as he/she could have).

However, I've also realized that I understand how to manipulate the code well enough to do what I need it to do. There was one specific thing I was trying to get it to do, that I won't be able to get it to do (at least I really don't believe I can), but I don't think it's entirely necessary anyway.

So considering the code was free to use for anything, I should be set on that little side track.