Final Presentation

For Game design for our final grades our groups worked on Final Presentations.
This was to be our work as Team Awesome on our game, "Food Forecast." We worked together to make a power point presentation of all of our work this semester.

The presentation showed our progress throughout the semester, starting from brainstorming ideas, and ending with gameplay and how the game will look. Consolidating all of our work, and writing up what needed to be say was a lot of work, but I think it came out looking great.
We had a bit of a set back when one of our members was absent on the day of the final, but the other three of us worked around it and split up the parts of the presentation between us.
A representative from Globolaria was present in the lab, as well as two others via cellphone call, and they were able to electronically watch our desktop so they could view the presentation.
I think all of the presentations on the day of the final were well prepared, and presented very well.
I am proud of the work we did individually and as a class, and am looking forward to working on Food Forecast more next semester in the Flash Games class.

"Adding"

Recently I finished up working on all of the "adding" homework that was assigned.
The adding navigation, animation, sound, and interaction.
I will admit that it was harder than I expected it, and I think that it was mostly because of directions. Once I figured out what needed to be done, it did not take me very long to figure out how to do it, and then execute the task at hand.
Adding Navigation
This was the first of the "adding" home working assignments that I started, and it had me stumped.
When I began to work on the assignment, I had already had the concept and new how to create an interactive button, but when I started watching the the videos that were on the page I just became confused. In my opinion, the videos were fairly informative, but the instructions that followed did not help me realize what I was supposed to do for the assignment. It turned out to be fairly simple, to just make two of the buttons in the file work to go to a different screen, but lack of instructions made me try numerous other things first.
Adding Animation
Adding animation was pretty easy for me. I had already worked with Monica on an animation of a cow that goes by the screen, so I just uploaded that since I knew the process by which to do that.
Adding Sound
This one was pretty fun. I added a mooing sound to the cow from adding animation. It made it quite comical. The only problem I had with this video, is that the method by which they told you to import the file didn't work, so I had to google how to correctly get my "mooing" sound into the layer I wanted it in.
Adding Interaction
The Final project I worked on for the assignments wasn't too difficult, but kind of confusing.
This assignment was similar to the "Mini-Game" project we had already worked on. It was taking an object and making it be able to move with the arrow keys. The problem I had with it was that the tutorial they posted a link for wasn't very accurate to our version. The steps it says to do don't line up with our version of Flash, so I had to take time to figure out what options worked and what didn't. It allowed me to figure things out for myself, which I did enjoy.

Overall, I think that the "adding" assignments were beneficial in the fact that it allowed me to process things and figure them out for myself. It allowed me to learn more about the interface of Flash.

Hurray!

Finallyyy!
Last week we finally filmed our paper prototype!
We had most of our group meet on thursday and we basically all of our prototype pieces together so we filmed the first workings of our game.
It was pretty exciting in my opinion. It went pretty smoothly. We were able to upload to Globaloria.
We are now going to be working together to get all of our parts together and start scripting in Flash.
Should be a good time.

Do Work!

So, we have had a little bit of a bumpy start on working on our paper prototype. A few of us have been absent off and on at different times, so we have been trying to collaborate and work around things to get our ideas together. So far it has been working. We have some cool ideas together, and I think it will be a fun and interesting game to play. We have all been working together, and getting ideas in motion. Now to finish the prototype up, and film our presentation of it on Tuesday.

Go Team Awesome!

NACA

I recently attended the NACA conference. NACA is the National Association for Campus Activities.
This was quite the experience. This conference is designed to educate student leaders and allow them an opportunity to find what types of acts that they want to bring to their College campus.

Musicians, Magicians, Comedians, Entertainers and Educators of all types were at the convention. Their goal was to interest the colleges that sent representatives. Our Program Board at Shepherd which I am a part of sent all but one of our members to the conference. The entertainers and agents/managers of the entertainers were there at the conference to interest us in having their acts out our school.

Along with showing of the acts there was educational sessions. These sessions involved how to do better publicity for events on campus, how to better plan for events, special booking techniques, as well as many other valuable techniques and skills to better help us as programmers.



