The Tales of TakeDown: 2009

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

One of the hardest things to do in this step was to add motion guides to the game. Assembling the game was harder than I actually expected, but looked good once we had it done. One thing we knew we'd have to do from the start was mask each game screen on one profile, which made it easier when we started assembling the game. One other question I must answer is "if you had money, influence and power, what would you do to make an impact for the better?" If I had all this, I would improve the world by helping to raise money for charities that help people effected by natural disasters

Friday, December 4, 2009

Adding Interaction

So far, i like working in class, I like the challenges of finding out ways to make our game to work the way we plan. Right now, we are trying to figure out how to randomly show a fram by clicking on a button. We are also wanting to know how to start a guided motion sceen by clicking a button with actiopn script. We have many plans, and we are going to have to do a lot of lookin to find what we need.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Adding Animation

I am doing this blog late because I didnt even know we were suposed to do it, but here we go. Out of all the games I've played, the animation I found the best was the animation from SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010. Each wrestler looks just like they do in real life. Here is a link to a picture for the game.
http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/article/103/1035969/wwe-smackdown-vs-raw-2010-20091016011501704.jpg

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Adding Sound

In class these last two days, we learned how to add sound to our games. Sound can add a mood to a game and help the player enjoy it more. When playing Conflict: Desert Storm, The music playing from area to area helps warn me if I'm coming up on something dangerous. Our game has a lot of potential in the soound area, but unfortunatly, I'm not getting much information out of the blogs I follow.

Monday, November 16, 2009

My Favorite Part of Class

My favorite thing we have done so far has been adding navigation in flash. I like watching things that I drew move around the screen. The thing I liked the least was drawing out each screen on paper. I'm not that good of a drawer and don't like drawing much either. I like how we're being graded. We aren't being graded as much by our quality of work as by the amount of work and participation we do. If I could change the class in any way, I would probably only make the internet cooperate more. I tell all my friends about this class and tell them that they should try and join it next year. The main reason I do this is because I like the class and think that they would to. To view some of our teams drawings, go to
http://www.myglife.org/usa/wv/lhswiki/index.php/Team:Elite_Shuffle

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Adding Navigation

We have been practicing using the four types of navigation in flash. The four types are fram-by-fram, guided motion, shape tweening, and motion tweening. Figuring out how to do guided motion was the hardest to do, but once I figured out the process, became the easiest one for multiple objects. I'd have to say that fram-by-fram is the longest and hardest. Guided motion is the type of motion that we plan to use the most when we make our game.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Drawing in Flash

We have been drawing the background to our game pages in flash, this has be hard. The line tool has been one of my best friends while making the game pages. We've gotten far, we only have about 3 or 4 pages left to do, that means that we've compleated about 8 pages. Soon, we will start adding characters. When we get finished with that, It will be time to start adding buttons aon motion. We've been hard at work, and I am pleased with what we have acomplished so far. I'll keep you updated.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Technology can be a pain

Sometimes, technology can be a serious pain, like when I first started getting an MP3 player. The first one I had just randomly stopped working after having it for 10 days. My second one that I got was a trade in for the first one. After having it for a three days, I accidentally got a little bit of water on the screen and it somehow seeped in and the screen no longer worked. About three months I finally got a new MP3. It was great, I had it for eleven months without anything wrong, but I got the memory full, so i decided to buy a SD card for it, when i did this, it deleted all my songs and ruined my MP3. Because I had it under warranty, I was able to take it back to the store, thy sent it to the companies workshop, and when they couldn't fix it, gave me all the money back. I curently have an iPod and have had it for almost a full year. So far, it has been just perfect for me, I would hate it if something caused my iPod to tear up.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Planing Your Game

In my team, I got the roles of content expert/client, project manager, instructional designer, interaction designer, programmer, and visual designer. I am good at these jobs because I am willing to search for information I need, will do my best to get a job done fast and correctly, and have an idea. We have some disagreements about who is team leader, but we all take charger when we need to. I can't wait till we start actually make our game. I hope that with this game, we can show some of the problems that gambling causes, and that it can ruin a persons life.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Paper Prototyping: The Gamble of a Lifetime

We finally got our paper prototype made. At first, we had a hard time choosing who would be the speaker for our group, we decided that since Honaker came up with the idea, he should be the speaker. I was the one flipping each new page over, and Brock held the camera.

