Adding Animations

Adding animations was the easier of the two. I knew how to do that a couple months ago and it is my favorite part of Flash. If you have extra time in Globaloria class (which we rarely get) I mess around with keyrframes. I spell my name out by adding one letter per frame. It's really fun. Drag and drop wasn't that hard but it was harder than the adding animations. My good buddy, Collin, who was sitting next to me at the time helped me. Here are is the link. The football ball with the smaller white lines representing laces on them is the football that you drag and as you can tell, the one with the thicker ones is the football with action.

Adding Mouse Input

I have seen many assignments in Globaloria that looked hard at first but when I got into it, it wasn't hard by any stretch of the imagination. I haven't used many of the instructional videos because I didn't think they did a very good job. I used other sources like my friends. The instructional video for animation was pretty good though. Drag and drop didn't have a video but pictures and codes that you could copy and paste to the actions layer to your scene. My friend Collin did a pretty good drag and drop. I don't know what the cup's for but it caught my eye. Without further ado, here it is.

Staying Caught Up

Is it me or is it really hard to stay caught up in Globaloria? I think it's pretty hard. I manage though. It takes lots of hard work and time though. One thing is that I have to go to lunch ZAP (Zeroes aren't permitted). I'm not going there because I have zeroes. I'm going there to prevent zeroes. It works pretty well too. I also seperate myself from the rest of the class. By doint that, I don't goof off or anything. The nearest person to me is two seats away.

Working With Buttons

Trying to get buttons to work wasn't that fun for me. It didn't take me that long to do though. It just seemed like a while because of how much I anticipated it. Now, adding buttons to scenes is easy and fun. I still have questions though. I noticed that when you copied and pasted a code from the Wiki Tips place on myglife.org, it only showed two codes but I think that I can get it to work. I've had doubts about many things in Globaloria this year. How am I going to do this? How am I going to do that? In the end though everytime, it worked for me. I definitley had doubts about adding buttons but I got into business (I couldn't think of anything else to say).

My Christmas Break

We have many Christmas traditions at our house. One is on Christmas Eve we always eat dinner at the Chinese restaurant in Lewisburg. We also travel the day after Christmas or someone comes to our house so we're always with family during the holidays. Christmas for us doesn't have as many traditions as Thanksgiving does but they are still great traditions. We also always go to the 5:45 Christmas Eve mass at our church. The only year we didn't go was I think 5 years ago when we showed up at the wrong Catholic church since there is 3 in Greenbrier County. We also spend time with family and friends on New Years. We usually go to a suburb of Richmond, VA called Glen Allen. There are some unfortunate traditions that happen that we don't want to. Every year, someone in my family gets sick. One year, everyone but my dad got sick. That's 4 out of 5 people. This year I was the only one to catch it though. I wish it were someone else though.

Drawing Scenes

This is the part of Globaloria that I enjoy the most. It is the making of scenes and making them work. I am definatly going to add more buttons to my main screen because I have learned a lot more as my time in Globaloria has gone on. I used Wikipedia a lot in the researching of my social issue. It was very accurate and it really helped me understand the topic of sports injuries better. I also used websites that talked about reducing the risk of an injury caused by a sporting activity. I've already drawn a scene for my game that's supposed to be the scene where you choose what you want do to like playing the game, a help screen, a team choice scene, and so on. Here's the scene. I'm definatly going to add to it but for right now it will do. I also don't have buttons working yet but I will get there as soon as possible.

Video Blog

As you might be able to tell, messed up at the beginning of the video by laughing. I do that in almost anything that is put on camera. The only reason why she didn't start over was because I had had many outtakes before becasue of a giggle attack so she kind of got sick of it after a while so she kept going. I expected it too. You'll notice how I'm holding a piece of paper which included my responses for the question my teacher was asking. Naturally, I barely used them at all. It's just something I've always done. Since I always do that you're probably asking why I even bother answering the questions on a piece of paper. Well, I can't completely wing something right out of the top of my head. I need some prior knowledge about what I'm going to say and I used that paper for reference. Well, enough with the chit-chat. Here's the video.

   The Big Idea: Describe your team's game topic. What is the most important concept you want your players to learn?

   My game topic is sports injuries. The concept I want to enforce the most is order of operations because many kids that I know struggle with that topic and if you don’t learn order of operations, it’s going to be very hard to do other math above order of operations.

  Making Decisions as a Team: How did your individual ideas from "Imagining Your Game" come together for your team game topic? How did your team decide the topic?

  When I was doing Imagining Your Game, I had just decided that sports injuries was going to be my social issue because of all of the injuries that were going on currently at that time. Some of those can be career-enders.

  Roles & Responsibilities: Tell us more about your team process. Please each talk about your specific roles, and how you work together.

  Since we are not in groups and we are by ourselves, everything is our responsibility. I like that better because there’s no arguing over what you want someone to do and what you have to do.

  Research: What kind of research went into the way you will express the game topic?

  Wikipedia played a huge part in the researching of my game topic. It was very useful and accurate because I had prior knowledge of that topic and it all was on there. I knew about concussions and ACL tears and all of that kind of stuff.

  The User Experience: Explain the game play. What actions does the player take in the game? Has this changed since you first started planning your game? Why?

  The player in my game has to answer order of operations questions and after they answer it they get an opportunity to run with the football. You cannot run out of bounds and if you get tackled, depending on whether you got the problem right or not you get injured or depending on what spot they hit you at, you will be alright. It has not changed from the start, my idea of the game play because I felt that I had a great idea that will teach the game players more about football, order of operations, and sports injuries.

  Mastering Flash: What Flash resources have been most helpful in your learning so far, and why? How did you locate these resources?

  The Flash movies on the actual Flash program have helped me the most because when I’m in the middle of making a scene with movement, I can see my progress and if I have something wrong I will be able to fix it to where I can make it better so I’m learning from my mistakes. I located these resources from Mrs. Sheppard’s tutorial on Flash.

  Overcoming Challenges: What curriculum topic has been most difficult for you so far? How did you overcome this difficulty?

  I think staying caught up with the rest of the class has been the most difficult for me so I have had to come in for lunch zap away from my friends to work on my Globaloria work. It has paid off though and now I am caught up.