End of the Year Review

This year has been amazing in this class! I have learned so many things and met some great people. Globaloria was just one of the many highlights of my year. I gained new skills in this class that are unique and are part of the 21st Century environment. We started out by making our mini games. I was proud of my mini game and my favorite part was the spinning carrot! We then moved on to making our big game. I teamed up with Tyler and we came up with a bunch of awesome ideas until we narrowed it down to one. We decided to make a game about helping the environment. We later then decided that we would call our game, Don't Be Mean, Go Green! The game would be about helping others make the right choices for the environment. We worked for months on the game. I did most of the coding and Tyler did most of the artwork. After having part of the game complete, we entered the 1st Annual STEM competition. Tyler and I were interview by David, one of the head Globaloria people in West Virginia, and his friend from New York. That was a great and rewarding experience. With our brilliant minds and our awesomeness, we finished the game in mid-May. We then created a presentation slide show and presented it via web conference. After that, we packed up our things and headed out the door into post high school life. I just uploaded the game to the game gallery and now we are waiting to see if we are selected winners in the STEM competition. Overall, it has been a great a successful year and I wish luck to those continuing in this next year and encourage others to be in this program.

Game Presentation Ideas

In preperatitions for our end of the year presentation will consist of finishing our game, making a powerpoint or slide, and gathering a presentation plan. Tyler isn't here today, but I think I have an idea of what we are going to do. We plan to finish Level 1 and that will be the game demo. We are going to write down our plan and have an idea of what we are going to include in our slideshow. Game slides, graphics, game and development plans, and game concepts will be included in our slideshow. I'll have more details when I collaborate with Tyler.

Outline for the Rest of the Year

As the year is coming to a close and graduation is right around the corner, Tyler and I have an outline on how we are to finish our game. In the next couple of class periods, we hope to have our boundary code fixed. After that, we plan to add the trash items to the game and code them into the mini-game by April 23 or April 27. Following that, we plan to finish drawing and coding the mini-game by May 7. We hope to have Level 1 complete and have everything we went in it by May 15th. This will most likely be our game demo for the STEM competition. If we have time, we will begin work on Level 2. I believe Tyler and I can reach our goals and maybe even beyond if we stay focused and determined.

Plans for the Rest of the Year

Tyler and I's plans for the rest of the year are to finish Level 1. We are so close to finishing that we might have time to get Level 2 started! That would be great! What we have left to do is fix the boundry code, add the trash and code it, make a score box, and a mini-game finish screen. We have 7 weeks to accomplish this and I believe that we can! If we start on Level 2, we will make the opening level screen and options. Then we may have the option windows finish, but probably not anymore than that. I believe that we can get to this point if we keep being consistant with our game updates. Tyler and I really hope that we can get our game to that point and make it the best it can be! We are excited to see our finished product.

Couldn't Find Our Game

Today Tyler and I searched and search the 7 seas of laptops and files to find our game and no luck. With the new laptops, we have to get the same laptop with our same file on it to open the game. Even though we upload most updates to the wiki, we didn't the last time because our new code was wrong and we felt that we shouldn't upload it. We now are going to put numbers on the new computers so we make sure to get the same laptop everytime. There is one more new laptop in the case and we plan on checking it for our game. Tyler and I had a plan on what we were going to do to our game today, but alas, we could not find it. We have learned a lesson and will now upload everything to wiki whether it is correct or needs work.

Uploading Files

Our latest blog assignment is to post about our experiences and skills with uploading files to the wiki. As Tyler and I have been very consistant with keeping our updated game on the wiki and putting the files on our team page. When we make a great deal of progress, even if it's just drawing a screen, we upload it to the wiki. Tyler and I have also been involved with uploading personal photos that we took to enhance our wiki profile. One thing I can improve on is putting each wiki file on my personal projects page. I have only recently been keeping up with that and I still slack on that sometimes. I'm determined to be more consistant with this.

