Last day of the term!

Today is a half day and it is our final day before the holidays. We started off doing a Christmas quiz about Christmas movies. I do not watch Christmas movies so I had no clue on most of the films. In the end I got 4/10 what was ok as most of the people got 4 or 5.

Next I moved onto my game. I managed to finish the first level and I have started working the second level. I also worked on a background however it did not fit in with the game and it made it harder to see. I was having a bug with the enemies going through the platforms so I managed to fix that. The problem was that I did not add the collision with those items.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

More game development

I started off today working on my instruction screen. I needed to import this into Game Maker then edit around it so it looks good. This took me quite a bit of time as the magic wand once again missed quite a lot so I was rubbing out the white parts. I managed to do this and then add in the button for the help menu and it all works fine now.

After that I worked on enemies so they killed me and they bounced off the walls. I had a problem as they just fell off so I had to make an invisible wall so they did not disappear. Now the enemies also kill you and send you back to the start of the current room.

I also started to design my levels. I have managed to do half of level one and I will finish off the rest of the levels on Thursday. I also set up the power up so you can now have a jump boost in the game. I have not made it for the character to change so I will try that on Thursday.

More game designing!

We started off today updating our personal development plans. I had managed to finish most of my goals however I just need to finish off my work and resubmit that. I also have been proof reading my work so hopefully I have less grammar issues. My goal for this week is to get my work sent back and have my enemies working better.

After that I moved onto working on my enemies. I had some issues with them before so I redesigned the code so they worked better however I just need to sort out the speed and they make the player go back to the start. This will not take too long so I will finish it tomorrow.

Then I worked on my start and help screens. These were quite time consuming however in the end I managed to do it. The magic wand tool in Game Maker left quite a bit of white blocks so I had to manually rub out them for the start menu. I have not yet added in the help section as I only finished it before break. Tomorrow I will add in the help menu and start to design some of my levels.

I am happy with my progress  today and I will hopefully manage to make the first level tomorrow. Hopefully all the enemies will work correctly and send the player back to the start as well.

Friday!

Today is submission for assignment two. I have nearly done finished it off so I will do that later tonight. All I have left is a little on my report and I need to add in my storyboard. I will also proof read my work so I know it is alright then I will submit it all.

I started off working on my report what was quite confusing at the start but then I worked out how to do it and I managed to finish it. I will add a little more detail and proof read it to make sure. I also added in some more information into my data type table.

Then I started working on my game. I did some more research into the camera bug then I finally found a fix. I had wrote in some of the information wrong so now it works properly. I also managed to make moving enemies and spikes that kill you when you fall on them. I am happy with my progress with my game so far and I will start to make up the game on Monday.

Quiz!

Today we started off with the quiz. This quiz was designed by Billy as he had lost the week before. The video we were watching was about a games designer who before wanted to be an English teacher. I managed to get 7.5 / 10 however I did not come first but at least the usual people did not win. Next week the quiz is being made by Chris as he came last.

After that we moved on with working on our design log as that is due in tomorrow. I have nearly finished the design log. I only have to write the report so I will do that tomorrow morning then I will send it off.

Then I started work on my game. My main aim today was to make the player move left and right and try to fix the shaking camera. I managed to add in the characters moving left and right so now when I press the direction it changes to look there. At the start it did not work but in the end I managed to get it to work. I did not fix the screen shaking thing so I have left it for now and I will try to work it out tomorrow. I made the spike asset as well so I will make it reset the game tomorrow as well.

Designing the game!

Today's main aim was to start designing our game. I had a little bit to do on my design log then I could start designing my game on GameMaker.

I started off adding more information into my design log. I had to write the pseudocode what I do not like to do at all. I only needed to write a little bit of code so it was fine. I managed to finish the code quite quickly so I could start working on my game.

I did not start designing my game straight away as I wanted to get some more practice in. I had followed a guide for the code so I could write the pseudocode and have my player moving on the level. I finished  the tutorial and I understood more so I started to work on my game.

Then I worked on my game design what was quite confusing at the start. This is because the assets were quite blurry and they did not fit on the screen properly. I fixed the blurry assets by changing a setting so it worked fine now. I set up a view so the camera could easily follow the player around. This is so it is easier to understand where you are and it is more interesting when you are walking around.

Overall I am happy with my progress today and I hopefully will get some more done on Thursday. Tomorrow I will design the asset for the spikes so there is a way to die. Also I will look for how to get the enemies so they can kill you and move around.

Assignment two

We started off today refreshing our mind on pseudocode. I do not like pseudocode and I was hoping that we did not have to do anymore pseudocode however we need to for the game design. I do not like pseudocode however I do understand it so it is not so bad. We did some simple pseudocode just to refresh our memories just in case we have forgotten. 

