CST 499 - Week 12

 This week was a rollercoaster of emotions for me. I was able to fine-tune the feed display and get it working to update with new activities in real-time, which was exciting. However, at some point, when messing with my gitignore file, I did something to somehow break the gradle build and was unable to get my project to even build on my machine for a couple days. On top of this, because of the holiday season and attending a work event, I had less time than usual to work on fixing it, so I was moderately stressed about the mishap. In the end, I tried multiple strategies and finally got it working, but it cost me a lot of coding time. I should have different types of feed activities working by the end of tonight and luckily, because of the holiday, I have an extra day off this week, so I'm hoping to continue implementing different achievements and achievement types this week along with fine-tuning a lot of the UI design, especially when it comes to event creation/display. 

CST 499 - Week 11

 This week I implemented achievement tracking, which involved handling achievements by type (COUNT, STREAK, ETC.) and began work on refactoring some of our code for use in a social-media-like display feed on the landing page. This involved a bit of work on my part, just because I was unsure how to go about creating the feed without constant queries. I ended up using an approach recommended by geniuses on the internet that involved converting our already existing achievements to "activities" and denoting them by time, for example, ACHIEVEMENT_EARNED and displaying all activities on the landing page. Next week, I will continue this path and convert the events and friend relationships in a similar manner, while also working to make sure the design is consistent across multiple activities.

My biggest challenge was mentioned in the previous answer.. Trying to convert our existing database for use in a feed. Luckily, because social media apps are so common, this basically just involved me looking for examples I could use as a "template" for the desired behavior and adapting it to our use.

CST 499 - Week 10

 This week, I worked on implementing the display for the event page. You can now view events on an "events home page" with small previews for active and past events and the option to view all events of your chosen type. I also started the code for tracking and earning achievements. 

My goal for this week is to implement the remaining code for achievement earning and work on the display and layout for stat tracking. This will also involve changing the way we currently view the profile pages for ourselves and our friends. 

One of our challenges this week has to do with modifying our database tables for ease of use when accessed by our program. Databases is one of my weaker topics, and while I'm comfortable using them, I feel very inadequate when trying to design them. Other than that, most of the challenges I've run into have to do with me being unfamiliar with necessary libraries or functions. Luckily, because of this, I also am learning a lot with regards to Java and Firebase.

CST 499 - Week 9

 This week our team focused mainly on backend implementation. I got approval to use the BGG API and went through the steps for learning how to securely store and use the bearer token. I ended up modifying our service and interface code to use Firebase Functions instead of our original code design and enabling Google Secret Manager to securely handle the token.

 Our next steps will be to wire up the activities for creating an event, finalizing user registration, and being able to view user profiles/past game nights with the relevant information, while also working on the next version of our design.

 My biggest hurdle this week was unrelated to the work. A close family member passed away and I was having a hard time staying focused while driving back and forth out of town. Another challenge was the Google Secret Manager use, since it required a lot of steps to get it working. At this point, it seems we have been able to manage all challenges that have come our way and we will hopefully be able to catch up to our desired pace this week.