Merry Christmas everyone!

MCTC game presentations/semester over

MCTC had their game presentations over two days, December 9th and 14th. The presentations went well and can be viewed here. I look forward to Buffalo High School's presentations in January, and then Logan and Wheeling Park's at the end of the school year.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone enjoys their week off (if they are lucky like me!) from school to be thankful for all the wonderful friends and family they have in their lives!

Team game progress in full force

Most of my mentees have completely the paper prototype topics and have moved on to having their students start to work on their team games. Team pages are now alive and well with activity!

Paper Prototypes just around the corner.

My mentees are either actively involved with creating and filming their paper prototypes, or it is just around the corner. I always find it thrilling when students put pencil to paper and are forced to conceptually their game ideas on paper. This is where many of your student's game idea "blind spots" can be spotted. Quiz students on the intricacies of their game ideas. At this point, they should be able to answer all of your questions. If not, more work needs to be done to flesh out the idea.

Mini Game in full force!

All of my mentees have started easing their way into the Mini Game topic. There have been (and will be) some bumps in the road along the way, but that is to be expected. It is our mistakes we learn from the most, the things we never forget. So, if a student hits a roadblock here and there, no sweat, once they fix that issue, they can learn from it and teach others how to avoid the same issue.

Progress Report 1 is dead and gone!

Progress Report 1 is now history! Everyone made it through alive with minor flesh wounds. Now we must focus our attention to our next foe to vanquish, Progress Report 2. Make haste! :-)

Start of Fall semester

Even though I am not actually teaching a Globaloria class, I am still knee deep in wikis and blogs this year through my third year as a Globaloria mentor. I always enjoy helping Globaloria educators work their way through the intricate web that is the Globaloria wiki. This year is no different, I have two new educators and two returning educators, and all of us are new to the fantastic changes to the wiki this year. Technology is not something that rests on its laurels, and all of our students need to learn that. They need to be exposed to a routine of self-learning and self-realization as young as possible because the workforce of the future needs to be a flexible and agile one.

My favorite beetle

Seeing as how I was a little less than two months old when John Lennon was killed, picking my favorite Beatle would be a little hard. So, imagine my surprise when I instead decided to pick my favorite beetle and found the selection to be just as frustrating. Based on the Encyclopedia of Insects, there are currently 350,000 known species of beetles, with more being discovered everyday. It must be hard for someone to pick just one, after all, with a face like this little guy, the competition must be fierce. In the long run, after my extensive elimination process, I declare my favorite to be the Clytus arietis, or wasp beetle. It takes a serious case of hubris to crawl and fly around imitating a wasp. That is just the type of thing to provoke Vicky Neal into rolling up a newspaper and bashing your brains out Clytus arietis!

Game Analysis: Alan Wake

I recently purchased Alan Wake for Xbox 360. I had been very saddened by the ending of ABC's LOST, and this game was just what I needed to pick up my spirits! The game has such a great atmosphere! The atmosphere brings me back to my first time playing the original Silent Hill and hearing the static on the radio knowing that some hell-spawned creature was close to me in the foggy city of Silent Hill. The game borrows from Twin Peaks, the Twilight Zone, and games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and the story is fantastic and leaves some answers to your imagination. For anyone who knows personally about the awesomeness that is Alan Wake, you may want to check out this Analysis of Alan Wake's story. WARNING: This link is extremely spoilerish. If you have not finished the game, I suggest you DO NOT read this analysis.

Week 18 - Post class

Wow, this was a wonderful semester! I feel that each semester my student's games get consistently better. I feel this is due to the fact that each semester more and more games are available for new students to tinker with, which accelerates my student's progress.

All of Mountwest Community and Technical College's game presentations are now posted here.

Want to see our students final games? Click here.

Week 17 - Gaming I Presentations/Gaming II Presentations part 2

This week is Finals week. Monday, Josh's Gaming I students did their presentations. I was thoroughly impressed with the progress made by each team. One team in particular, which had 4 members, had an awesome game. One of the members was already an advanced programmer and programmed the orbits of each planet completely in actionscript. I was very impressed with the caliber of Actionscript and design skills that each of Josh's students showed in him Gaming I class. Now, all that is left is for the rest of my Gaming II students to present tomorrow, Friday, May 7th. This year with Globaloria has been very fruitful for both my students and Josh and myself.

Week 16 - Gaming II Presentations Day One

This week, on Wednesday, three of my students presented their Game Presentations. Bagh Nakh Kora, James0208, and KraZy's presentations were outstanding. I am so proud of the progress my students have made this semester, and the whole throughout the whole Globaloria experience. I have seen some amazing first-hand growth on my students' part. Below are links to some of the final team pages if you would like to see for yourself:

KraZy's team page

Bagh Nakh Kora's team page

James0208's team page

Week 15 - Project Deliverable Three Due

Students are attempting get all assignments done before Friday's deadline. We had a lottery to see find the sequence order for the Gaming Presentations that will take place at the end of the semester. There will be seven presentations, so we are spreading the presentations out over two class periods. Next week is "Dead Week", a week that students have to prep for Final Exams. I plan on have the students do impromptu presentations on Monday to practice for the real presentations that will take place Wednesday, April 28 and Friday, May 7.

Week 14 - Work week

This week students are working towards finishing their games. The Project Deliverable Three deadline is looming next Friday(4/23/10). Students are attempting to post all of their files, clean up their team pages, and prepare for presentations.

Week 13 - A light at the end of the tunnel

This weekend, I graded all the topics covered in the Project Deliverable Two. At this point, my students still have two required game-related Flash topics to deliver in a couple of weeks for Project Deliverable Three. With the five combined game-realted topics that will have been created this semester, the students should be able to deliver a functional, if not complete, demo of their game at the end of the semester.

