T.J. Liggett, Michael Stefanko
javac *.java
java Raspberry Lanes
“Every once in awhile a revolutionary...(Raspberry Lanes)...comes along that changes everything.”, Steve Jobs. “(Raspberry Lanes)...is never finished, only abandoned.”, Leonardo Da Vinci "To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in... (Raspberry Lanes)", Albert Einstein
The purpose of Raspberry Lanes is simple, to combine innovative technology and highly advanced technical skills with creative imagination on the forefront of personal computer gaming. “RL”, provided education and experience to its programmers, developers, project supervisor, and its artists. It provides a game in a type that has not truly been exploited by the modern market: The thrill of a day by the racetrack. It satisfies a gambling fire that burns in all of us, in a completely legal and ethical way. With this project MixedBerry Studios has brought together the two worlds of tracks and gaming together in a safe and exciting way.
A huge purpose of RL was to give its makers a purpose. Raspberry Lanes started as just a game, but quickly snowballed into something so much greater. It became a lifestyle for its head developer, TJ Liggett, and lead artist, Michael Stefanko. Raspberry Lanes reinvigorated TJ’s love for computers, and computer science. The painstaking pixel by pixel art graphics, and assisting TJ in code, created the potential for a passion in young Michael’s heart. “I’ve never seen such a gifted programmer, mainly because I don’t know many, but nonetheless, TJ’s new nickname is El Dios Del Ordenador, or the god of computers.” Michael sums up perfectly the passion and purpose of Raspberry Lanes, fun with a dedication to increasing experience and education in Rosemount High School.
Problems were encountered in the creation of Raspberry Lanes. The major problem for the art team was the difficulty of finding a truly free software that could support the robust graphics. Once that software was found, however, the artists quickly got to work on multiple tracks, logos, and horse designs. The biggest problem encountered during coding had to do with static variables. The main method created and controlled a canvas class that painted the race (The PaintRace class). However, the PaintRace class needed a way to let the main method know when the race animation was over. This task proved to be the most challenging in the entire project. The eventual solution was to publicize the swing objects in the interface and call them outside the main method in a method called updateStuff(). This created the delay that was needed to continue the method. The last problem encountered in Raspberry Lanes had to do with the size of Music files. Have entire songs located inside the project created immense lag while the game was running. So, we fixed this problem by using GarageBand to shorten the audio files.