April 2007 Archives

The first public version of MétEX, my Paris Métro virtual tour, is now live!

MétEX Version 1.0

This version is almost exactly the same as the version I submitted to my university tutors. This is just a conversion, I have not added or improved any features. I also do not intend to add any more features to this version. If there is enough interest, I will commence working on Version 2.0.

Changes Made From Version 0.5
- ASP.net scripts converted to PHP.
- Access database converted to MySQL.
- Database and script character sets changed to UTF-8.
- Descriptions for Lines 6, 10 and 12 rewritten.

Lines Currently Covered By MétEX Version 1.0
- Paris Métro Lines 3, 3bis, 6, 7bis, 10, 12, 14.

Below is a list of known issues and bugs. Please do not contact me about them! If however, you do find a bug not listed here, please leave a comment on this post, or send me an email at metex (at) sblorgh (dot) org. If there is enough interest, I will start a public discussion forum to make commenting easier.

Known Issues and Bugs
* Flash Tour
- Ambient sounds may not automatically play. Press the play button to make them start.
- Station dropbox does not automatically update if the Previous/Next buttons are used.
- Lines of text which include accents are displayed in a different font.

* Flash Map
- Zoom feature may not re-centre properly.
- Some areas of the map may appear off-screen.

* Flash Journey
- When selecting a new journey after having finished one, previous slides may appear momentarily.
- Lines of text which include accents are displayed in a different font.

* Places Of Interest
- The entire feature is currently incomplete. I added it after my tutors suggested that the project should have a commercial stance. However, RATP permission for the project came on the condition that it remain non-commercial. Therefore, all Places Of Interest data is either missing or consists of dummy text for testing purposes.

* Text Tour
- There are no Previous/Next Station links.

* I-Mode Site
- The entire feature is currently broken. Emoji seem to differ between Japanese and European models, and accents similarly do not appear to work. There is also very little navigation.

That's about it. I started this project back in 2004, and I only just got around to releasing it to the public. I really hope you enjoy it and will want me to keep working on it in the future! All comments and criticisms are welcome!

I'm sorry to have to disappoint once again, but the launch of MétEX will have to wait a few more days. Last week, I noticed certain sections of the site had problems with charsets and encoding. The result is that accents are not displaying correctly, producing garbled text instead.

Obviously, I do not want to launch the site with such a big bug. Not to worry though, I am sorting things out with my host, and it should be a very quick fix.

See you again next week!

Well, that didn't take long.

That's it! The site has been completely converted from ASP.net and Access to PHP and MySQL. Everything is functioning exactly the same as it was two years ago when I submitted it to my tutors.

The only problem is the database. All of my backups contain the same version of the database - the one submitted at the deadline. However, it was still missing the descriptions of several (actually more than 30) stations, so over the next week, I finished researching all the stations and uploaded an updated database to the test server.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any backups of that final version of the database. This means that at this moment, almost half of the stations in MÈtEX are missing descriptions. While I could go ahead and open the site right now, I feel it would not give an accurate representation of my work.

Therefore, I will rewrite the station descriptions over the current week. If, by the weekend, I have not finished all of the descriptions, I will open the site anyway, but disabling the incomplete lines.

Of course, I hope I manage to find a copy of this elusive database!

All of the Flash's PHP scripts have been converted. All of the photos and sounds have been uploaded. All of the Flash movies have been updated. All of this is live right now if you know where to look.

The following still needs to be done:
- Conversion of text-only tour to PHP;
- Conversion of I-Mode Index/Tour/POI pages to PHP;

Once I complete these last conversions, I will open up the site to the public.

Unfortunately I still have not found the final version of the database. Unless I can find this soon, it means that some of the stations (roughly 20) will be lacking descriptions. Also, I will be using this blog as a place to collect bug reports, but I am considering opening a forum for this purpose. It depends on the amount of traffic MétEX receives.

MétEX 1.0 will launch sometime this week. Keep your eyes peeled!

After a year of silence, finally an update!

I apologise for neglecting this project for so long. I hit a block last year when I simply couldn't figure out why the most basic of code wasn't working. I sat down to look at it again yesterday... and it all just clicked.

Therefore, I am happy to announce that all of the original ASP.net scripts for collecting data from the database and handing it back to Flash as XML have been converted to PHP, and are working correctly.

This means that all that needs to be done now are a few minor modifications to the Flash files, uploading of media, and it'll be ready. I don't expect this should take more than a week, but as you well know I get side-tracked easily!

Watch this space!