Week 12 - Work week before Project Deliverable Two is due

This is the first week back from Spring Break, and my students are getting all of their files uploaded, linked in, etc. in anticipation of the deadline for Project Deliverable Two. This Project Deliverable wraps up all the individual topics covered in the Globaloria gaming wiki, and simply leaves a push for the student's last two game-related topics and the Game Demo itself! Hope to see you at the Publishing Your Game finish line!

Week 11 - Spring Break!

Yeah, spring break is here! Now I can hopefully "recharge my batteries" and get excited for the upcoming Gaming II presentations.

Week 10 - Platforms part 2 / Coding "Enemies"

This week is the tenth week of class at MCTC. Next week is Spring Break! It will be a well deserved week off! :-) On Monday, I showed my students how a simple movieclip below the stage of their Platforms file can create a "deadzone" for their characters. All of my students now enjoy their hero's falling off of their platforms in their games! They are slightly morbid that way. :-) Monday and Wednesday we also covered the Coding "Enemies" topic. When I go through this topic, I require my students to complete four separate flash projects. The first is based on the enemy following the mouse (as illustrated in Step 1 of the topic). The second is a slight derivative off the first, not allowing the "enemy" to follow the path of the mouse's current position till a mouse click occurs. This style creates more of a "waypoint" effect. And finally, the third and fourth are based on the two videos on Step 3 of the topic. These videos really bring back that statement my high school math teacher once said, "You will need and use geometry and trig one day!" My students definitely used Trig for the Coding "Enemies" topics. It was even fun to switch the code around to make the enemy run away from your character as opposed to chase it. Remember, some old horse caught another horse taking oats away! Sin = o/h; cos = a/h; Tan = o/a. Not bad for a guy who hasn't touched a math book for ten years. :-)

Week 9 - Running, Jumping, etc / Platforms

This week, my students worked on the Running, Jumping, etc. and Platforms topics. We completed the topics in this order because it made sense to learn how to jump on flat land before we learned to jump on multi-tiered land. Here is an interesting skill game made by one of my students.

When you press the spacebar the character jumps in the air. The colored bars give you points. The goal of the game is to keep hitting spacebar to maintain your character's altitude. If the character hits the ground, your score returns to zero. If the character's altitude goes above the flash stage, no points are earned. Good Luck!

Week 8 - Character Effects / Drag and Drop

This week we hit Week 8, half way through the spring semester. We are going to cover the Character Effects and Drag and Drop topics. When I cover Drag and Drop, I typically go over scripted tweening as well. I leave you with a fantastic Flash file from one of my students. Last fall, when John and Benji said they wanted to make a guitar hero style flash game to teach guitar to students, I was skeptical it could be pulled off. This semester, John continues the "good fight" since Benji graduated. He has recruited a fellow student, and John has just posted a demo that shows me that they might actually pull it off after all. Great start so far!


The strings of the guitar are pressed by using the number keys at the top of the keyboard (1-8).

Week 7 - prepping for the Project Deliverable One deadline

Students had this week to get their files, wiki pages, and team pages in order before I grade everything covered in the Project Deliverable One.

Week 6 - Sound Effects/Timer

This week we finished up the last two topics that will be graded during the first Project Deliverable. Next week I will give my students the week to do some "housekeeping" on their pages before I start grading all assignments and blogs Friday at midnight. I have also implemented a Class Structure area on MCTC's main wiki page here. The goal of this area is to explain to any newcomers to our wiki what the exact structure and expectations are for our students during their Gaming I and Gaming II classes.

Week 5 - Collision Detection/Projectiles

This week we covered Collision Detection. I showed a couple of examples of increasing difficulty from my user page (http://www.myglife.org/usa/wv/mctcwiki/index.php/User:Smith288). The second day I showed students how to export symbol in actionscript so that they could run the attachmovie function to embed a dynamic number (similar to the carrot in the Mini Game tutorial). This allowed the students to spawn numerous enemies, and then destroy those enemies using numerous projectiles. Here are some of the highlights:

Bagh Nakh Kora
Use the W and S keys to move your gun up and down and to avoid the Troll King's projectiles. Click the Heal, Sniper, or Shoot buttons to do the action specified (Hint: aim for the head! sniper bullet does more damage than spread.). Be aware that when you fire the gun, there is a delayed reload time. Good Luck!


James0208

Week 4 - Project Planning Pages/Scrolling Background results

Today I printed out and talked to my students about their game related FLAs and SWFs. I expect by the end of the semester that all students will have at least 5 different game-related FLA and SWF files based on the topics covered in the Game Development topics. I also went more in-depth on the Project Deliverables required in my Gaming II class. If you are curious to see how I have implemented this, please go here. I do all of these things to help curve my student's procrastination.

Last week we went over the Scrolling Background topic. Here are some highlights from that assignment.

JustDieuIt


KraZy


Bagh Nakh Kora

Gaming II - Week 3

So far this semester, my students are energized and motivated about class. We have gone through most of the beginning brainstorming activities like Development Plan. Now, we are about to get into advanced flash skills. My students always find that time fun, learning new skills, but I always stress that the new skills are only worthwhile if you understand WHY and HOW they apply to your game idea. Technical skill can only go so far unless you have critical thinking skills to back it up. :-)

Student motivation

This semester, I plan to try to show my students the value of all of the Globaloria tools and try to model good behavior. Why should my students use the tools if I don't use them myself? I plan to also regularly post work and comment on model students who are excelling in a particular area. I hope all of these things start to show that a student will be recognized if they exhibit excellence.