Engineering Projects/Poppit/Howard Community College/Fall2011/502 DBBM

Problem Statement
Poppit is a puzzle game in which a player is required to pop the balloons and score a big in order to win the game. Even if you win the game, there are a number of balloons left over at the end of the game. The most interesting part of the game is to find out how can we pop all of the balloons, score a big, and win the game.

The project is divided into different groups in which our goal is to take pictures/video of a game and record the number of balloons left over at the end.

Team Members

 * Bryan
 * Mike
 * Deep

Summary
Our team members played the game many times, took pictures and video of the game, and recorded the number of balloons left over at the end to help members of the team: 502_HDM.

Poster
For class use, we have saved the video and pictures into the folder: Desktop/ENES-100

If you are out of the class and trying to access the video, here's the link to download the video: Poppit Video

Story
Before we begin, we must have installed Google Chrome Browser in order to play the game- Poppit. Playing the game is really easy, since all we have to do is to left click on the balloons and they pop in groups of two or more. We begin the project by playing the game for few times and realizing how the game varies in terms of its pattern and set up. Each game is randomized and have different patterns to it. After playing the first 10 games, we record the number of balloons left over at the end and they're 25,17,11,6,53,37,19,22,9 and 43.

We used Wink to capture single-frames of the entire game, since it's really easy to use and gives the best resolution. The default resolution is set to 1024*728. When using Wink, we must select only the game region or else it will capture the entire Windows-screen. When running Wink, it captures single-frames every time we click the balloons. We also used HyperCam-2 to capture video of the game. The software is similar to Wink, except that it uses HD-codec and also records the sound.

The purpose of taking these pictures and the video of the entire game is to realize where we made mistakes and how many different ways could we have possibly completed the game if we were to fix those mistakes. However, the problem still remains that is it possible to pop all of the balloons, score a big, and win the game? No one knows!

Decision List
We decided to use the software Wink to capture single-frame shots and HyperCam-2 to capture video.

Material List

 * Computer

Software List

 * Google Chrome Browser: to open up the game- Poppit.
 * Wiki: creates a single-frame every time we click on the balloons.
 * HyperCam-2: captures the window screen and makes a video of it.

Time
There's no time limit to the game, so take your time to recognize the pattern, undo your moves, and keep up with your strategy. The more you take your time the more rewarding it is.

Tutorials
The Unofficial Poppit Strategy Guide created by Travis Lyon. This tutorial really helps to eliminate number of balloons.

Next Steps
The next step for our goal is to use the same game that we have captured and figure out our mistakes and come up with some guidelines to pop all of the balloons.