My Civics Engagement

On the front page of www.mycivicengagement.com, you'll find links to game demo submissions of participants in the Globaloria Civics Game Competition. Play the demos in your knowledge area, then choose one (different from your choice last week) and compare the demo with the paper prototype. What developments do you see? From your own experience in game design, why do you think changes were made (if any)? What advice do you have for this team as they develop their demo into a final game?

I think that their game demo was a lot better than their paper prototype but that is expected. In my opinion the paper prototyping is basically a rough draft so things should change. With my experience in game design, I think they changed things to make their game better. Someone even could have gave them ideas to make their game better and they may have changed things after the made the paper prototype.

Adding Interaction

In adding interaction, I went to google images and I chose a picture of a turtle in the ocean. After that I had to draw a picture to put on top of that picture. The picture I drew was a turquoise fish. Next I added a code to make the fish move so when you use your arrow keys he moves across the screen on top of your picture.

Adding Sound

Adding sound was really fun and interesting. I made a cat howling at the moon. It was cool because I got to add sound and that was fun. My sound is a cat meowing. It was kind of hard because the website we used, only some of the computers allowed us to download it so I had to use a flashdrive and save it on one of the other computers but in the end it all worked out.

Adding Animation

Adding animation was really fun and interesting. The coolest thing about learning to animate was that I learned exactly how to do it so when I go to add animation to my character in my game I will know how and that's exciting. I admire animation in all games now because I realize that its challenging so I give people who had to do it props.

Adding Navigation

I thought adding navigation was fun because our game is finally starting to come together. It was really interesting to see what our game will eventually look like and that was exciting. It was also extremely challenging. Flash confuses me and Ms. Stalnaker had to come help me and I eventually had to start all over because my thing was just messed up.

Drawing In Flash

In drawing in flash I learned about certain new things in flash. It was really fun because we got to start making our game and that was exciting. It went well and I really think our game is going to be a success. I am actually starting to understand flash and how to use it which is very good because it will be very important to know because that's the program I will be using to make my game.

Paper Prototype

We worked on paper prototyping at our house on the snow days because we missed so much school. When we finally came back to school we had to video ourselves talking about the paper prototype. Cody videoed me talking and explaining the paper prototype. It was very productive and it helped us a lot with the beginning of our game.

Understanding of US Ideals

How well do you believe the average American citizen understands US Ideals and how they are applied in government? Why does it matter?


I think the majority of American citizens don't understand US Ideals or they don't know what they are at all. For example, I did not completely understand until I did this blog entry. It is extremely important for every citizen of the United States to not only know what these are but for them to understand them. This matters because when people don't know what they are it is difficult for them to understand things that happen in our government.

Planning Your Game

Me and Cody are just taking turns doing whatever needs to be done for the game. But to start things off, my first task is to design the welcome/main screen. I was assigned this task because it is the first thing that needs to be done for our game. We did not have any disagreements. We get along good and we agreed on everything. I am mostly looking forward to the end result of our game. I am excited to play it and see other people's reactions towards our game. There really was no inspiration we were just trying to think of ideas that were educational and Cody mentioned this and I liked it.

Presntations

The presentations on Friday went really well. The globaloria staff was really easy to talk to and they had some really good ideas for our game. The best one was instead of just doing random facts about the constitution, they told us we should do facts about the election since that is what the game is about which makes sense. If we have to do any more webcam presentations, I won't be nervous because this time it wasn't bad at all.

Playing to Learn

I really enjoyed doing the topic playing to learn because I wasn't just playing a game just to play it. I was learning about how to make my game and giving me ideas of how to make my game better!

Participation Guidelines

This topic was interesting to me because I am new to globaloria. In this topic I learned the rules and guidelines for globaloria. It was nice to have this on here because without it I would be confused and not know what was restricted and what wasn't.

Ideals

My game, Jumping for President, falls under the ideals category. It is in this category because the facts included in our game are about the government of the United States. This is also what the ideals category is about. Some of the facts in our game will also be about individual rights and the constitution. The possibilities are endless!