Last week:
Login page - Check!
Login Registration page - Check!
Working database that can handle the users - Check!

This week:
Our goal this week to build some more screens and give a general feeling of the game in order to start user trials as soon as possible.
We are glad to say that we managed to:
1. Build a lobby for a player to see all of his current games
2. Build a "find me a player" screen where a user can either search for a friend or pick a random user
3. Build a the random words list from which the user chooses what to record
4. Build the record screen from which the user records and send the file to the server

Finally, we see the application come to life!
User trial - here we come!

The communications students put together a design for the entire interaction taking place in the Soundscape game, and in cooperation with the rest of the team decided on the final features that went into the game, taking into account technological and time constraints put forth by the Computer Science students regarding what is feasible in the given time frame. After putting this list together, organizing the features by priority for the prototype was a group effort. The preliminary version will be ready with the entire recording part of the game in order for people to begin recording and collecting data, and for further usability tests to be performed by the Psychology student.

With the weekend behind us, most of our goals have been completed!
From the original goals we set for ourselves most of them have been completed:
* Application for flow from word selection to recording and sending to server is completed
* Server-side handling of most actions through the flow in working condition

This weekend has been a major advancement in our understanding of development for Android and mostly through trial-and-error we have learned a lot. We even managed to push farther ahead then planned and have the following working:
* Registration of new users from application and insertion into server-side databse
* Awesome one-time login that remembers the user on the phone across multiple sessions of the application without having to re-login

Some statistics about the marathon:
Total number of hours slept: 2
Total lines of code written: 15998723
Total lines of code erased: 15998000

Nearing the halfway mark of the marathon, here is an update on our contestants:
* Server -> php accepting login is working, database schema is decided, no entries yet
* App -> sound recording has been resurrected from the demo a few weeks back
* Sleep -> NONE!

Get ready for the weekend-long SoundScape Coding Marathon! A lot of things planned for this weekend including:
* Getting the server up and running
* First version of application communicating with server
* Application that plays through the word selection and recording phase of the game from the live server
Requirements:
* 2 code-monkeys -> CHECK!!
* Very few hours of sleep -> CHECK!!
* Large quantities if sugar -> CHECK!!

Up until now, we focused on the application itself as we wanted to start user trials, problem is, there was still no server side code to give the real feeling of a game.. but no more!
This week we started to link all of our working app code with a the corresponding server code and crossed our fingers really hard.. :)

In order to test out our application and database, we looked for a free web hosting to try and see if we can use our application outside the "lab".
Grabbing the first web hosting service we found, we ported our code and database and launched the application with fingers crossed....

What we managed this week:
1. Database that saves the user games.
2. Game lobby that takes all active games of the logged user from the database and populate the screen
3. Database now support file storage and server support uploads and downloads

keep tuning in for more news soon!

In order to get the best possible user experience and game design we have drafted over and over again the rules and screens that will assemble the Soundscape app. 
Check out these very raw sketches of our app that lead to the game design of our app:

General Android knowledge - Check!
Basic proof of concept game - Check!
Now it is time to start thinking about how we are going to spread the joy!

We have spent the last few days thinking, designing and researching the principles of communication between a client and a server. Registration, authentication, communication (and many other words ending with "ation"!) are an essential part of projects these days and a whole new world at that.

So we set up a server at home and currently playing with it in order to learn how to work with it.
Join us next week for some more exciting news! :)

After last week's successful POC, this week we set out to take the wonderful design sketches we have and turning them into a live app that will demo the GUI of our game. After a furious week of coding, setting aside the actual functionality behind each screen, we have an app that allows a user to experience the core aspects of our game

It is finally time to start bringing our vision to life! After a long week of reading up on the Android SDK, we are starting to lay the foundations for the project. This past weekend was a long coding marathon to get a small technological proof of concept running. Our main goal of taking the core technical features of our program and bringing them to life was achieved - we have a working Android app that can record up to 20 seconds of sound and additionally acquire a GPS lock!