Game Progression - 3/11/10

After all of the snow days and the theft of our wireless router, we can finally get back to our game! Before the extended 'break', I had been working on the bus screen to Level 1. I did the drawing, which is not of my expertise, but didn't do half bad. After I finished the main part of the bus drawing, I worked with the code to make the buttons and when you click the buttons, they go to a different screen. After the break, Tyler made the bike screen and I did the coding for that as well.
Even though we have have some minor adjustments to make to our game, I believe Tyler and I will make great progression in the next two months. One thing I have realized as we are making our games is that I am becoming more familiar with code and memorizing codes. I have started to edit codes not only on the wiki, but other things such as my blog and MySpace as well. I'm looking forward to finishing our game and seeing what new skills I can learn!



Title Screen





Options Screen





Bus Screen

Too Much Snow and Not Enough Wifi!

Recently, our wireless internet router was stolen in the band hallway. Someone came into the school, in the middle of the night, on a snow day, and stole our router! How dare them! We need that router! We are so far behind with the all of the snow we have had and now with the router gone, we either don't have wifi for a class or we have to go up to the cafeteria. That puts us even more behind. Even with working as hard as we can everyday, with having 20 snow days and the possibility of more coming, it will be difficult to finish our games by the end of the year. Hopefully we will have the determination and motivation to get them done, but if the time lost has prevented that, maybe we will get them close to finished. With the time lost and the snow getting on everyone's nerves because it seems to never end, deveoloping our games will be a hard task.
I'm hoping within the next couple of weeks, Tyler and I can make progress on our game and get level 1 and level 1 mini game finished!

Video Tutorial on Flash Skills

Our latest assignment in Globaloria was to find a flash tutorial video of a skill we need to use in our team game. I found this video of how to make a scrolling background.




The video describes making an object and duplicating it multiple times to put each one into a new keyframe on the timeline. Then you would create different layers to make the background appear to scroll.

Tyler and I intend to use this skill in our game with our background of trees and buildings.

Game Developmemt Plan

Today we made a game development plan for our game. Here are our ideas on what we need to do to accomplish for our game: Intro to ActionScript -learning how to make codes and put ideas into flash, Programming Practices - practice the codes we are going to use in our game, Learning from Others - learning new codes from others and sharing flash files with team partner, Screen Motions - learning what codes work the screen to move from one scene to another, Making Objects Disappear - learning or making codes that make objects disappear when character picks them up, Buttons - learning how to make buttons, Objects Moving Across the Scene - learning how to make objects move across the screen and in angles, Different Levels and Mini Games - making different levels, mini games, and constructing them, Character Motions - making the character move in all directions, and Publishing Your Game - publishing our final and finished product. We believe that if we accomplish these things, our game will be a success! :)

My Past Year's Accomplishments and My New Year's Resolutions

This blog post is a reflection on my Globaloria goals that I accomplished in 2009 and what I would like to accomplish in 2010.

My 2009 Accomplishments for Globaloria:
1. Learning how to use codes on flash-how to make objects move and dissappear.
2. Making a mini game-how to make a functional mini game with moving objects and points.
3. Getting our team game idea together-working with my team partner, Tyler, on getting our big game started.
4. Starting the team game-working with Tyler to get our game on Flash and working with codes such as buttons and scene navigation.





I feel a great sense of accomplishment from these goals and I'm looking forward to accomplishing my new goals.




My 3 Goals for 2010:
1. Learn new codes to use in our team game-learning how to make the screen move while the character is going from one place to another and how to make objects dissappear when the character hits them.
2. Learn how to use Flash faster-learn how to make codes and graphics faster in order to keep our progress on our game moving.
3. Complete our team game before we graduate-have a complete and functional game with all the features we planned to have before we graduate.

I'm excited about my new goals and am going to work very hard to try and achieve them.

Progress

The progress I have made is learning how to create new codes and learn how different features in the properties window. New codes I've learned are how to create buttons and change from scene to scene. The properties window has features such as changing text style. An example would be changing dynamic text to static text.
We were also told to find another school's wiki and find aother team's game. I found a team from Shady River Middle School. The team's name is The Super Team. Their game is based on a character going off to fight super worm men. They have discribed playing the game to where if you hit your head while trying to fight the worms, you will lose the game. Other than that, the game doesn't have a good plan or advancement. They have a cool idea and great graphics, but where is the game going and what is the true idea? They have progress to make, but they seem to have a good idea of where to go.