After that we had to do our personal development plan for this week. This is a weekly task for unit one and we have to do it for assignment three. We have to make some SMART targets to work for and I have managed to do two out of my three targets this week.

Then we worked on assignment two. I started off working on my storyboard as I did not finish all of it before. I managed to finish that and went over it in pen so it is better to photocopy in. This is so I can add it into my design log. After that I worked on my design log some more and added in more detail and wrote out the action list. 

Designing the game!

Today our main aim was to start designing our game and write our design specification. Some people have started to create their game however they are making their design log as they go along. I might have to edit it as I might include more than I have written.

First off we started with a little table discussion about the things we need to include in our design log and in our work for assignment two task one. This task is designing the game so I am excited for it and I'm hoping the game will work in the end. I had to design another enemy for it so I chose to create a monkey as it was quite easy to do and I found a guide to design it.

After that I worked on drawing out my storyboard. I am not too good at drawing so my storyboard is not the best. I am happy with what I did and I have nearly finished the design of it. I will finish it off on Monday.

Overall I am happy with what I have done today and I hope to start designing my game on Monday. I have some experience with GameMaker so I should be good with designing it.

Quiz

We started off today with the quiz. This week Zoe made the quiz as she forgot to write down who lost last weeks quiz. This quiz was about self driving cars what is quite an interesting invention. In the end I got 5/12 but I was not last! It was a fun quiz and it is a nice weekly thing to do to break up the week.

After that we carried on working on assignment one task one. I have now finished that and I have moved onto task two. Task two is about different genres of games and different platforms. I think I will find this quite easy as I know many different game genres and I finish this unit quite fun.

This has been a good day and I am happy with all my progress today and I have finished half of my game genres. Tomorrow I will try to finish all of the genres and work on most of the different platforms.

Tuesday

We started off today with a little group activity to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of gaming. We were writing the advantages and then we had to feed back to the other advantages group. After that we wrote them on all a piece of paper and read them out to the class.

Then we discussed all of the different factors. This is for assignment one task one and I found it quite interesting. I never knew there were so many different factors about it. After we had discussed all the different factors we started to work on task one. I found task one quite easy and I have nearly finished it.

This day have been quite interesting and I am happy with my progress today. I will finish off task one tomorrow and also start my report for unit one. The deadline is for Friday so I should be able to meet it.

New unit!

Today was a new unit. We finished off the last unit on Friday and we have moved onto games development. I have been looking forward to this unit because game design is a fun unit and I have always wanted to learn more about designing games and how to do it.

The program we are using for game design is GameMaker. I have used this program before about three years ago so I have some knowledge of how it works. Before I made a platform game and that worked well but now the whole program is quite different. It has a different design however I enjoyed playing around with the program.

We were given a tutorial about a simple game. Some people were getting confused with it but in the end we all managed to finish the program. Some people did add more after the tutorial such as a background and some background music. I did not do too much and I started to work on a different game however  I did not get too far with it.

Overall I am happy with today and I am excited for the unit ahead. I cannot wait to learn more about GameMaker and make our games. I will download GameMaker tonight so I can work from home and also practice from home.

Quiz!

We started the day with the quiz. This was written by Ashley and it was quite interesting. I was not paying full attention to the video so I missed some questions such as the name of the presenter. In the end I ended up 10/14 what I was pleased with. Sadly I did not come first but I did not come last what is good.

After that I moved onto working on assignment work. I worked on assignment two some more and added more detail into the different sections. Now it has more information in it and it is clearer to read. Before there was only one or two sentences for each learning style so I did some research and added some more information into it. Also I had a look through my presentation to check if it was all fine and I think it is. I will be presenting it tomorrow if my throat is better but I am not sure yet.

Overall I am happy with my progress today and I hope that my throat is better to present tomorrow so I can work on assignment two and hopefully finish it off for tomorrow.

Assignment three!

Today's main was to do coursework for assignment two and three. I managed to finish task one assignment three today so I am pleased with that. I was off yesterday so Danny filled me in on what they did yesterday and it helped me catch up.

Assignment three task one is about the different types of learning. I knew some of them such as kinaesthetic. This task was quite easy to do and I managed to finish it today. I will be doing my presentation on Thursday then we finish the unit on Friday.

Overall I am happy with my progress today and I will go over what I will be saying tomorrow so I know what I'm doing.

Assignment deadline!

Today our main was to work on assignment one and two. I first started working on assignment two and I managed to finished my presentation then I had to change it so I could use some proofing tools such as spell check or thesaurus. They were the two different tools I chose to do.

