I forgot!

Oh and I forgot that I wanted to blog about our presentation. I wanted to say that I forgot that there would be an actual representative from Globalaria at the presentation as well as a conference call with Globalaria listening on the other line to our presentation and viewing it online. After I saw all this I got pretty nervous. I usually am pretty relaxed with things like presentations and don't get too nervous but it reminded me of my internship I did two years ago. I interned at a credit identity theft protection agency for a whole summer and at the end, they had me do a presentation of how I could help with customer retention. I knew I would be presenting to the whole company but when the time actually came I got so nervous because I was presenting to my whole floor as well as several other properties throughout the country. I was really nervous and I could barely speak. This time I wasn't nearly as nervous I guess because I was in a much more comfortable environment but I was nervous nonetheless. But I did enjoy presenting our game to Globalaria like that, it was nice knowing that our game development was important to people for other reasons than just getting a good grade.

End of the Semester

Well the end of the semester has come. It once again seemed like the usual... a frantic race to the finish. Me and my group members were unable to complete a fully functioning flash game but I feel we made a great effort and got a lot done. As a whole, our group came up with fantastic ideas that the Globalaria team according to their feedback, seemed like they really enjoyed. Our game had a great mixture of not just learning the importance of eating well but also raising awareness of conserving the worlds non-renewable resources and simply teaching its players the importance of budgeting in todays world. Our game consisted of a front screen with two types of foods to choose from: imported and local foods. The imported foods cost less money but at the same time use up more oil because of the distances that the foods travel. The locally grown foods do not use up nearly the same amount of oil as imported foods but cost more because of the maintenance and care those foods require, plus they are much more nutritious and don't have the unhealthy preservatives as imported foods have. The front screen as mentioned, also has a oil bar and a money meter. The oil bar continuously goes down with the purchase of each food, more for imported foods. The object of the oil bar is to conserve the oil as much as possible while budgeting your money and not going over the $6,000 budget in 52 weeks that is in place for you. If you can conserve oil, save your money as well as stay healthy for 52 full weeks, you win the game. During the time that we had, we were able to gather all these ideas and begin creating our game but were unable to finish. We discussed with Globalaria that if we were to finish our game, we would have liked to expand the game and make it a little more difficult. We thought of adding things such as other life-altering problems like troubles at work, maybe losing your job which would contribute to losing money. Maybe if you run into health problems you have to cut into your food budget and spend it at the doctor's. Globalaria seemed to like these ideas. I had a lot of fun imagining and creating this game and loved our ideas. I feel our group worked very well together and we were able to get a lot more done than we thought we could. Overall, I enjoyed this game design class and learned so many things. Before this class I had never used Adobe Flash or Adobe Illustrator. Now I know how to draw pictures or trace objects in Illustrator and also know how to create games in Flash. This class also inspired me to purchase a Mac computer (which I love!).

Educational Game

I have loaded up the High Rollas' new educational game Localicious from Youtube. I think it's kind of fun seeing the prototype of our game on youtube for others to view. We still have to fill out our game pitch in the wiki and are waiting for Sean so we can discuss what we will do with him. I have some suggestions that I think would be good for the game pitch. For Learning Topic I think it should obviously be nutrition. For Audience I think this game should be directed towards people of all ages but appeal mostly towards children to teach them at a young age the importance of eating right. For the Fun Factor, I think the style of our game makes it fun. What I mean by this is it is fairly simple and educational, plus it is very colorful and children love colors. The Smart Factor is that this game obviously teaches you about proper nutrition along with the importance of the conservation of resources. The Originality Factor is about the uniqueness of our game. What makes this game unique is the content of nutrition education and environmental awareness. "Going Green" is a big campaign all over the country right now which I think is a reason why this game will sell. We will wait for Sean to come next class so we can discuss the roles of each team member.

Paper Prototype

Today in class, our group succesfully video taped our paper prototype for our game. We used 3 pieces of paper one for our title screen, one for our loading screen and one for our main game screen. We used two sets of foods which were used for the 2 sample weeks we set for our prototype. The game consists of 52 weeks that you have to live through by using only locally produced food or food that is grown by the game player. Every time a local food is bought, your petroleum level goes down and cannot be replenished because of the fact that it is a non-renewable resource. The object is to live through the 52 weeks without running out of oil or money. I think our game is a game that closely resembles the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and can also be used as a good awareness tool for the world to see how we need to conserve our natural resources as well as eating healthy to live a long and healthy life.

In class game

We are now developing our group game in class. My group has decided that we will be making a game that centers around the importance of nutrition based on the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Our game will have a character, particularly a farmer who lives on a farm and will have the choice of living off of the food he grows himself and/or the food that is available at the grocery store. The catch is he will have to make money from the food he grows in order to have money to spend at the grocery store. He will have a food pyramid with progress bar that will monitor how well his health is. He will also have a limited supply of oil that will decrease from every transaction of food that is made which symbolizes the non-renewable resources that you use from the mass transportation among other things that help run this country. He will have to do this for 1 year just as the Kingsolver family does in the book. We are still working with the game and have some details that we will work out but that is the gist of our game. I'm looking forward to creating this game with my group, I think it will be a lot of fun.

