Elaine's Game Presentation

GamesBy: Elaine Liman

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

INVESTIGATION


Design Brief•Client: Lower school students

•Time allowed: 5 weeks

•How I can prove to my parents video games are able to educate: I’m going to make an educational yet entertaining game to present to lower school students.

•Specifications and limitations:

1. I have to demonstrate that games can be educational

2. Learn to use a variety of softwares in order to create games

3. Evaluate and justify the choices you’ve made during your design of the game

•Unit question: Can games educate?Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Introduction •Throughout these 5 weeks, I am going to design and create a

game that lower school students will be interested to play to prove to my parents that games can be educational yet entertaining. To be able to make a good game, I will have to go through various steps which are, investigation, design, plan, create and evaluate. I will try to find out how could meet my expectations. Since my clients are lower school students I have to make the game simple to understand and not require as much thinking because it will make them lose interest. I will have to plan out my time carefully before going to the create stage so that I can be conscious of how efficiently I’m working. When I start creating my product, I will try my best to satisfy my client.


AOI (Areas of Interaction)

•This project relates to Community and Service because I will be designing and creating a product to educate little kids. Community and Service is about helping other people in our community and I will be using interviews with my clients, researches about different types of games for little kids and my own knowledge to investigate, design, plan and create this product, which shows my imagination and creativity. My own abilities to make a game will be shown from this project. Therefore, this project relates best to Community and Service.


How Games Are Made•I found out the program we were going to use to make our games was

scratch, so I did some research on how to make it and here are the steps:

1. Download and open the software

2. Chose or draw your own “sprite”

3. Give your “sprite” different actions using the tools available on the top left hand corner

4. Press the small presentation button on the upper right hand corner to test out the actions you’ve just created

5. Once you’re happy with the actions you’ve created, save the game and it’s now ready to be presented!


How Games Are Made Summary

•From researching about how to work scratch, I found out that how to make a game using scratch is very easy. All you need to do after you already have the software is make your own “sprite,” give it actions and go back to see if the whole game worked. It’s quite a simple process but you would have to go back and check the actions you gave it a lot of times.


Client Interview•What sort of things do you look for in a game?

•I would like the graphics of the game to be good and the instructions to be clear especially since your game is aimed for lower school students.

•Would you prefer an animated game or a more realistic styled one?

•I personally like animated games more because I think it makes the game more interesting and funner to play .

•What things do you think little kids would look for in a game?

•In my opinion, they would prefer more pictures rather than words and they also like things colorful.


Client Interview•From this client interview, I found out that my

client likes animated graphics, especially because my game is supposed to be for lower school students, animated graphics would be more interesting and funner to play. She also expects the instructions to be clear. She thinks it’s important that I put more pictures than words and that everything on my page is colorful for little kids.


Investigation Summary•From the investigation stage, I clarified that my client is

the lower school SWA students. I mentioned that the program I’m going to use is scratch and that there are 5 easy steps to make a game using scratch which are downloading the software, make a “sprite,” give it actions, go back to check the actions and save the game. The AOI of this unit is community and service because I’m helping the lower school students by creating a game to educate them and entertain them at the same time. I have five weeks to make this game. I also found out what my client thinks are important to put into my game.


Works Cited

•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrFBK5DcAWo

•http://blogs.swa-jkt.com/swa/brianduffy/

•https://docs.google.com/a/jwaonline.com/document/d1RnkoBbIyr9nLi97YsHdBkNDIP1aZHCVtNQCMb3K_j7Y/edit

•Jessie Tania from grade 7 (Client interview)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrFBK5DcAWo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrFBK5DcAWo

http://blogs.swa-jkt.com/swa/brianduffy/

http://blogs.swa-jkt.com/swa/brianduffy/

https://docs.google.com/a/jwaonline.com/document/d/1RnkoBbIyr9nLi97YsHdBkNDIP1aZHCVtNQCMb3K_j7Y/edit






DESIGNTuesday, December 13, 2011

Design 1Pros:

• The typing game could get the little kids ready for when they have to use laptops.

• It would be a great challenge for some kids.

Cons:

• The typing game might be too hard for little kids.

• I might have to re-explain to them how the game works.

• The kids might not be interested.

What will happen:

• I was planning that if they won the tic-tac-toe game, you get a bonus round which is the short typing game. If you win both games, you get 2 points and if you only win the tic-tac-toe game, you only get 1 point.


Design 2Pros:

•Both girls and boys could play this game

•It’s easy for both the client and the creator.

Cons:

•The kids might be confused about how to play it.

•It might be too easy for them

What will happen:

•I’m planning to make a maze game. I want to make the character follow the mouse and try to get to the “treasure chest.”


Design 3Pros:

•A lot of little boys would be interested in this game.

Cons:

•Probably only the boys would be really interested in this game.

•Maybe the kids will be confused on how to operate the car since its from the top view and they’re use d to them actually being inside the car.

What will happen:

•I’m planning to make this game a race car game. The game will have 5 levels. The race car game will be from the top view.