After I finished the presentation, I moved onto assignment one. I had nearly finished  this PowerPoint so it did not take much time to do. I will proof read it later tonight and then I will send it off ready to be marked. I will proof read it later because I would of had a break from doing the work so I could notice any errors I have done in my work.

Quiz Thursday!

We started the day of with the normal quiz to win the dual monitors. The quiz this week was designed by Alex and it was about the Spark Core. This is a little device that you can use to create WiFi devices. It was pretty interesting and I never knew it existed. I got a score of 7/10 what I was happy with however once again I did not win the dual monitors.

After that we had a recap on assignment one and all  the different attributes and attitudes. Also we recapped on the ways of communication. These are general communication, interpersonal communication and written communication. This is for assignment one task two what I have nearly finished. All I have  to do is write about is written communication and then I am finished.

Next off started to learn about assignment two. This assignment is to create a presentation and present it in front of two people. I like this because it is only two people and not the entire class. I have started to design my presentation but I finished off assignment one.

Assignment one!

We started off the day with a little talk from a person called Andy. He was from the Navy and he showed us about the jobs in the Navy.I am not interested about joining the Navy but it does look pretty interesting if you were interested to work there. Andy did a few activities with us and also showed us a video about the Navy.

Next off we were taught about the last part to assignment one. The next tasks are about effective communication and about the barriers. I am pretty confident with these tasks and I should be able complete them quite easily.

After that we worked on assignment one. I had started assignment one task one and my goal was to finish task one. Task one is quite easy because all you have to do explain why the attributes are important. I managed to nearly finish it and I only have about 2 more attitudes to write about.

Overall I am happy with my progress for the first two days and I will finish off all task one tomorrow.

A new unit!

As we finished programming on Monday, we have moved onto our next unit. This unit is about communication and employability skills for IT. This unit is with a tutor called Zoe who we have never had before. She is a good teacher and I think this unit is going to go fine and I can't wait for upcoming units with her.

We started off the day with a teamwork activity. The leader in the group had to go get some Lego and create a simple model and we had to create that same one but with only the leader telling us how to make it. We could not see what he had designed until we had made it. This was a fun activity and it helped to improve our  teamwork skills.

After that we moved onto learning about attributes and attitudes. There are three different types of attributes and attitudes. There are specific attributes, general attributes and attitudes. This was quite interesting learning all the different attributes and attitudes because I had never heard of some of them before.

We also had two games of Chinese whispers. This was to show that whispering is not a good way to communicate with other people as the message gets changed. We did it two times with the whole of the class and the message was changed both times. This shows that it is a bad way to communicate with other people.

A day of re submissions!

We started off with a little game called Einsteins riddle. This is a game that is a riddle and you have to work it out. It was quite confusing and I managed to get 15/25 before John put up the answer on the board. This was a fun starter and it helps your brain get going.

After that we started to work on our assignment work. I started working on assignment and I managed to finish that after break. I only had two slides left on task one so that did not take long however task two did take a while because I had a few changes to make.

Then I moved onto assignment three what I had quite a bit to do. I had to change one flow chart, a little bit of my specification and comment my code and fix a little bit of it. I started off finishing my flow chart then I worked on the specification. I realized what I did with the code and I easily fixed that. Commenting the code did take a little while however I finished it about 10 minutes ago.

Overall the software design unit has been very fun and I have improved my programming skills a lot. I will carry on practicing my programming skills and I will try to make some more programs.

Assignment work!

We started the day off with the daily quiz. This weeks quiz was about programming with Notch (the creator of Minecraft). The video was quite interesting seeing how they designed Minecraft and how they work in debug mode. The questions what had been made were very colour based and not many of the questions were on the programming side.

The main aim of today was to hand in the rest of assignment three. I finished most of it yesterday so when I came in I just finished off a few things then I handed the work in and moved onto the other work I had to finish.

Then I worked on assignment one. I had nearly finished this as well so it didn't take long to do. I only had a few changes left on task three then I was finished with assignment two. After that I worked on assignment two what I have finished the first assignment and I have started the second assignment. I am aiming to finish off the last work tomorrow and have it all sent back by tomorrow.

John showed us a recent news story about the comet that a group of 5 people have been working on for 10 years. I was following the comet landing news yesterday and it was quite interesting. Space is a very interesting place and the technology they are designing to explore it is very cleaver. The main reason why John showed us this was because the code that was used needed to be spot on or it would go wrong.

Assignment three deadline!

Once again today we started off with Countdown! This time we had words and numbers and still I failed. This time I managed to get 1 off in one of the calculations and I got a three letter word in the word round. This was fun to do and it does help wake your brain up in the morning.

