So here's my game intro, finally right? The following bit of animation contains a logo the intro screen, the info screen, and a sample level. Basically what I had done for the paper prototype video, but in flash form.

So, here it is, my long awaited final post to this blog for the semester. You have no idea how overjoyed I am at the prospect of this. Tomorrow evening I'll be giving my presentation thing, so tonight I'm making sure everything is in order to go. I won't say that this semester hasn't been interesting, though I think a better word for it is entertaining. From BSing answers to questions on the wiki, to getting an introduction to flash its been a bit of a ride. I kind of look forward to seeing the things my classmates will come up with to say tomorrow night.

This course has been an interesting, but somewhat failing lesson in collaboration. At least, I hope collaboration was the point of all this blogging and wiki-ing we've been doing. In reality, very little collaboration has gone on outside of the classroom making the blogs and wikis seem to be very useless. I see the point in this kind of work, but don't agree with the way its currently being implemented.

The way things are working, as I understand it, is the class is focusing more on blogging and wiki-ing than it is on the actual game creation process. By just looking at some of the blogs I found links to you can see this focus. They are more personal journals, filled with random comments such as sport scores, or what the author is doing that day. Even the ones that are more on topic (including my own) are rife with simple entries of "Today we _______." The end. This isn't collaboration, this is parroting to get a grade.

I feel that too much emphasis has been placed on the quantity of posts instead of quality. Where's the sharing of neat bits of code you found while trying to figure out how to make your character move? Where's the actual work you did in class? The source files? Where are the comments? Where is the proof that someone else is reading these posts?

Along this quantity train of thought, there's the question of equality. How can you hold a college level student, who meets in the lab once a week for a little over two hours equal to a middle or high school student who meets for an hour and a half or so daily for five days a week? The same teaching patterns really don't seem to work with the two groups. I wonder why?

The point of this is, while I think the class has a good idea to it, I don't believe it is a good use of time (and in a college student's case, money) in its current format. If you're going to put such a great emphasis on collaboration, then make sure there's collaboration. Inter-campus groups via skype or the blogs or the wikis for little projects, or something. At least some communication through a medium other than the course instructor! Otherwise, leave me alone and teach me flash, that's what I came for.

I've been working pretty hard these past few weeks getting my demo ready to go. I'm really happy with how things are looking so far. I have one or two background screens left to make and some boundries to set, but the car moves on WSAD and turns with Q and E, and the hit test and scoreboard seems to be working!

I think for the rest of the demo I want a just watch level/movie and the game over screens. Maybe some sound. It depends on how far I get tonight with my "movie" level.

I have absolutely nothing shiny to put in here tonight to show for my incredible amount work. Alas.

Anyway, I spent tonight setting up the second screen of my game, and trying to get clouds to move when everything else is stopped. So far I'm pretty much unsuccessful at getting it to work. I'm going to have to play with it some more if I can manage to get some lab time before next week.

Aside from that setback, I'm really happy with the way things are going so far. The intro screen and the information screen look pretty awesome. I think I'm going to try and add a logo to the beginning really quick. Hrmm. Brb.

Link to the file.



Link to the file.


So I kind of fell off the world for a couple weeks. Sorry. Well I'm back with a vengeance. You may be able to tell from the post above that we worked on sounds last week. We added a really annoying howl to the wolf, and then had to go back to our jokes again and add some sort of sound. All my buttons make this weird clicking sound now. Its awesome. Feel my enthusiasm abound.

Aside from that we worked on our paper prototypes, of which my video is still uploading. I've been number 23 in queue for a good half an hour now. Viddler is awesome. Check out my wiki page for more information on the game front (and for blinding boxes of green).

Finally we made logos. Mine's pretty simple but it came out kind of pretty. I can never make cool stuff when I need to, just has to be kind of spontaneous. I decided to not put ShinRa Electric Company on my logo despite my team name. Even I can only be so geeky in a point of time. And just now I changed my mind on which logo I was going to use to a photoshop thing I did a while back. Its prettier. Seriously. I'll find the PSD file this week and fix it up to be more logo like.

Okay so I've fallen a bit behind again. These past couple weks have been dedicated to getting details about my game all sorted out. I've drawn a few slides and created a couple of paper prototypes of various screens in the game. I think my level screen came out really well. My construction paper cars move quite nicely over my string pathways. Its a little odd to look at, but the fuctionality is pretty awesome.

I still have some work left to do on the crash and "yay you win!" screens, but I'm pretty confident that I'll get it worked out. The only thing I'm having issues with at the moment really is the "real world resources."

So I was a little ahead tonight and had already done the collision detection and scorekeeping on my "bunny" example. (Pleased note that my bunny just so happens to be a blue square, oops.) So I moved on to another assignment, where we edited a frog game. My version of the game is pretty easy. Those bugs have to be nowhere near the frog to get him.

Watch the movie closely! Are there three balls or four?

Tonight we covered a bunch of material. First we had a group discussion about our games. A post concerning my game will come up a bit after this one. I did a little updating to the wiki before class so I was ready to start my basic pitch.

After talking about everyone's games we learned a little about the motion guide tool, and I went a little crazy with it. After that we started the mini game tutorial. As the assignment we just had to have an object that moved, and one that we could control, so click the movie below to control the square. I took it a little further and added the hit control and the scorekeeping. Awesome.

So today we messed around with the pen and pencil tools, then took a paper drawing and then traced it in flash. I think that my flash one actually looks a great deal better than my hand drawn one. I've always had an easier time manipulating things on a computer, so oh well. Getting the anchor points to do exactly what I wanted them to was a little tricky, and in some places it still isn't quite right. It's just something that will bet better with practice, I'm sure.

Me, being the geek I am did a quick sketch of the Starfleet emblem. Woohoo.



After I did that, I attempted to morph the first emblem into another version of it with limited success. I ran into the biggest issue with the right leg, which is supposed to be shorter than my final product. Oh, well.

Don't bust a gut from laughing so hard.

Right, so I'm way behind with this. Hi, I'm Allison, 23 year old student at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical college. I'm really bad at writing things about myself, never really see the point.

So far the class has been pretty interesting. I really do wish we met more than once a week so I had more time to play with my flash animations. That last one has a weird little seizure that happens every 50 seconds or so. Watching it, I think I programed something into the paladin that I shouldn't have. The pathways of the balls in the first one could have been better with a little more time too.

This past week we learned a bit about buttons (which I need to edit into my story still as well). Not really much to say other than yay, basic building blocks and yay flash. Action Script doesn't look too difficult so far, just a lot of little ; and {} and such to remember.

Uhh that's it for now.

A paladin walks into a bar and approaches a warlock. He asks the warlock for some food, and the lock says "I'm not a mage, I can't do that." The paladin says "Well give me some water." And the lock replies, "I'm not a damn mage, I can't do that." "Well! Sorry for thinking you were useful!" the paladin exclaims. The warlock glares and suddenly pushes the paladin over. From the floor the paladin growls, "What did you do that for?" In reply, the warlock grinned, "Well! Sorry for thinking you could tank."

Now in Flash!!



Get the file!

Link to the trippy balls!

Kind of messy, but not to bad for the first try, eh?