Mapping!

Today was all about mapping out my game. Laying traps, treasure, and keys for the user. Oh, not to mention the deadly pit I planned to put somewhere in the game. It was actually pretty fun!

I haven't actually started programming the game yet since I want to make sure I have everything I want in all my rooms (18 of them), even though I should be able to change my mind in the middle of it.
And I have a feeling it's going to be very confusing.

Ah, and about the problem I had yesterday. It's fine when I run the program on my school computer and +Chilly C  guesses that I probably ran out of RAMs when I...ran...the program... (too many rans there O_O).

Strange Error Occurs...

Okay...this is so weird, I'm not even sure if it can be considered an error or not...I mean, it's not supposed to do this so of course it's an error (facepalm).

I'm in the middle of making my "About" screen, which has to include stuff like who it belongs to, copyright (Me), year, etc etc... ( I think!). Anyways. So I made an "About" button on my menu screen and tested it out after adding the MouseListener and whatnot. I clicked it. Perfectly fine (although it's centred and I didn't write any code to make it so), except if I close the window and run the program again, press the INSTRUCTIONS button first, then press the BACK button, THEN, when I press the "About" button, the words (c) Vivian Luu shows up TWICE. Not once, but twice. Why? I have no clue.
It's the strangest thing I've ever come across.

Either my computer has gone wonky or my program is crashing because I imported java.awt.* and javax.swing.awt* even though I'm not using all of the things included in the packages. Does a program even crash like that?
I fiddled with it a bit, like making the text of "About" set so it's uneditable, placed a BorderLayout in the aboutPane, and added the "Back" button to it. Then I ran it again. I checked the About screen, and it looked alright. I clicked back, clicked "Instructions", and went back to "About". I would have done a short happy dance, except that when I tried this a few more times, it started glitching on me.
Me: ....what?
My program: (stops working)
And I get this white screen. I click my mouse and my instruction screen shows up. Phew. I click back. Then I click "About". Again, it takes a few seconds for everything to pop up. This happened in my last program so I wasn't too worried. I clicked "Instructions" again and this time a black screen greeted me.
Uhhhh, so what's happening? I move the window around. That works. I click it. Nothing happens. Then I try to click Google Chrome, which was open. THE BLACK INSTRUCTION SCREEN POPS BACK UP.
I click another window. It pops back up again. I click minimize. And click another window. My computer's task bar tells me that I'm still on the black instruction screen even though I see my browser. I click my browser and for a second I see that my Google Chrome icon is highlighted, but then it jumps back the java screen with the black instruction screen, even though it's minimized.
So I started the task manager but the black window's still saying that it's there which makes everything else unclickable.
I try to end the window, but it won't worrrrk! I keep on clicking on the end task button until a bunch of "End Now" or "Send Error Report" window pops up and I click "End Now" which worked. But still.
That was super weird!
I tried it again, this time just importing the stuff I needed, but it still happened. Guess it must be my computer then.

Conclusion of Today's Programming

1. I found a suspicious error with my copyright sign that disappeared after some fiddling
2. My program's glitching and the window won't close without forcing it to close using the task manager
3. I think it's my computer's fault.

Frames and Frames and more Frames

So, I figured out that it's normal for me to have more than just a few frames in the program if I'm doing chose your own adventure... I'll probably end up with around 20 or 30 of them. I'll probably end up calling them scene 1, or something that describes what's going on in that frame.
My title screen is done! It has a picture of a UFO with its beam to the ground, taken from here. My instruction screen is more like the beginning of the story and the goal, which is to escape from the aliens before they preform experiments on your family. I also put all the text in the middle of the window by using JTextArea and a JScrollPane but it seems like I won't be needing it.

The Gooey Monster Arrives...

Hi! 
I think the name of this blog is pretty self explanatory and since you are probably my teacher or someone else I know who is reading this, I won't bother to explain it in much detail. I'm planning on making it a bit like an agenda/journal to remind me to do things and to sum up the stuff that I managed to get done.
Basically, for my GUI culminating, I'm planning on making a chose your own adventure game that has aliens, green goo, kidnapped family members plus a dog and of course, GUIs. 

I was thinking of not making it from a birds-eye-view although I think I should since I have to include arrays and ... yeah. I have to think of some other way to put them in. 
But I wanted to make it like the user will be walking through the story as the character, so they see everything from "street view" and if they see something (i.e a map) they can click on the graphic or .png, and they will be able to pick it up. After that, I have no idea what they'll do. 
Maybe each scene will be a panel within the same frame and they just keep clicking on something in the room that will lead them to another one? I'll think more of that later...for now, each scene is a separate...something. 

The story so far (without the chose-your-own bit)...

You live in a family of four: your mom, your dad, your little brother, and your poodle. One day, your mother told you to go to the corner store to buy a bag of milk. Being the responsible child you are, you go and buy the milk.
Coming back, you find out that aliens have abducted your family to an unknown location!

You've decided that it's up to you to save them. So, you follow the trail of goo that the aliens who kidnapped your family left behind and found that it led to High Park. As the sun was setting, you have to rely on your human eyes to look for the goo. You'd think that the aliens would try to hijack a car if they were carrying three people plus an annoying pink poodle named Elephanté. But everyone has their own methods, so you don't dwell on it.

There! You find the aliens and their flying saucer called GUI Munsta.
You hide behind the bushes. You see them loading a crate labelled SGNIL HTRAE. (EARTHLINGS). When they turn their backs, you sneak into the flying saucer through another entrance since they already closed the other ones. You hide beneath the covers as the doors slide shut. Then when you realise that you're flying, you come out of your hiding place. But there's just one problem.
You don't know where you or your family are.
But look, there's a map on the floor! So you pick it up and locate yourself. Sadly, it looks like the flying saucer has a lot of rooms to go through. What do aliens put in those rooms anyways?

....and that's all I have for now! Time to do my history homework.