After that little starter, we carried on working on assignment three. The deadline is today and I have managed to get it done (the program can be handed in Thursday so I will do that then). I started off finishing off my program what created some errors. The main error I was working on was the paint cost what I managed to fix. It was due to using the wrong variable name when doing some calculations.

When I finished my program I commented my pseudocode code and changed parts of it. One example of this would be using a loop for the different wall lengths. I commented on the main parts of the code and went into detail about the different types of data types. After that I started to test my program (I'm still working on it and I will finish it tomorrow). So far I have found one error with the pricing with a window so I will fix that tomorrow.

I should be able to finish the rest of the work tomorrow and hand in task two tomorrow morning. I haven't got much left to do so hopefully it wont take too long to finish.

More programming!

We started the day off with a couple games of countdown. I am not too good with maths so I did not get far in the 30 seconds we had. I did about one calculation and the time was up so I didn't win. Soon after that we started a little programming quiz. It contained 14 questions about what we learnt and I got 11/14. I am happy with my score and it shows I need to re look at validation and verification because I got both of those questions wrong.

Then we carried on with the programming. My main goal for this was to finish this off however I just fell short of that goal. I am currently working on the prices what is quite confusing however the main thing is that it works. I have tested my program and so far I have found only a few errors what I have fixed. When I finish it tomorrow I will test it in more detail and hopefully will eliminate all the bugs in the code.

John showed us a video about a new game coming to PS4 and Xbox One next year. The game is called No Man's Sky. It is a space type game and there is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets and they are generated by code. As I remember if you stay on each planet for one second each, it would take about 86 billion years.

Overall I am happy with my progress today and I should be able to finish all the work off tomorrow and send in the unit on time. I have enjoyed creating the program and I will carry on programming on Small Basic.

Programming day!

Today's main objective was to finally start our programming. Most people had done their pseudocode and their flowcharts so they could start with programming. Some people are creating their pseudocode as they go a long however I just wanted to finish it off straight away.

We started off with a mind blowing starter with paper. We had two pieces of paper each and we had to fold it and make the middle bit stick up with only three cuts. The trick was to twist it after you had made the  three cuts. Only one person managed to do it before John showed us how to do it. That trick was just too simple in my eyes but it was very clever.

Next off we moved onto the coding (what took up the rest of the day). I managed to get all of the customer ID finished and I nearly finished the calculating the total area. I found the total area calculations the hardest because I had to use an array what I was not 100% confident on. Also I got a bit muddled up with the for loops however Google saved me and I was pretty close on making the loop correct.

Overall I am pleased with my progress today and I am going to aim to finish the program Monday or Tuesday as the whole assignment is due for Tuesday. I am a lot more confident with programming now compared to when we first started it and I feel I could make other complex programs.

Pseudocode and quiz day!

We started off the day with the weekly Thursday quiz to try get our hands on the dual monitor. Today's quiz was created by Chris and it was all about flow charts (how fun). It was quite an interesting quiz and the last question was the best. It was the ISBN number for the book what was 13 digits long and we only had a couple seconds to write it down. A big surprise that hardly no one got that question. Sadly I did not win the dual monitors this week however I did not come last! The quiz is a good activity to break up the week.

After that we went on to create some mind maps for the program and the main parts of it. This was quite easy to do and I enjoyed creating the mind maps. The mind maps helped me with writing the pseudocode later in the day what I will explain soon. I finished the mind maps quite quick so I could move onto the next part.

The next part was writing the pseudocode because I did not do that at the start. The flowcharts what I did before and the pseudocode guide helped me a long with the pseudocode. I managed to finish the pseudocode about 15 minutes before break so I got to do some programming. I managed to write most of the customer ID what I am pleased with.

Tomorrow will be a day of programming and I hopefully should get quite far. I will try to work on the code over the weekend if I have any spare time so I can get closer to finishing the program.

Flow chart day!

Today's main aim today was to start and finish the flow charts needed for starting our program. We had to do four flow charts what were asking the customer ID, the wall height and length, deducting the area and working out the paint and the undercoat cost. I managed to finish all of the flow charts and start my program a little.

We started the day off with looking at somebodies program. The goal of this was to find what assumptions they had made and the errors in the program. I found quite a few errors and quite a few assumptions. This showed me some mistakes I could do so I need to keep an eye out when making the program. I will test little and frequently for the best results.

I did not find the flow chart designing that hard to do however I did make a few mistakes. One of these was forgetting to store some information in variables after collecting the customers name. I quickly changed that so it worked right. We were peer assessing each others work so we knew we were on the right lines. This is how I found out about how I forgot the variables and I found it very helpful.

