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[celebrinborn]

For my Senior Project I made the game Shogi, or Japanese Chess, in Adobe Flash cs6 (well, most of it was in cs4, upgraded to cs6 like 3 days before I finished it lol). I also used Adobe Illustrator CS5 and CS6 to draw the pieces. I would like to know what everyone thinks about it, what did I do right and what did I do that could use improvement
Also, if you guys notice any bugs, I would appreciate it if you could let me know about them. I don't think there are any but if you find any, please let me know.

Note: I know that when you try to drop a piece there is no indication that the piece is selected, this is not a bug. I just didn't think about it until after it was too late to change it. It works as is, the problem is with the UI, not with the ability to drop/capture pieces. Just click on the piece you want to drop and then click on where you want to drop the piece. After I graduate in a few weeks I'll try and fix that (and add some vanity features like background art and music while I'm at it) but until then I probably won't have any time.
Link: http://goo.gl/GXJVE

[LordBucket]

opinions

 * There is way too much black and white. It is boring and unappealing. It would be vastly visually improved by replacing background with an image of wood like this and then drawing the black grid on top of it. (Might need 2 or 3 pixels wide instead of one.) Also, either replace the pieces with images of shogi pieces, or at least consider giving them a border. With the wood background as a board, a simple white oval around the tiles would be ok, though it would be visually more pleasing if it was given depth.

 * The splash screen would benefit from:
  1) Correctly spelling "Japanese." Blatant misspellings like that on your splash screen are not going to impress your teacher.
  2) A more visually obvious way to start the game. To clarify: as is, you simply click anywhere. But when I first started, I had a text cursor, not an arrow pointer. It's somewhat unconventional for a text cursor to be functional for pressing buttons. Either change the cursor to match the windows convention, or add a start button.
  3) A button that shows a popup with the rules for playing Shogi.
  4) As in the game itself, the black and white is visually displeasing. At least add some wood borders or something.

 * The victory screen should have a way to reset the game. As is, it just puts up "player x wins" then stops responding to the player. Very tacky. Fix it.

 * Too late to fix it now, but the concept here is flawed. You have a two player game with no AI, and no other option but hotseat play. I realize writing a Shogi AI or implementing network play are probably impractical for you, but understand that what you've created is basically not useful. Further, since odds are that your teacher doesn't play Shogi, what do you expect him to do other than load it up, look at it...click some random things then stop and give you a grade? He's obviously not going to actually play it. Between the inherent unusability, the fact that he probably won't be able to play it himself at all, and the extreme visual monotony...I don't expect this to receive a high grade.

[celebrinborn]

Thank you very much for the advice.
1. I can't believe I misspelled Japanese, I'll fix that right away
2. The start button would be a good idea.
3. I tried to do that. I ran out of time
4. Once again, I ran out of time.
5. For this I can simply recycle code I used previously so it will only take 5 minutes.
6. This is the first Action Script 3 program I have ever created and my second flash program period. I thought about it and even seriously looked into it but sadly writing an AI or implementing network play is far beyond my abilities. However, because of the medium in which I will present (Basically I will present a power point while I talk about what I did and what I learned while writing my project, I don't think that this will be as big of a problem as it would seem)

Thank you very much for your advice, it is very helpful.

[celebrinborn]

I found some time and made some changes
http://goo.gl/LBsHs
1. I fixed the splash screen typo
2. I made a start screen
3. I found an old wood texture I had laying around on my hard-drive. I used those
4. now there is a restart button on the player x wins screen

Thank you very much for your suggestions. If anyone has any more feedback, I would very much appreciate it.