Annotated Bibliography

I need to keep in mind the following:

-What is it (title)
-What does the source suggest, what is it about
-Who is the author
-How will it contribute to my documentary 

EVALUATE

EVALUATE:

Since I wasn't at school for my evaluation I had to ask my brother to evaluate it. He was a perfect person to evaluate it since he is a gamer.

The questions were:

1) Discuss the good points in your game and why they are effective.
2) Which are some bad points and why are they not effective?
3) Discuss what you learnt through the game and how the new knowledge is applicable.
4) Was the layout understandable yet showed effort?
5) How can the negative points be improved.


1) The game is good, it's simple, and I could understand what you wanted to teach. It's also good for beginners who don't know anything about this sport. 


2)The game would be better if it had more levels and was a bit more colorful. Maybe you should have put some music in the background just so that the player can interact more with your game.


3)I have been horse riding for 7 years so I knew all of the things, but still, it was good. There was some basic but good information, it's good for a person that wants to just start this sport.


4)Game Salad seems kind of complicated so I understand why it isn't very detailed but it seemed like she put effort into making it. There is color so the objects appear more and contrast more from one another. 


5)I think you should have had more time so that you could have watched more videos and learnt more about the mind behind these programs. 


Personal Evaluation: Unfortunately I had to leave the country before the unit was over so I didn’t have a lot of time to put in this project. It was hard leaving my project unfinished, especially because I planned my plan when I didn’t know that I had to leave so soon. Another factor that affected my game was my attitude; during my plan I was quote negative because gaming isn’t usually what I do, and I wasn’t familiar enough with it to create a stable and advanced plan. As I lost some of my negative attitude I started working on the game at home because it started to interest me. My brother really motivated me to doing this game well, I talked to him a couple of times about it and he went home and showed me how to do certain things that I wasn’t able to. I think that if I had more time, I would have achieved more and made this game more educational for my audience since that was my main intent. Although, I did what was required, so I'm happy and proud with my product. Next time I would maybe use a less complicated program like Scratch or Kodu, I'm not familiar with them either, but I hope that they are a bit more simpler. I wish that I would have been able to improve my game after my brother gave me the feedback to my questions. From what my brother told me, he said that if he never knew what this sport was about, he would definitely be motivated to try it out. My parents' and brother's feedback was actually really useful, and I would definitely change some things if I could go back. 

CREATE

CREATE:

The tasks bellow are my steps that I did to create my game, some of the rules and what the game is about.

Task 1: I chose to create a game about horse riding for beginner, teaching any MYP student the basics of horse riding. Before I actually started to create my game, I tried doing different things with Game Salad, I played around with it, getting comfortable.

Task 2: I then started to design level 1, before the game started there was a pop-up which explained the rules and how to play. Level one consisted of a horse and the rider in the arena. In this level the gamer had to press "W" (on the key board) in order to make the horse walk, "H" to make the horse halt, "T" to make the horse trot, and "C" to make the horse canter. After a couple of times of doing this, the level was complete and Level 2 was in the making.

Task 4: Level 2 was hard to make because when the horse moved it moved all at once, obviously it is not an advanced game so it doesn't move its legs at different times. Even if it didn't seem very realistic esthetically speaking, I tried to create a jump horse. Every time there was an obstacle the player would have to click the up arrow to jump. If the player didn't succeed to jump, the level would re-begin. This level was really hard to create, especially when not being familiar to the whole gaming field.

Task 5: I didn't make any more levels because it got quite complicated, so instead of making more i went back and added more features to my levels. For example, every time that the player would succeed in certain things, then a star would pop up, or sometimes a heart would show on the screen and they had to get it before it disappeared in order to increase their lives.

Evaluation of Create: I think that my attitude affected my game. At the beginning of this project I wasn’t very positive about it because I didn’t feel like I was going to achieve a lot since I didn’t know much about gaming. But as I got used to working with GameSalad I got more positive and achieved more than I wanted. I think that it would have been better if I tried using Kodu as well so I could see what fitted best for me. During create I really put a lot of effort even if I had to leave the country before the unit ended. Overall I followed my plan except the fact that I didn’t manage to finish it fully.

PLAN

PLAN:

Task 1: Plan

Procedure: Write a plan on what I’m going to do from the beginning to the end and how I am going to do all these steps in Create. Include the equipment I need, any problems I might have with realizing this game, what I am going to teach through it or how it is going to benefit someone else, and my audience.

Task 2: Familiarize with Game Salad

Procedure: To plan my game I have to first get familiar with gaming in general, so I’m going to go on YouTube and watch various tutorials so that I can understand some of the terminology and get comfortable with the program I’m using. I want to watch videos that are at different difficulty levels so I can understand where my game should be at.

The three main videos I’m going to watch are:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-0-mZqMUbY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YhFnT72xVE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7z8pvKvQTU

Task 3: What is appealing to the audience

Procedure: I’m going to ask people which are familiar with computer games what makes a good game good. One of these people is going to be my father.

Task 4: What do I want to do?

Procedure: I’m going to do a list of possible and realistic ideas, and then from that narrow it down until I manage to chose one. What I’m going to do needs to be something that I’m going to enjoy doing and something which is interesting and educational to an audience.

Task 5: Audience

Procedure: Once that I chose my game, I need to chose my audience which will help me decide on how hard and how educational my game is going to be. The audience I chose is also going to be the audience that will evaluate my game in the end in order to give me feedback and constructive criticism.

Task 6: Software and Designing  

Once I have all of the tasks above completed, I will draw out on a paper my scenes and what I want my characters to look like. This plan will also include some of the rules and regulations. I need to also decide on what program/ software I want to use: Kodu or GameSalad. I’m probably going to choose the software which works on a mac so that I can work on it at home.

Task 7: Creating the game

Procedure: I am going to create my game and write a short evaluation on how much I proceeded in that day. In these evaluations I will have to include how much time did it take, what I did, any technical problems I had, etc.

Task 8: Finishing the game

Procedure: Once I am going to achieve what I want to achieve, I am going to go back to this plan and see if I followed the plan in order to so I can give my self a fair and understandable evaluation.

Task 9: Evaluation

Procedure: I am going to complete my evaluation, and write it according to my plan and creation. My evaluation is also going to change depending on the feedback I get from one of the audiences.

Evaluation of Plan: I think that this is a good plan, I think that it is effective because it is clear and easy to understand. It is going to guide me adequately and clearly through this project helping me realize these ideas into a game. For this plan to work like I want it to, I need to keep a time line at home so that every day I can see at what point I’m at and understand if I’m on track or behind. I didn’t make any modifications to my plan in terms of creation because I think that I will be able to finish it on time and efficiently.

DOCUMENTARY- 9/11

Yesterday I watched Between the Lies. A documentary composed mainly out of news broadcasts from 9/11, 9/12, and 9/13. The film shows the media lies that stuck with the public, and mostly the truth that should never be forgotten.