When I finished the flow charts I started to work on my program. I did not do much for my program however I did set up the main subroutine I will be using when clearing the screen for the next part of the program. My aim is to clear the screen after certain parts of the program such as asking the information about the customer.

Overall today has been a good day of progress and I can't wait to start working on my program more. We have a day off tomorrow so I might start doing some more with the program and try to get it to collect the customers information.

Back at Develop

We came back today after one week off. It was a nice break from college and I managed to finish assignment two however I did not start assignment three. I am pretty confident with assignment two but I will be doing some changes tonight and I will proof read it.

The starter activity today was to ask how many days in the week there is and ask the user to enter the seven days of the week then print them. The trick behind this program was to make it with a loop. I didn't really understand loops but I managed to work it out in the end. The array confused me and still did after John showed us what to do.

After that we started to work on assignment one changes and assignment two. As I have finished assignment two I started working on assignment one. I like Johns way of marking because he talks and you can listen to it what I prefer over reading the comments. I managed to finish task one and task two and I will finish task three tomorrow or on Wednesday.

Also we had a practice with flow charts. I was pretty confident with flow charts however I do still get confused sometimes when creating them. This task helped me get more practice with flow charts and I am understanding them more now. I normally get confused over what box to use but now I do understand it more and I will start doing the flow charts soon for my final program.

Blog star!

It was tutorial time again today! So that means we learnt a new function in Small Basic. Today we had to make it to enter five peoples names and enter their score. This was quite an easy starter however the extension was more interesting. We had to use an array for the five people to enter their name and their score. I did not understand how to use an array so I did not understand the extension. John put an example of how to use an array up on the board for this example. My program was about 30 lines of code without the array and Johns code was about 8 lines with an array. It shows that using an array is more efficient compared to storing the information in all of the different variables.

After the tutorial we carried on doing assignment two/three. As I had finished off assignment three task one, I carried on doing my PowerPoint for assignment two task one what I finished about 20 minutes ago. I got a bit confused on rigidity, fragility and immobility because it was hard to find definitions on these terms. Overall I am pretty confident with the rest of the PowerPoint and I think I have done it right.

We also went over task two of assignment three. It seems quite straight forward however the pseudo code is my weakness. Luckily we only have to write the main parts of the code in pseudo code such as the calculations. I will aim to write most of them over the half term so I can get started on my program after half term. Also we found out the blog stars who were, Adam, Ben and myself (hence the title).

Overall this week has been very interesting and I have learnt a lot of new parts to programming and more key terms. In the week off I am going to aim to write some of the pseudo code and maybe some flow charts. Also I will practice my programming skills at home so I don't forget what to do.

Quiz day

We started the day off with the quiz! Sadly we did not do a little Small Basic tutorial because I enjoy them and learning more code. The quiz was very interesting. The video was about how you could use a sensor to control this machine. They used their hands to make the block stick up and it looked like their hands under it. The quiz questions were very hard and I don't see how people got 6/10. That just surprised me compared to my amazing score of 2/10! Surprisingly I did not come last.

After the quiz we started a team activity. We were given the information about the task and in our tables we had to design the pseudo code and the flow chart. I was in the flowchart team because I am more confident with flowcharts compared of pseudo code. In the end our table won what we were pleased with. I am getting more confident with my flow chart drawing and pseudo code for assignment three.

We also started learning about assignment three and what we had to do for it. This included trying out some of the programs what students made last year. We had to try and break them what was fun. The fifth program I put in some random letters in the post code bit and it started looping a message saying "Please enter your postcode" or something a long the lines like that. There was no way of typing while it was looping like that. Assignment three is two tasks what are the specification and the creation of the program. We made notes of the assumptions, inputs, outputs and processes of what we were going to put in our specification. I finished my notes and then designed the specification so I can start designing my program now. I will finish off assignment two first then I will design the program what will be fun.

Overall I am happy with what I have learnt today and I can't wait to start coding the program. Hopefully I wont make the mistakes like the other people did last year and hopefully it works. They are my main two goals to my program.

Deadlines and a new assignment

Today's Small Basic tutorial was to print information to a .txt file. We had to ask for the name and their address then print it to a .txt file into our documents. I had a look at the tutorial on how to do it and it seemed quite easy. I had a little problem with saving the file because I forgot to put the name of the file in the file path. The next part of the task was to use yesterdays code and make that print to the same document. I found that quite easy to do because it was the same as the code before. Here is an example of how I saved the name and address to a text document.