There was times between the showcases and the educational sessions for what is called the marketplace. The marketplace was a very cool experience. It consisted of management groups, individual artists/entertainers or any number of other groups that had things to offer to campuses for special activities.

Overall this was a great experience. I both enjoyed myself, and learned a great deal on how to book shows and work with agents/managers.

"Localvore"

Being aware of the food we intake, and where we get that food is a growing concern these days. More and more food is being shipped in from other countries thousands of miles away. Being concious of that fact and finding foods that are locally grown or produced is a little harder, but can be much more satisfying and healthy.

"Living La Vita Local" was the title of the "Food Fight" that I attended last week. This event was in connection to the common reading "Animal Vegetable Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. The event featured five panelists that would weigh in on their knowledge and perspective of the growing local food movement.

The panelists included: David Ober, a local farmer who raises pigs organically; Liz Gallery, who owns Stone Soup Bistro in Shepherdstown, a restaurant using only fresh and local foods; and Jack Shaw, Shepherd's director of dining services and also Jack was joined by Andrew Manasicaco, one of Shepherd's food suppliers.

Dr. Clarissa Matthews, who is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Shepherd, moderated the event. She asked the panelists questions and introduced ideas to the audience. She introduced the word "localvore," one that lives primarily off of locally produced food products. At the event we dove into the ideas surrounding being and becoming a "localvore."

The panel answered questions posed to them involving what food they use in their buisiness or lives everyday, and how that effects how things go. They were asked what percentage of food the produce or eat is locally grown. It was very interesting to hear the answers.

Fuel prices were taken into effect in the questioning. Everyone realizes that if we do not change how things are done, fuel prices could directly affect the price of the products produced by farmers.

Many people realize that there has been less and less farmers as of late, but people don't realize how quickly farming is declining. I hope that we all can learn to support local farmers and to try to eat more locally overall. In the long run, we will be healthier and our community will be able to thrive more readily.

From a young age I have loved creating things. I loved making huge Lego creations, forts in the backyard, and any other things I could get my hands on to build or make. It is no different now, I still love creating things. So naturally Game Design has intrigued me. Recently we started working with Adobe Illustrator, and so far I have not done too well. It has been a little challenging because the way the interface and pen tool is designed it is opposite to my normal thinking. I tried to trace a cow, it was pretty funny how bad I was, but I will keep at it. I am up for the challenge. I am excited to figure it out, and start creating some images for our games.

Image from CreativeCommons.org

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
This book has been interesting in the fact of gaining my awareness for local food markets and farms.
I believe that I would like to create some kind of game to gain awareness on the local food and farm markets. A life simulation game to show how to run a small farm and or farm market. The book talks about not importing things from South America and Africa.
I think I will try to incorporate how to locally grow things, and get people to by them. You will have to advertise the market, get people to buy your produce etc.
I think it is neat how time is taken into account. Hopefully the game will be able to incorporate timing, seasonally and such. You have to grow crops and sell them in certain timings. I think it will be interesting to try to get things to work out.

flickr.com/photos/12407296@N00/2817040058
From creativecommons.org.

King Corn

On Wednesday Aug 26th, my girlfriend Brandi and I decided to go watch the Documentary "King Corn" at Shepherd. It was quite the experience. Coming into to it, I was a little worried that the movie might be boring. Friends had assured me that it wouldn't be, but come on, it's a documentary about corn, how interesting can it be?

Picture from:
http://www.allmovie.com/work/391258

The documentary was about two recent college grads, Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis move to Greene, Iowa to grow and farm an acre of Corn. They traced the role of corn in industry in the United States and what it was being used for.


I will have to say, that this movie changed how I viewed things a little bit. I mean, I knew that High Fructose Corn Syrup was bad for you, but seeing how it was made and what it does to you was quite different. After the movie Brandi and I stopped back at my house for a snack before she drove back home, and we were amazed just how many foods had high fructose corn syrup in them.

To see how the cornmeal affects the cows stomachs was pretty ridiculous. In the United States we cut a lot of corners on production to make this more profitable, but we are making things a whole lot less healthy.

As a whole the movie helped me stop and think about what I am eating. Not that I didn't before, but this documentary gave me a more educated look at what is happening in the food industry. It was enjoyable, and educational. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in eating!