Sunday, April 15, 2012

ART 450 Special Projects assignment

ART 450

1.     Mary O’Garrin

2.     A book of memories as we remember Mary.

3.     This is to be a book of pictures and text that presents the memories of Mary’s siblings, children, grandchildren and nieces.  It is intended to give a real picture of who she was and be a memorial to her.

4.     I have asked my siblings and others members of our family who are directly related to Mary to present information and pictures for this book.  I have given a deadline for when I must have submissions. It is my hope that those invited will participate in the creation of this book about my Grandma Mary.  She was a very wonderful person and I am pleased to have known her and to be one of her six living grandchildren.  While I know how many children, siblings and grandchildren she has, I do not know how many nieces and nephews Mary has.  I have met one of my cousins, who I believe is going to contribute to this book.

5.     I am going to produce a book.  It will be bound and copies given to my siblings, and other family members.  I am thinking of using a 9.5 x 7.5 format for the book.  The book will have text and photos included and may be as short as 16 pages or as long as 50 plus pages.

6.     I have been researching other books of a similar form and purpose.

7.     I have no specific ideas or work to present today.

8.     Issues I need to address include getting everyone who can to actually contribute information in a timely manner, contacting a printer and actually completing the project on time.  Deciding on how many copies to have printed and then distributing them is another issue to be reviewed.

9.     Timeline

a.      1 May 2012…have all submissions for book

b.     7 May 2012…have basic organization of book completed

c.      15 May 2012…have book reviewed for errors and get it ready for printing

d.     21 May 2012…send book to printer

e.      12 June 2012…turn in finished book

Monday, June 6, 2011

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.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

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.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

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.