Essay

The DMF203 class has been a lot of fun.  I really enjoyed working with Miles Inada in both class and lab.  During the length of the course, I have discovered that writing games is not one of the things that I excel at, though I am pretty good at coming up with ideas for games.

The final project I created was called “Kitty Pong”.  It has a face for a ball that bounces around the screen, a paddle to redirect the ball with, kitty faces to remove from the stage to change levels, and a star and bug.  The star is in the upper half of the stage and the bug in the lower half.  They move from side to side and the ball may bounce against them to change direction.  The paddle is player controlled via a mouse. The number of kitty faces starts at about 10 or 11 and increases by five for each level cleared.  The stage background is green in color and the objects are all different colors.  This game lasts until you get bored and kill it.  There is no score kept and no life gained or lost, so it can last indefinitely.

A change I have considered making when time permits, is to have the star provide life and the bug eat life.  Life is measure in the number of balls you have.  This change would require setting one edge of the stage so the ball disappears when it hits the edge.  It would also require setting up a score keeping function, and an end game function.  Another function that could have been useful is a level up notice function.

I am pleased with the drawings I made for my game and pleased with how it looks and works over all.  I suspect that my nieces and nephews, other family members and children would also enjoy this game, with or without the proposed changes.

final project

FinalGame.as
FinalGame.fla
FinalGame.swf


attempted to embed the .swf file.  this failed.  the space for it to show up in was there. but the file was not.

project 4 part b

project4f.swf motion tween and frame by frame

project4g.swf

project4h.swf

project4i.swf

project4j.swf

project4k.swf

the first was made some time ago and the last five were completed today

project four part a

project4.swf code animation

project4b.swf code and frame animation
the above link includes the first one and then two eyes that were animated in a different way than code.

project4c.swf frame by frame

project4d.swf tween movement???

project4e.swf 


these were completed sometime ago...I just had not gotten them up and posted.
please enjoy

reflective essay #4

Experiences that stand out in my mind include, cutting the tree after a hurricane, the first time my team killed the lich king in wow, and the births of my daughters.  These experiences all include me and others. 

Cutting the tree after the hurricane:  in this experience, my father directed me and one of my sisters in the process of cutting a small piece of the trunk off a tree that had fallen in our yard during the storm.  We used a special saw to do this and had to work together in order to succeed.  We saved the piece of the tree for many years before it was finally lost in one of our many moves.

The first time my team killed the lich king in wow:  this was an exciting day.  The team consisted of ten people who all needed to work together to succeed.  Each of us had our specific tasks to do which related to the class of character we played.  I play a Warlock in this experience.  One task specific to my class was the maintaining of a teleport circle so if I was grabbed I could return to the fight easily when dropped, while the team focused on the lich king.  Another task that all of the team had to do was stay alive.  As we all worked together, we used Ventrilo for voice communications to let the rest of the team know what we were doing, especially if we died or were grabbed by a valkery.  We had been trying for several weeks to bring down the lich king before we succeeded.  After success we had a party in game.

The births of my daughters:  these are both memorable experiences.  While the same process was involved, there were drastic differences in the completion of the task.  With the older daughter, I was hungry and had no strength when it was time to do the real work for her to be born.  Also this labor was induced, which made it necessary to keep monitors on at all times and so I could not get up and walk about.  With the younger daughter, I had walked across the town the night before and noticed a backache in the morning.  I took a shower and then watched my clock and timed the frequency of the backache cramp.  Then I called my doctor and asked what he wanted me to do.  He requested that I come to his office so he could check things out. From his office I was sent to the hospital. This time at least I was not hungry, and was able to occasionally take a short walk.  Both daughters were born during the dark hours of the night, one just before midnight, and the other after midnight.  I was in the hospital for the three days of the week that they were born.

In all of these experiences it was necessary to work with others for success.  In the first I needed to work with my sister and father, in the second with the other nine members of my team and in the last with my doctor and the nursing staff at the hospital.  All involved communications at some level and in the second, lack of communication would cause failure.  These experiences could be used for inspiration in creating a game that demands high skills in communications.

Essay # 3

My preferred task in the video game production team is an artist.  This is primarily because I am an artist.  I enjoy doing most forms of art.  Photography is my personal favorite method of expressing art.  I can use it to create ideas for backdrops and for objects.  Creating visual references for a game would be my preferred task.

I do draw, sometimes well, sometimes quickly, and sometimes both well and quickly.  I could also make use of my skills in ceramics to help produce visual clues for a game.

collage created by code

http://www.clancrawford.us/images/codepractice2.swf

I used one of my personal websites to load the .swf file to be cause I am doing all of my work for the class on either my laptop or my home desktop computers.