Learn Basic Japanese

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Learn Basic Japanese is a cross platform mobile application designed to teach autonomous learners basic Japanese. It provides users with an extensive course of materials that they can engage with using touch, sounds and speech. The prototype version of the software was completed as part of Sam's dissertation project, it was coded using Corona SDK and written in Lua tied to an SQLite database.

Due to the enormous amount of research into Japanese language, Second Language Learning, Foreign Language Anxiety, Pedagogy, Mobile Assisted Language Learning, Application design, Computer Assisted Language Learning techniques and many many more; the application itself was coded in just 2 weeks.

Sam had never coded in Lua or used Corona before this project. Despite this, he was able to produce an incredibly extensive and user friendly design, addressing all requirements highlighted during the research. The project report will be published and available through Sheffield Hallam University.

Click here to download the APK file, which can be installed on any android device.

• Corona: Corona SDK
• Date completed: Spring 2014
• Project: Dissertation Project
• Mark Achieved: 77%

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Unmentionable

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Unmentionable is an Android version of a popular word association board game. Users choose teams and take it in turns to guess words for points and the first one round the board wins! Certain squares on the board have special properties such as double time and higher point requirements to cross. The game allows the user a level of customisation not offered by similar games through the compiling and editing of cards, decks and teams.

The game was completed as part of an assignment for Sam's final year Mobile Applications module at Sheffield Hallam University. The development process was pseudo-commercial agile development, with regular meetings with the tutors acting as business managers. New deadlines and requirements were thrown into the mix by the tutors during development to simulate a real life scenario. It was created using Android SDK and written in Javascript tied to an SQLite database.

Despite this being the first time Sam ever coded something using Javascript or Android SDK, his tutors praised his work as professional and publishable.

Click here to download the APK file, which can be installed on any android device.

• Android: Android SDK
• Date completed: Spring 2014
• Project: Mobile Applications assignment
• Mark Achieved: 79%

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Sam's Interview

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Sam's Interview was a fun little project Sam undertook while searching for a placement opportunity in industry following his second year at Sheffield Hallam University. Sam found a very appealing position with a company that made Flash games.

Unfortunately, Sam had no experience with Flash; despite this, he saw the situation as a potential learning experience and once he was accepted for an interview at the company he spent the weekend learning Flash the only way he knew how, by making a game out if it!

Sam's interview is the result of this weekend spent downloading and learning to code in flash. It is a simple game where the player controls Sam as he prepares and attends his interview, with lots of fun little interactions, a couple of secondary objectives and a very strict time limit.

The owners of the company were incredibly impressed with the amount of effort put into such a small time frame for a simple placement interview, but due to the industrial climate and the size of the company they could not afford the potential learning curve of hiring Sam and chose someone with a more relavent degree and experience.

It was a very fun project however and learning something new is always a good thing.

• Flash: Developer center
• Date completed: Summer 2012
• Project: Personal development for an interview

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Run, Lenny, Run!

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Run, Lenny, Run! is an iOS "endless runner" style game. The player controls the hapless lemming "Lenny", who bumbles through the forest encountering a variety of hostile creatures from birds, to frogs, to wolves. Players control Lenny by either tilting their device or enabling buttons to manoeuvre left and right while running, and tapping on the screen to jump. The longer the player lasts the more points they get. High scores are recorded on the device and can be shared via facebook with a screenshot of Lenny mere moments before death.

Run, Lenny, Run! was the main assignment of Sam's MSc Mobile Application Development course and accounted for 70% of his grade. This, combined with Sam's love for mobile game development, allowed him to spend a tremendous amount of time writing it and it stands as his most accomplished work to date.

Sam packed this game full of interesting and challenging features such as achievements, unlockable backgrounds and character skins, a wide range of unique enemies & allies, secret puzzle levels, social media integration, multiple gesture interactions and much much more. The tutor gave over 90% for the programming portion of the assignment and praised it as "one of the most polished apps of this year's cohort".

The game was built using Xcode and SpriteKit. Click here to view the GitHub repo.

• iOS: Xcode
• Date completed: January 2015
• Project: MSc Mobile Application Development
• Mark Achieved: 86%

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Other Work

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This is a brief list of other notable works that Sam has created or played a large role in the creation of. They cannot be sampled but provided valuable learning lessons and thus cannot go without mention.

The Self-Resourcing Online Journal

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The Self-Resourcing Online Journal is a website that allows users to self-manage a Journal through the submission of papers and the incentivisation of fair review processes. It was built from scratch using a text editor and Java Servlets with Velocity. Neither Sam nor his team had any prior experience with the latter 2 tools. Sam spent much of his free time teaching himself how to use them, so that he could teach his team and the project could excel.

Sam also solely handled the peer demonstration aspect of the assignment, which the tutor reported "Received some of the best feedback scores from (other students) that I have ever seen.".

Click here to view the GitHub repo.

• Date completed: May 2015
• Project: Java E-Commerce Assignment
• Mark Achieved: 89%

Peak Sailing

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Peak Sailing is a website used to extensively manage boat racing events for a fictitious sailing club. It uses HTML, Javascript, PHP and advanced SQL to create a fluid website that allowed user friendly searching, sorting and editting of boats, races, external events, results and training sessions. Sam had no prior experience using PHP or Jquery so this was a massive learning curve, but ultimately a very useful experience.

Initial website design was done by Kevin Guruge.

• Date completed: Spring 2014
• Project: Advanced Databases Assignment
• Mark Achieved: 77%

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FoodHall EpiGenesys Project

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FoodHall is a student food sharing and socialising platform concept, the website for which was built by Sam and his team as part of a project on behalf of epiGenesys with the University of Sheffield. The project was done for a real client of epiGenesys and full training of contemporary team and project management practices for web development was given to Sam and his team prior to starting. The training was very beneficial and thorough as the work produced for these projects represented the company.

The purpose of the site itself is to provide a mobile friendly medium for new students to organise meals together, making sure no food goes to waste and allowing them an excuse to get to know one another. The project made up 100% of the grade for the module and was a massive undertaking, but provided an immense amount of beneficial lessons in project management and Ruby on Rails. Sam played the role of manager for the team, directing and organising workflow so that the project was completed according to the scope and deadlines, but also took part in more than an equal share of the development itself. Following evaluation by his tutors and teammates, Sam earned 94% for this assignment and the module overall.

The site was built using Ruby on Rails Click here to view the SheffieldCrowd FoodHall info site.

• epiGenesys: Website
• Date completed: May 2015
• Project: FoodHall for epiGenesys
• Mark Achieved: 94%

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Classic Warlord

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Classic Warlord is a turn based strategy board game. The objective of players is to dominate the map of over 600 regions from western Europe to eastern Asia and eliminate all other players. For Sam's largest solo project to date, his MSc dissertation, he undertook the monolithic task of converting this complex game into an Android application from the ground up for an external client, this app would allow players to take one another on online. The application uses Google Play Online services for player connectivity and OpenGL ES 2.0 for graphics. Sam had no prior experience with these technologies and the project proved to be both a tremendous challenge and positive learning experience, as intended. Both Sam's external client and his dissertation supervisor were very impressed with the finished product, which recieved a grade of 88% and the Fretwell-Downing Prize for Best MSc Dissertation, and has been published to the Google Play Store (Link Below).

Sam's background report/preparation assignment, completed in Semester 2, achieved a grade of 79%.

The application is being developed natively for Android using Android studio.

Click here to view the official Classic Warlord website.

• Available on Google Play: Click Here
• Published: November 2015
• Project: MSc Dissertation
• Mark Achieved: 88%
• Awards Given: Fretwell-Downing Best MSc Project Click Here

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