Summary of Designs•Design 1: This design is very simple because it’s basically putting 2

original games together. I don’t really like this one because kids will lose interest. However, it is very educational because of the typing game part. Also, making the typing game will be very complex.

•Design 2: This design is my favorite one because it’s simple for me to make and it’s simple for little kids to play. It might not be very educational but maybe I could throw in some math questions in there. It’s also great because both girls and boys could be interested in playing the game.

•Design 3: This design is quite complex and it might confuse some little kids. I keep trying to focus on how my client wants the game to have straightforward instructions and I think this one will be too confusing for the kids. Also, since its a race car game probably only the boys would be interested in it. It’s also not very educational.


Final Design•I chose design 2 because it’s a very simple game to make and to play. I think that because it’s a very rushed project I need to find the game that uses the least amount of time. Also, the other designs seemed too boring and cliche. This one was also based on an original game but I’m planning to find a way to put my own twist to it.


PLANTuesday, December 13, 2011

Gantt Chart


Experimenting with Scratch


CREATETuesday, December 13, 2011

Lesson 1 (25.11.11)

•This is my first lesson on the create stage. I started on making the maze layout and I made the treasure chest. I found out that it was complicated on making a maze so maybe I’ll change my plan and only make 2 or 3 levels because I don’t have much time. By next lesson, I will try to get my layout done and start giving the character some actions.


Lesson 2 (29.11.11)•During this lesson I actually did finish majority of my first level. Even though the game is really simple, it did succeed. I decided to get rid of my title page because it made everything very complicated. Next lesson, I will try to finish making at least one more stage. I still haven’t finished making the question for the client to answer. I have to think of a variety of questions because so far, the only questions I could think of is math questions.


Lesson 3 (01.12.11)•I faced a lot of problems during this lesson because I had a lot of technical difficulties. I tried to get a second level done but I didn’t have enough time. At the end of the lesson, I finally made the 2nd section of my first level done and everything was nice and neat. Next lesson, I will take a short break from making my game and I’m going to get ideas from other games to mix into my game to make it more interesting.


Lesson 4 (02.12.11)•This lesson, I decided to make another short game because my first game was a little too short and I still had a couple more lessons left and I had nothing else to do. I decided to make a simpler version of hangman with just using points because taking the body parts out of the snowman I made would be too complex. I made my word and made a sprite for each letter in the alphabet. This lesson I finished making the sprites and next lesson all I have to do is give them actions.


Lesson 5 (06.12.11)

•This lesson I finished giving the sprites it’s actions and I’m planning to give them the points action for homework. I found out that the font I used was too hard to click because it was too thin so it took me some time to change the fonts one by one.


Screenshots


EVALUATION


Evaluating My Performance•Investigation: In this stage, we clarified our client, our time limit,

my specifications and limitations, my target group, my aim, the AOI and what my client is looking for. I think I did this stage well because whoever reads this should be able to understand what I’m trying to tell them.

•Design: In the design stage, we had to make 3 designs with what’s going to happen in the game, pros and cons. We then made a summary of each design and chose which one we were going to make. I think this is one of my weakest stages because I didn’t include any pictures/screenshots.

•Plan: In this stage, all we had to do was make a gantt chart and put screenshots of us experimenting scratch. I think I did well in this stage because I put in everything that was required.


Evaluating My Performance•Create: In this stage, obviously we made the actual

game. We had to include a few screenshots of us making our actual game. During this stage, I found out that I had more than enough time to make another game. Since I only had 2 lessons left, I decided to make a simplified version of hangman. I didn’t do very well in this stage because I found it hard to make a game.

•Evaluate: In this stage, I evaluated how I did in every stage and how I did according to what I said in my investigation stage.


Design Specification•From my specifications in my investigation stage, in my opinion, I

did demonstrate that each game could be educational in a different way. My simplified hangman game will help kids with spelling and my pac man maze game will help kids with math because at the end there’s a mathematical question. I learnt how to use scratch because before this project, I never knew there was such software. When I finished making my pac man maze game, I thought that it wasn’t very educational (except hand eye coordination) so I made a second part of it which was a bonus round and it has a math question. I also decided to make a second game because I had extra time and also because my game was too short.


Peer to Peer Evaluation

•Thalia from grade 7 says, “Your pac man maze game is fun but it should be more colorful since it’s for little kids.”

•Jessie says, “Your hangman game is fun. However, I think it’s a bit too hard for little kids.”


Impact on Society

•After I’ve made this game, I have proved to adults even games that seem not educational is the complete opposite in a way. Both my game teaches important subjects which are math and English. Games often teach hand eye coordination.


Improvements

•If I could redo this project, I would...

1. Spend some time going on game websites and looking for ideas

2. Think of an un-original game

3.Make the games more interesting

4.Make the layout more colorful

5. Include characters (e.g spongebob, mickey mouse) to get the kids interested in playing the game


Final Product

Part 2 of Pacman Maze

Snow-Man (Snowman, Hangman)


Elaine's Game Presentation

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