In the beginning of this course, I was in a group with Ivo and Gary. We were given the learning subject of Tension and Compression. As a group, Gary and I were in class a lot, brainstorming ideas and testing out games that had a similar design to what we had in mind for our game artefact. We came up with many ideas and picked out a few reasonable ones. Unfortunately, our group wasn’t to last, as because of the infrequency of Ivo’s attendance, the group disbanded and merged into some of the others. The disbanding was decided by the agreement that it would be too strenuous to do the given assignment with only two members.

I was accepted into the Apollenations group, which consisted of David, Jio and Charles. Not wanting to waste any time, I discussed with the group to find out what duties I would receive in the team. Since all of the creative input tasks were taken up; as Jio, David and Charles had already decided the games design, with Jio as the game’s artist/designer and team head, David as the appointed game programmer and game artefact designer and Charles as the team’s audio technician and quiz writer, I was assigned the task of creating the groups game design document.

At the time, I was sure that it was best if I were to be the one to design the game’s design document, which would allow me to gain an understanding of how the group worked and their direction (because, at this point, all the groups had undergone their brainstorming phase and were on the same wavelength).

Unfortunately, I only realized late into the game’s production, that I, as a group member, would have had no creative input to the game, and would not be able to get much credit for any of the work. I thus began to inquire more and input ideas and try to test out the game as much as possible.

Regrettably, just before getting to start with this, I was stricken with illness and missed out on quite a few group discussions, throwing me out of sync with the group’s work. Reflecting back onto it, I could have dealt with it much better, but I had missed too much of the interaction with the group. So it may have seemed like I wasn’t even doing much in the group. On top of that, I was also booked to abroad, and to arrive not too late into the start of the next semester; this, on top of my absences had alienated me from the group.

But I would not let that deter me. I continued to test and input as much as I could. Testing and evaluating as much of the game as I could, so that I would be able to add that research to my role in the team.

Looking back at what I had managed to get done, I did not have a very creative role in the group, but I have strived hard with what I DID have. And I have worked it as hard as I could to get it to a presentable standard.

I have learnt much from my experiences in this group, and it has allowed me to understand the value of the individual work of the members of the group and of the join effort that it took to bring the game to the standard that it is.

Both Jio and David were very professional with their time constraints when working their respective team roles, and Charles, although I was worried in the beginning that there wouldn’t be a lot coming from him, my worries were groundless, and he had managed his time well to give a lot of improvement to the game and its work overhaul.

Today’s presentation went really well for us in my opinion. Aside from the fact that we ran over the time during the presentation (this was mainly because we also had individual presentations to be shown as well).

Though the overall presentation was thorough, the individual presentations caused far too much overtime and we were over by twice the max timelimit.

With that said, our presentation was a tad shakey at times, we held strong, and (because of our excessive overtime) I was not able to present my side of the work. I feel that it went well for the work regardless.

There have been a cancellation for my flight back to London due to weather conditions. So I could be delayed up to Saturday. But there are hopes for a flight for tomorrow in the morning. I have booked it and hope to be in time for the presentations on the Friday.

I should be coming back from abroad in 2 days.

With everything written down, all that is needed is to reconsult with David, Jio and Charles and make sure that all my information is accurate.

Once that is done, I will use the in-game images taken from screenshots of the actual game artefact and concept art from Jio to brighten up and integrate the visual element of the Design Document.

Though I haven’t much creative contribution, I have a good understanding for the structure of my design document.

I will divide up the document by:

• Its Main Features
• The Target Audience
• The Game’s Genre
• The Player’s Motivation
• Design Goals
• Characters
• Gameplay Brief
• The Game’s Structure
• Game Controls
• Objectives
• Audio
• Improvements and Changes
• References and Credits

As I already have all the information recorded, I will now begin tidying up the document.

I am currently abroad at the moment, but I have managed to contact David about the game artefact. I wanted to get a better feel for how the game ran, and have not had the chance to playtest the game itself yet.

David has recently sent me the game artefact, and I have managed to educate myself with its workings.

It runs well, but I do have slight problems with the manouverablity, but it hasn’t hampered the gameplay experience. I have a good outlook for the finished artefact.

The artwork Jio has used for the game integrates well with the audio that Charles has found. So their collaboration has allowed for better immersion whilst playing and learning.

I have spoken to my group about the vacation I will be taking in 2 days time. I’ve been consulting with Charles about the audio that he will be using for the in-game background music.

Coinciding with the cartoony theme, its been decided that the music should have a warm and summer-like feel to it.

Jio has currently just finished some artwork for the background and given them over to David to weave into the flash game document.

Interestingly, there have been some enemies added to give some threat to Buzz Bee and his companions.

Firstly, we have a Butterfly

Then we have the Earwig,

Fearsome…

The game will be presented visually with a slight cartoon-ish tinge, and run much like how a story would.

Use of the game sequences will be integrated at frequent intervals during story’s narrative and learning sections.

Much like a slideshow presentation.

The game that has been laid out (as I see it) would be a blend of mazes, puzzles, quizzes and learning.

The game itself will be centered around guiding a bee around a maze, and picking up different other bees and bringing them with you towards the goal, which changes from leaving the hive to go to collect the nectar from the flowers, to bringing yourself and the other bees back to the hive safely, avoiding the dangers of a bee’s predators.

The another part of the in-game mechanics would be the nectar collection part, where the young player will point and click on different and varying flowers. The flowers that the player clicks on will either be occupied by other insects, or not. Should they be free of any other insects, then the player will be able to proceed to the next stage in the game; whereas if the flower IS occupied, then the insect occupying the flower will show themselves, and then some information will be given on the the properties of these insects and their dealings and reasons for collecting the nectar.

The final part in interactive sessions would be the quizzes that would be included in-between the gaming parts of the game. Before the quiz is given, the relative and concise information so that the player may answer the questions without too much difficulty.

This week, my group has just done their group presentation. I so far, I’m still trying to understand how the work is going to be done and the presentation that was made allowed me to get a better understanding of the way bees collect nectar.

By unspoken consent, the group that I was in was disbanded, because of a lack of attendance by one of the group’s members.

Because of this, I have been assimilated into Jio, David and Charles’ group, which have been assigned the KS3 subject of Nectar Collection. The game has been titled Nectar Collector, and I have been given the task of creating the design document for it.

I will begin by compiling the information given to me by my other group members, either through them directly or via their blogs.

I will take from Jio’s Blog:

http://nequisan.wordpress.com/

David’s Blog:

http://biolam.livejournal.com/

And Charles’ Blog:

http://fuzzywuzzyness.livejournal.com/

After recognising that we would not want to get ahead of ourselves and just dive into the game, we discussed the different types of aesthetics that would be included under “Tension and Compression”, we came up with a list of ideas.

With these range of ideas down on paper, we considered the types of learning games we could base around the differing ranges of Tension and Compression.

Afterwards, we went full roundabout…

We then continued to look at the types of physics engines that we could use in the creation of our learning game. To help choose, we tried out different flash games that already utilised the Flash game engines, and tested each one to see which would suit our game best.

After this was completed, we began to work on our ideas, singling out the games that wouldn’t be useful to the learning of the KS3 children, to the consideration of which game would be the most effective learning tool when trying to teach children about Tension and Compression.

We will now continue to finalise the initial idea, pitch our ideas before the class, and begin assigning our team roles.