The name of our game is "The Gamble of a Lifetime". I think we have one of the hardest games to make. I'll be sure to keep you all updated on the work of our game.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Mountaintop Removal Blogs

I chose Mountaintop removal as my game idea that I'd like to do. I had to look for three blogs that talked about my Idea. This was hard because not many people posts blogs that talk about mountaintop removal. I finally was able to find three, all of which seemed to raise points that I see everyday in my home town. All of these gave ideas of coal companies and the ideas of the people that live in those areas. With the help of these blogs, I should be able to make my game as informative as posible.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Imagining My Game

I am excited we are finally starting to make our games. Today we formed our groups and made a one frame flash movie about our game ideas and posted them onto our wiki's. Our game is going to be about the effects of gambling on people and society. I cant wait till we start making the game.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Mini Game

For the past two days or three, we made a mini game. It was hard to get everything to work. The best part of making the game was when I got to play the final version of my game, it made me proud of the work that i put into it. The worst part of making the game was when the code didn't work right. It still never actually worked right, but the class found out that if you right click on our game, and click rewind, that the carrot would start moving right and the game worked properly. I spend most of my free time playing video games. The kind I play most commonly are action and sports games. I like sports games like Smack Down v.s. Raw 2009 and Madden NFl 09. They allow me to watch my favorite sports when they're not on TV.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Working with Flash

OK, today we made our own little movie clips if you will. Making them was hard, but also got fun when we figured out what to do. At first, I was lost, but with some help of Ms. Halsey and other students, it became fun. The job was to move an object we made to the side, which was real easy to mess up. All in all, today was a simple day.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Playing to Learn

OK, today we played games to learn. We had to play games made by MyGLife users and professionals and then choose two to make comments about. For my games I chose Jimmy vs The Splurge and Climate Change.

Jimmy vs The Splurge was made to promote healthy eating. The game uses comical images to show bad habits and unhealthy foods. The designer had a great idea and got his point across very well to me. The quality is very good for someone that had no prior experience and the instructions were easy to understand. The only way I could think to make the game better would be to add more levels to it. I would like to be able to create a character that moves with the mouse and acts at the click of the mouse just as expressed in this game. If you would like to play this game, click the following link.

http://www.myglife.org/usa/wv/resources/en/play/Social/jimmy

Climate Change was made to show players what could be done to help the Earth's climate. The player learns what

could be done to help the Earth by making decisions for Europe. The designer had an excellent idea and was able

to get it across effectively. The quality was good compared to other games I found. the designer was able to teach

me how to play very well. The only way I think this game could have been better is if you had a choice for what

country you took control of. I would like to be able to offer different playable characters as this game does. I

would also like to be able to offer different choices of which to do, as this game uses very much. If you would like

to play this game, click the following link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Ladies and Gentelmen, Start Your Engines!!!

OK, I'm three weeks into class and were finally starting with our blogs. So far, everything has been slow and steady. We created our Gmail accounts first, and then after doing that, requested our Wiki accounts, and set them up the way we wanted, taking a week to do all of this.

When deciding that we had enough time to work on our Wiki's, we took a break and created our Blogger accounts. This is my first post, and I'm amazed how much I have done in just these three weeks.They have seemed to fly by, and there is still a lot to do. We will be breaking up into our teams soon and I am hoping that my friends and I can work together to come up with some great game ideas.

I'm sorry, I have yet to introduce myself. My name is Aaron, and I am one of the people that are taking part in the Globaloria project. I have lived in West Virginia all my life, from being born in Huntington, West Virginia, to moving to Clear Creek, West Virginia when I was five.

The Tales of TakeDown

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