Ingredients

Actionscript 2.0 compiled for Flash Player 8 and Flash Player 6 for Pocket PC
Flash Communication Server
ASP/Access DB

Description

The Klapper Institute project involved creating two business simulations that support 20 participants via PDAs, guided by a moderator using a laptop to control the simulations. I chose Flash Communication server because PDAs needed to communicate with each other real-time, and ASP with Access so that the client could modify the databases easily.

The first simulation puts users in charge of a fictional company. It consists of 4 Flash applications: A moderator client, a PDA client, an ambient display, and a results presentation. The moderator client communicates with the PDAs , and the ambient display via Flash communication server. It is in charge of sending messages to the PDAs and triggering the ambient display’s information videos. The PDAs also communicate with each other via FCS, and they run different mini -applications depending on their configuration. The results of the-mini applications are reviewed on the presentation at the end of the simulation.

The second simulation requires users to man a station on an assembly line. It is also composed of a moderator client, a PDA client, an ambient display , and a results presentation. The participants, using their PDAs, perform a task on a product and pass it on to the next user. The system supports several assembly lines so users can group into teams and compete with each other. Finished products are shown real-time on the ambient display.

This project presented some challenges. It wasn’t easy to build an attractive and functional Flash application within the constraints of Flash Player 6 on a PDA running at 400Mhz. I had to manage traffic for 20 Flash clients that wanted to talk to the server at the same time. The programming also had to be flexible enough to handle changes to the client’s requirements. All these challenges were overcome, and the simulations work great.