Thanksgiving break

Last week, we did not have school due to thanksgiving break. During this break I visited family, went to the mall, movies, and hung out with friends. I wanted it to be stress free and relaxing, so in other words, school free. I didn't think anything of school or doing something school related. In-fact, my back pack stayed unopened, in the same place, from friday till monday morning. Everyday, i found myself waking up around one or two in the afternoon. I also played Black Ops, grand theft auto and play-station home on my Ps3 for an amount of time straight. I really enjoyed the much needed break. 

I didn't do anything constructive for this or any other class, and i was unable to get on the wiki during the break. Hints "Stress free and relaxed." Said earlier. Now the countdown to Christmas break is winding down now at 22 days left.

Producer or Consumer.

Before this class, I was labeled a "consumer" to video games, because I bought and played them for fun. Now I can consider myself as a producer for that I am creating the games that other consumers can buy and play and hopefully enjoy. Even though my status on gaming has changed, my perspective on them as a producer and a consumer are the same. I still view them as a great way to pass time, to help hand-eye coordination, and just to simply have fun. However, it does make the game more fun and interesting having the knowledge or some what knowing how the game was made. Also, be amazed how the game is only coding and that it is all based on codes.

Pseudocode Coding

I don't fully understand why we need this type of coding in the game any ways. Its a fake code, therefore serves no purpose but to label the codes that do work. In my opinion, when I play video games, I want to play the game. Not go into the coding of it just to see how it works. The time you may spend on applying pseudocode to your game could be spent making your game better.

so Far....

Honestly, I do not like this class very much, if at all. Flash is to complicated and I don't like the coding and all the steps that you have to go through just to complete on thing. I cant seem to focus on anything because of it being so, strict and scheduled. Another reason is that I hate timelines, being forced to do something within the amount of time given. I like working at my own pass and not being rushed constantly. So, so far in this class, I cant seem to like it.

Adding Scenes

Our scenes are basically the same, so there really is no story line to be told by the scenes. However, the different sceneries still make to game enjoyable and fun to play, so it's not boring to the player. Being the graphic designer, it is going to be difficult to hold the gamers attention without a story line, but I am still confident it will be a good game for the age group it is attended for.

The New Idea

So far, there isn't much that I have learned about my topic since we started. However, I did learn how to draw and create pictures in Flash. I came to learn this by going over all the tools available to you in Flash. I traced a few scenes from the Paper Prototype to make the scenes in Flash. The Wiki was a useful source to help me understand how to use the tools properly and easily. Also, since we use the Wiki on a day-to-day bases, I found it was very trustworthy with the information it provided.

Team Super Freak

Learning the Topic

When we started making this game, we thought it would be easy to keep it simple. However, it is still rather difficult. Even though there isn't really any research needed, i learned that making a game revolving around numbers is still hard to accomplish. The course that helped me best understand how to start to create the game was the "paper prototype" course.

My role for The Team

What roles did you get in your team?


I am the graphic and visual designer and the end user.


Why am I good for these roles?


I think I am good for these roles because, I am very good at and enjoy playing games. Also, I like to design and make special effects.


What is the hardest thing about working in teams?


To me, working as a team is difficult because, I have a hard time trusting and relying on someone.


My teammates are Chelsea and Robbie.
Chelsea was assigned the Producer role and the Content Developer/Writer role. Robbie was assigned the Content Expert/Client role, the Programmer role, the Project Manager role, and the Informational Architect role.

My game idea

Here is the basic description of my game idea. My team and I are thinking and putting together a game that deals with mathematics. Simply put, numbers will flash and you will have to quickly type the numbers and add them as you go. If the addition is correct the electricity will flow farther up into a tower. You beat each level by reaching the top. With multi difficulties, this is going to be a good game to help reaction time, attention span, and mathematic capabilities. It is planned out to bevery fun and very helpful for those who have trouble with addtion and some cases multiplication.


What are you most excited about as you start making your game?
As the end user, I am most excited to text and play the game when it is all finished or at least close to being done.

Mini Game

Was it hard to make your mini game?


It was very difficult for me to create my mini game. I found that coding can get really confusing and hard to understand what goes where. Also, the process of uploading all of the content was rather stressful because, it would take forever to upload and once they were uploaded they were in the wrong area.


What was the best part of this topic?


The best part of this topic was the ending. I felt somewhat accomplished once I completed all the steps and uploaded the files.

The worst part?


The worst part,to me personally, was embedding all the codes to apply it on to my Wiki. 

Video games

Do you play games in your free time?

When I have the time, I love playing video games. I personally own a PS3, and i enjoy playing games that Is multi-player online.

What kind of games are your favorite?

My favorite type of games are first person shooter. Call Of Duty is my all time favorite because, it has very good online gaming and the graphics are incredible.

Does this topic give you a new perspective about playing games? Why or why not?

It does not, my topic has nothing to do with the types of games I like to play.

My topic

My name is Zach. I am making an educational game for game design and I was asked to have a topic for my game I am attempting to create. My topic falls under mathematics and to be more clear since math is a broad topic, the sub topic is complementary angles.
To research about complementary angles and the definition of, I went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_angle. There I got information that told me exactly what type of angles they are and why they are called complementary angles.

Any Two Angles That Forms A Right Angle (90 Degrees) 

Game Genre

Alex Gonzalez, Short stop of the Atlanta Braves,
 turning a double play on the New York Mets.

After playing a few games on "playing to learn", I have decided to make a game in the sports area.  Personally, I enjoy playing sport based games, and I would like to make one for that reason. Sports, being a big topic, my game that I am most interested in making is a baseball game. I choose baseball because, I like to play baseball as an athlete and as video games. Baseball has a lot of influence on my life, which gives another good reason for why I pick this topic.

Privacy Importance.

Why is it important to protect privacy on the internet?

In today's world, there are a lot of dangers you can encounter over the internet. Dangers such as: predators, cyber bullying, sexual harassment, identity theft, and so on. To prevent most of these dangers, you should not show any sort of personal information that anybody can reach and see over the internet. You shouldn't put your last name, phone numbers, emails, address where you live, or anything else that can be used to track you down by predators that would want to find and hurt you.

1st Blog Post

What kind of game do I want to make?

A game that appeals to mostly teens and young adults. I would like for the game to have a baseball theme. Also, I want to include music, mainly hip hop, for the background sound. I would like for this class to help me, and get a better understanding about game design so I can continue to do it as a career after high school and college. West Virginia University has a program in game design that I would like to attend. I look forward to the future in this class and all the other assignments we do.

What am I most excited about?

I guess you could say I am most excited to create my own game for others to play. I enjoy playing video games on my PS3 and I would like to create one and play it, giving me a since of achievement by beating my own game.

A great game, in my opinion, is Madden 11, and I would like to make a game like it someday.