After that we carried on working on assignment one. The deadline is today and I have finished my work nearly. I have one little bit left to do then I have done it. I started off finishing off task one and starting task two before break. After break we moved onto assignment two (I will explain that later) and did some more of assignment one. At the end of the lesson before lunch, I managed to finish off task two and nearly finish task three. I am happy with the progress I have made and I will be sending it off later when I get home.

We started to learn about assignment two today. There are two tasks for this and I am feeling pretty confident with them both. The first task is about the software development cycle (SDLC) what is quite interesting. We have to discuss the two main types of life cycles what are Waterfall and Agile. I am confident with it and have made quite a bit of progress with task one. I have done the introduction and explained the Waterfall stages.

Overall I have learnt a lot today and I am excited for working on assignment two. Hopefully I have done enough for assignment one and pass that. I am going to practice my Small Basic skills more tomorrow and experiment more.

Assignment writing!

We started off with the Small Basic tutorial. Today's tutorial was to make two numbers times with each other. The goal was to allow the user to add in their own numbers then it automatically works it out. This was a fun task and I managed to do both extensions and it worked so I was pleased with that.

After that we carried on working on assignment one. I was working on task one and I managed to finish it just before lunchtime. I had a few references left to do but I finished off them just after. Next off I moved onto task two (after the mind blowing start after lunch) I managed to get quite far with it and I have nearly finished it all. I will finish off task two tonight at home and I will start task three.

Now onto the mind blowing start after lunch! John showed us how to times two numbers together simple with just some lines and some simple adding. You first write the two numbers you are going to times. For example, 123 x 456. You first draw one line down then you move over a bit then draw two lines down then three lines down. Then with the second number you draw four lines across the bottom, then five and finally six. The next part really confused me and I got lost. You count where the lines cross over and it creates the answer. I failed at this task because I kept counting up all the lines wrong! But it did blow my mind on how you could do it.

Overall I am happy with the progress today and I am on track of getting assignment one in tomorrow. I am also getting more confident with my Small Basic programming and I can't wait to start the practical. Hopefully by then I will have more knowledge and I will even more confident with the coding. 

Friday turtle time!

Today our starter was quite confusing as John was not here. John sent an email to us all with the instructions. We had to make a program that adds up two numbers up to 20. It was quite confusing to do however when John finally got here, he showed us how to do it. I was close to getting however I couldn't get my head around writing the loop. After I saw how to do it, I understood it more. If I had to do a task like this in the future I could do it.

Also we carried on writing assignment one task one. We did this for just over an hour (until lunch) and I have got quite far with it. My goal is to finish the whole of task one over the weekend and I might start task two or three. I am pretty confident with task one and I should be able to finish it on the Saturday.

Another thing we did today was making a turtle alphabet. We were all given one letter each (the three leaders were given the left over letters) and we had to program it to write that letter. The letter I assigned was P. This was quite easy because all I had to do was draw a line down then make a semi circle at the top. This was a fun task because we got to practice our design skills and our programming skills. Here is the P I designed and I am happy with what I did with it.


Overall I have enjoyed this week of programming and I have learnt a lot. I never knew what Small Basic was at the start but now I am understanding it and getting more confident with it. I'm going to continue working on my Small Basic skills over the weekend.

Starting the first assignment!

Today we started the day off with a little quiz. The quiz was for the amazing dual monitors, the almighty lava lamp and a pair of headphones for one week. The quiz was a video what was a TED talk what was quite interesting to watch. There was a total of 14 questions and there were 17 marks up for grabs. I got 11/17 marks and I came 3rd what I was pleased with. Sadly I did not get the lava lamp because that would of been epic.

Next we went onto improving our pseudo code and flow charts. I am pretty confident with flow charts however I am not very good at pseudo code. John put a PDF to look at to help improve our pseudo knowledge. I had a look at that and it has helped me a bit more with my pseudo knowledge. I did 3 different flow charts improving them every time. I made it neater and I also make it clearer to read.

Also we had a look at verification and validation what was quite fun because we got to do some more work on Small Basic. We had to program the random number generator to say a message if someone put in a number over 100. Also we had to make it so they had to write in another answer. I used the goto code to make it easier to work. I enjoyed this task and it helped me improve my Small Basic knowledge.

Finally we had a look at the assignments we will be starting. John got us to make some notes on assignment one what was about what we have been doing the past few days such as paradigms and low and high level languages. We are making a PowerPoint about it so it is easier to layout. I have set up the design of it and I have started to write some of the information.

Day 2 of programming!

We started the day off with a little coding starter activity. The starter was a recap on what we were learning yesterday. I found the start quite helpful and it did help me remember what we did yesterday. The code was quite easy to do and I did remember how to write it.