MiniGame

I finished my mini game yesterday and was rather pleased with my efforts on figuring things out. At first, I was not very motivated to figure out where to find certain things. For example, I would read things as simple as opening up your Actions Window and I didn't know where that was so I kind of just sat there getting frustrated. But I started figuring things out with the help of classmates. I normally DO NOT like doing things like this on the computer, I guess they make me feel computer illiterate. But I slowly started to figure things out and then the mini-game became rather easy to assemble. I have never worked with photoshop or flash or any of the sort but they are seeming pretty cool the more I work with them. It's something new that's a challenge and it's never a bad thing to learn something new. I know this mini-game is only the beginning of going through hell and back lol, but what doesn't kill us makes us stronger right? Yes that was another cheesy quote I just ended with.

The book Rules of Play is complicated as well!

So I just finished reading pages 39-69 in the textbook and finished the quiz on sakai but only after having to read back over what I read about 20 times so I could find and understand the answers. The book is very complex with words that have definitions with a definition of that definition of other definitions... It's insane. The book almost seems repetitive, constantly talking about Game Interaction and Meaningful Play. It's probably interesting if you can let yourself fall into it but I think you reeeeaaaally have to be into game design to reeeaaaally enjoy this book. I definitely would not recommend picking up a copy at the library for sheer entertainment. I definitely have to say Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a much better book to read. Anything is better than the torture of reading Rules of Play. I guess that's why it's a textbook and a novel/memoir.

Flash is Complicated

Well I finished outlining my Pineapple in Adobe Illustrator which really wasn't too bad and then imported it into Flash then uploaded it onto my wiki account. With the help of Magnificent Monica she helped me make my pineapple look really good and helped me fix the size of it. At first it was really frustrating trying to outline the pineapple in adobe illustrator without using small lines but I got through it I guess. Now I'm doing this Mini Game in flash and even though there are step-by-step directions it is sill complicated. I am having trouble understanding exactly what I'm doing and how I'm supposed to do it. I'm going to need more help next week to get used to Flash. I hate Flash right now.

I hate blogging

Ok so about 25 minutes ago I was attempting to log-in and blog about how I was having trouble tracing an outline of my stupid Pineapple and how I was determined to finish it and make it look perfect blah blah blah.... but then I had trouble logging in to this stupid blog.


First I went into Globaloria and went to my blog to log-in. First it didn't let me log-in about 5 times because it said there was an error. Normally I get frustrated very easily at things on the computer but I remained calm and did something else on the computer for about 10 minutes before I tried to log back in. Ten minutes later, viola, the site magically lets me log in finally for some reason. So once I'm logged in I go to create a new post and I see that my blog is not there and I do not have an option to create a new post.


Now this is getting irritating. All I wanted to do was write a blog about this project but it's screwing with me. So then I see this link on the page that says something like "did your blog disappear? click here" or some crap like that. The first thing I thought was wow well this website must really blow if this happens that much that they have to put a link for when people's blogs just disappear. So naturally I clicked it and honestly I don't even remember exactly what happened but a few clicks here and there and then I was finally able to log into this dumb blog.


Now the sad thing is I never really blogged before, I don't even really update my statuses on my facebook even but I was just beginning to think that this blogging crap wasn't too bad but the actions that this blogsite took against me confirmed my thoughts of blogging being retarted. Maybe I just have terrible nerves but seriously, why couldn't it just work the way it was supposed to. When it rains it pours I guess.

What's for dinner??

I just finished reading another chapter from Animal, Vegetable Miracle and it is astonishing to realize that America really does not have their own food culture. Our food culture basically consists of the classic "burger and fries" made popular in the 50s. It is very alarming to learn about the different types of ingredients in our food. High fructose corn syrup, lechithin, citric acid, maltodextrin, xanthan gum are all manufactured from corn and contribute to the calories that we unknowingly put into our bodies. These corn products are used to fatten up our cows so they can be distributed in large quantities to companies such as McDonalds, Burger King etc. It's unfortunate to learn that our Capitalist system, the same system that preaches freedom and prosperity, is what is contributing to the poisoning of the nation and tragically our nation's youth. The mass-production and distribution of fast food is fattening up our society and shortening our life-span. This is an amazingly informative book that really hits close to home especially if you have children.

Animal Vegetable Miracle Game Foundation

With Sean as my partner, we have decided that we will be doing a game in which you and your family will be will be in charge of surviving for 1 year using food that you grow yourself and also buying food from local markets. The catch is that you will have a limited oil supply that will lower each time you buy local food from the transportation of that food using fuel. You will be able to make money from the food you grow as well. This game will have the hidden message of conserving the world's non-renewable resources as you take a step towards changing the way you eat. This game is derived from the Kingsolver family moving from out west where they feel health is not viewed as a major priority. They then begin to live off of the food they grow and the natural water from the ground.