Finding Solutions

Having the luxury of time away from work or school is seen by many as just a time to lounge around and relax.  Which by all means is great and often well deserved and needed.  Often though it is found that a break has come and the choice stands of whether to relax or get caught up and not remain behind on work.  Shooter was the perfect example of work that needed to be completed over a break from school.  The break away from school allowed the game to have an immense amount of work completed on it.

Testing & De-Bugging

Designing a well thought out flash video game is not as simple as wanting to do so.  There is an immense amount of flash coding that goes into the game to allow certain features to opperate.  Each flash game requires its own specific coding based on the game actions.  Coding can often cause or allow for glitches to occur in a game.  In order to prevent the final player from running into these glitches it is important to test for glitches or errors.  One person can not always find where the error is located and may want to find others who would be willing to play and help correct the errors found.  In my experience you can find more mistakes in a game when you have another look it over.  In my particular game I saught help from a fellow classmate and game creator.

Action Script Tutorials

Throughout the process of designing and coding my Flash game I have used a good amount of tutorials to help create the game.  Those tutorials consisted of written tutorials and video tutorials.  Between the two types I preferred video tutorials.  A video tutorial allows the viewers to visualize the process rather than simply reading the process.  In the process of designing my game one of the most significant and helpful video tutorials was for a game called Balloon Shooter.  Balloon Shooter was fairly similar to the game I designed, Shooter.

Thanksgiving Updates

Over the week long thanksgiving break I actually took out time and worked on my team wiki page for the game Shooter.  At first I really had no intention of working or even glancing at the team page.  I scarcely glance at work that does not have an upcoming due date.  Although, if work does have an upcoming due date I will work on weekends or holidays in order to have in finished.  I happened to log into the wiki over break and saw a comment from a member of Globaloria, Denise.  She had left a comment on the wiki that I should work on my team page.  After seeing this comment I got to work and made a huge dent in the amount of work completed on my team wiki.

Media Interactive

How I view media and video game design has changed significantly since I began to build and design my own video game. I used to wonder what went into a simple game, but now I know the basics behind it. I have a greater appreciation for the game and what went into the game now than I ever did before. I had less questions as to how the game was made, because I was less interested. Now that I have a further knowledge of game design I am curious as to the coding behind the game itself that I am playing.

Paper Prototype

I have come to finish my paper prototype for my flash game idea.  Paper prototyping has been more helpful than what I originally expected it to be.  I felt as though paper prototyping was just going to take up time, but would not be helpful in any way.  I have come to realize otherwise, paper prototyping is very beneficial when designing a flash game or any game for that matter.  It has caused me to modify my approach and has been a great asset in my design process.

Team Creation

The team that I am on currently consists of myself and my partner Nathan.  My team splits the work evenly across the board.  If a part has some piecing pieces the other team member will help to pick up the slack.  I have been drawing objects for the game, such as objects to shoot as well as the beginning of a character.  I am good at the drawing portion of the game because I enjoy and am able to draw on the computer for a game, although I am not a skilled drawer on pen and paper.  The hardest part of being on a team is definitely not knowing from one day to the next whether or not my parter will be here.  Where is he?