Also today we did some more Small Basic and work through the tutorials some more. I got up to the turtle tutorial what is enjoyable to play around with and make different shapes. There is quite a lot of different options you can do with Small Basic and I never knew you could do so much in such a basic program. The example for turtle was creating two shapes so I changed the angles it moved at to make some more interesting patterns. Overall I enjoyed tutorial part of today and I am aiming to get further along and learn new things.

Then we moved onto the words what was quite confusing at the start. We were learning about the paradigms what are procedural, event driven and the horrible object orientated. Procedural and event driven were quite easy to understand however object orientated was not at the start. I found out that we have been coding in procedural and event driven. Also we had a quick talk about flow charts and on pseudo code what is still confusing for me.

Overall I am happy with my progress of programming and learning more about Small Basic. Tomorrow I might carry on working through the tutorials and try make some programs and see if they work. Also I might look up some guides online and have a look at them to boost my Small basic knowledge

New unit!

Today we started the new unit what is programming. I have been looking forward for this unit because I enjoy programming and I've always wanted to improve my skills. I started learning Python in school however I did not progress that much with it. We have also changed our tutor for this unit. We now have John who is a funny person and a good teacher.

We started off looking at a site what is a nice entry level for coding. It was a maze game where you had to program the angry bird to get to the pig. The layout of the programming was like Scratch because you drag in the code. It makes it quite simple and easy however if you look at the code it is more confusing.

The programming language we will be using is Small Basic. I have heard of Small Basic however I have never used it. When I first saw Small Basic, it looked quite basic (hence the name). I like Small Basic because it offers lots of help when writing your code. It automatically predicts what you might be typing so you can quickly write the code.

We had a go at Small Basic with a number of tutorials. One tutorial was counting up from 0 to 100. It was quite interesting because I never knew you could right 0-100 in a few lines of code. We also had to organize a program code to make it more readable. One of the things I changed was putting spaces in it so I could split up all the code into blocks. This does not effect the code what is helpful so it can look nice while running fine.

Overall I have enjoyed the first day of programming and I can't wait to learn more different things you can do in Small Basic. Programming can be very helpful and you can do so much in a few lines of code. The bigger programs most likely use more lines of code because there is lots of different parts to certain programs such as word.

3 days left of graphics!

Today we started off looking at two of the entries of the blog stars. The two blog stars were Tom and myself. We wrote the good and bad points of both blog entries what was quite helpful because I noticed one little spelling mistake what I had done. This has helped me develop my English more and hopefully keep on improving.

Next off we had a discussion about feedback. We talked about what feedback was and the ways you can collect it. This was interesting because I never knew how many different ways there is to collect data. The way we will be collecting data is using Survey Monkey. This is all about our game assets and how we could improve them.

After that we started to design our Survey Monkey surveys. We had to create 10 questions (was changed to 8 afterwards) to ask each other about our game assets. I decided to pick my main character and the power up character because I think I need to improve my power up character because it does not look much different compared to the normal character.

Finally we moved onto making a pitch. Adam did a demonstration on how to do one and how not to do one (what was quite funny). Then we watched another example about the annoying things in PowerPoint what was also funny. Then we had to design our own pitch to present tomorrow. I am not looking forward to doing the pitch because I get quite nervous when talking to the rest of the class at the front of the class.

Overall it has been a enjoyable day however I am quite nervous about the pitch tomorrow. Also we only have 3 days left of graphics! This will go fast.

Action packed Friday!

We started the day off looking at some blog entries and to see the good and bad things about what they did. There were three different paragraphs for us to look at and we had to correct the grammar. After that we fed back to the group and said the mistakes for the paragraphs and it just shows how if you don't proof read you will make these silly mistakes.

After that we went onto do a worksheet about homophones. These are words what sound alike however they are spelt differently. For example there, their and they're. They all sound the same however they are all spelt differently. I found this worksheet very helpful because I sometimes get muddled up with the homophones and I'm not always sure which one is correct.

Next off we went to the place called the outside world! We did an activity about what we enjoyed this unit. It showed that a lot of people liked designing their 8 bit games and improving their Photoshop skills. Also we were answering some questions like do you like Comic Sans MS or not and is Wii better than Xbox? Clearly the winners were that most people like Comic Sans MS and the Wii because its true.

Finally we did a task about copyright. This was a research task so we had to find out all about copyright and how it works. This was quite fun to do because I never knew that so much different content could be copyrighted. Also we looked at the common mistakes in A2T1 and then we had about an hour to correct our work. I finished that off at about two then finished off my copyright document.

Overall this has been an enjoyable week with lots of events. My favorite part of the week was designing all the 8 bit graphics because it made me a lot more confident when using Photoshop. Also it showed me that you can do so much with Photoshop quite easily.

