Working with a Partner

It's almost time for us to start thinking about our main games in our class. When we choose our learning topic, which we will do this week, we base our team selection on whose ideas are close to our own. Sometimes I select your team members for you. There are other times when I allow you to select your team members. We are getting close to the time that this needs to take place. Have you given any thought to who you would like to work with in the class? Don't base your decision on who you are friends with. Don't base your decision on who you are sitting beside either. It is much more than this. Being a team member is hard work. Sometimes friends don't make the best partners. You will work with one other person in most cases. Your partner needs to be responsible, dependable, and have a good work ethic and so do you. Your partner needs to come to school regularly and be willing to compromise and work for the good of the team and so do you. Both of you need to be able to work independently and to stay on task without someone watching you constantly. You both need to be able to set and meet your own goals. Can you do that? Now that that's said. Who might you like to work with? I have a pretty good idea of who I want to work together in your class and who I don't. But, we can discuss this. This is an important decision for you. It will determine the kind of game you will make and the quality of your work for the semester. You need to spend some time pondering it. So will I.

Mini Game

The mini game is the next step we are taking in our game creation. It is different though in that all of our games will be the same or very similar with the exception of the final step of the game. The coding for the mini game is very important because you will come back to it time and time again as you work during the semester on your game. The hit test is a primary code that every game uses and the mini game teaches it in a very simple and easy to use way. Take advantage of this great class activity to pick up some great coding tips and learn some new ways of doing things in Flash as we complete the mini game lessons in class together. It's a lot of fun and you will use it.

Hidden Object Games Finished!

We were finally able to complete the hidden object games and get them presented and get them uploaded to the project pages. The vlogs are completed as well. It was a tremendous amount of work to complete both classes it seems. Everyone's game is in the game gallery and all of the presentations are showing up on the project pages. It is no small feat to upload all of the presentations to Viddler with one account and to put all of the IDs into the project pages. I took it on as a weekend project and it took two days to complete it. But, they are complete and I am glad to have that out of the way. Some of the games have some mistakes in them. Some of them have minor errors that should have been caught with a good proofreading before the games were submitted for the final upload and others just have errors that may not have been detected to one reason or another. They can still be corrected. Remember the best game is going to be nominated in each class for our candidate for the Globey competitions. You want your game to be the one that is chosen so you don't want to have any errors or anything that might cause you to be passed over for someone else. Make it perfect if it does take some extra effort. Anything worth doing is worth some extra effort.

Adding Game Ingredients

We have been adding game ingredients for a week now and it seems like we are getting bogged down with this. Some of the students are keeping up with the lessons and are doing very well. They have three ingredients or more. Others have one or two. Some are still working on coding their hidden objects. It is difficult to keep everyone together and when students are scattered, they don't listen to the instruction that is taking place because they are focused on what they are doing at the moment. Then they want individual instruction on what they need when they need it. It is difficult to do this when you have more than twenty students. Once we have the fundamental coding skills mastered, working individually is going to be encouraged so that I can help each student or team. But, right now group instruction is the way to go if everyone would just pay attention. This week has been full of emotions in the classes. We've had the frustration of losing entire games and we've even had some tears, but we have made some good progress. Flash is temperamental at times and we just need to know how to work with it and survive. It is a learning process that is difficult at times. Save often and upload to the wiki. Keep back up files with different file names. These are all things that I say every day. Maybe some day, someone will listen. Game ingredients is a good coding experience to throw the students into at the beginning of the course. And, they seem to enjoy it so far. We will be presenting the games next week--I hope. So, even with the tears and the frustrations we've had, everything should come together for a great experience in the end. I have my fingers crossed!