Deadline day & Quiz Thursday!

We started today off doing a little designing task. Adam put up three words on the board and we had to design a picture about the word. The three words we were told was formatting, design and consistent. This was quite challenging because I'm not too good at designing pictures for words but I did enjoy it.

Today is Thursday so it means one thing. Quiz Thursday! Today's quiz was not too organised however it was fun to do. The quiz was 10 questions long and it was about colours. The looser of every week has to make next weeks quiz so I aimed not to loose! In the end I got 8/10 what I was very happy with and I can't wait till next week.

After that Adam sent another quiz just to test our knowledge about grammar and how to send in our assignment work. We did it two times because not a lot of people did well on the first quiz! After the first attempt at the quiz Adam explained about how we should send the assignment then we had another go and most people improved.

Finally we finished up our assignments because the deadline day was today. I finished mine just in time before break so I was pleased with that. One more assignment and we are finished with this unit. It has gone very fast in the end and I have enjoyed it all so far.

Overall this has been a enjoyable day and I have made a lot of progress and learnt new things.

Front cover designing!

We started off today with a talk from Catherine about what we can do after Develop. One of the options is going to university but I'm not sure about that yet. Next Friday we are going to a university open day to see what it is like. Catherine did this talk now so we could think about our future options we can take.

After that we started to learn about the front covers on games. The front covers normally are split into three parts. The top or middle is normally where the logo goes because that's where we look first and how we read. Also the 1st and 2nd sectors sometimes have the main character so we know who we are playing as. The 3rd sector is usually where the game info goes and the producer goes.

Then we got to start to design the front covers for our own games. Here is my cover what is nearly finished:
The background was royalty free so we had to manipulate it. I changed the brightness and contrast of the picture so my main character stands out. I tested out some of the effects I can add to the font and overall I am pretty happy with it. We started just before lunch and finished at 2.

After we came back from lunch we watched a video about Comic Sans MS (Adams favorite font). This was about how bad it is and how it shouldn't be used for a designing point of view. I found this quite interesting and it has shown me how I should not pick that font.

Overall I am happy with the front cover I made today. Tomorrow I will finish off my design log and finish off my front cover at home.

Photoshop day

We started the day off finding out the blog starts today who was Tom and myself. I was happy that I was one of the blog stars because it shows that my English is improving and that I am going into more detail in my blog.

The rest of today we were working on our game designing on Photoshop. Today I have finished my main character, the power up version of the character, the power up item and two of the items to collect points. I had changed my main character quite a bit from yesterday and in my opinion he looks quite good. Here is a picture of my final character:













After I finished my main character, I moved on designing what he would look like when the power up is activated. The power up I have selected is a speed boost. It would last for 10 seconds and would change the look of the character. The changes what would happen to my character is that his skin would turn darker and his boots would change colour. The item to pick up for the power up is boots so the boots on the character changes.






The final design I did today were the two items to pick up. These are a jeweled statue and a coin. The jeweled statue would give 20 points and the coin would give 10 points. I will add one more item in what would give 30 points but I did not have the time for that today. Also I have not made the enemies so I will finish that off at a later date.

Overall I am happy of my progress I have made today and my Photoshop knowledge is getting better. I never knew you could make 8 bit characters this easily in Photoshop.

An amazing finish to the week!

Friday is here again. A nice relaxing weekend! The main part of today was starting to make our characters for our games. Adam sent us this helpful link on drawing 8-Bit Pixel Art to start us off and give us some help. I followed the guide and it really helped when coming to drawing the body of my main character. My main character is an explorer and at the moment he does not look like one! As you see the character is quite small. He is only 50 by 50 pixels so I did not have a lot of room to work in. In the end I manged to get his body looking good and I'm pretty happy with him!




Today we also had a talk about hygiene. This was just explaining about why we need to keep ourselves clean and look after our hair. I did learn some new information from that PowerPoint like how the most sweat glands are in your feet. I thought the most swear glands would be around your armpits but it's not.

Also today we got to play Pictionary again! This was a nice break into the day and it also it helps me get more ideas flowing when creating objects for games. Adam used some of the same words multiple times so we had to think up of different ways to show that object. I found it really helpful doing that because I never knew there was so many ways you could show a certain object.

My favorite part to the week was starting to create our characters. I'm excited for getting more detail on my character and hopefully he will look good.

Quiz Thursday!

We started the day off with a little English lesson. The lesson was about improving our vocabulary in our assignments. Adam put up a list of words up on the board and we had to come up with some words what mean the same. For example one of the words was big. People suggested words like large and tall. The aim of this lesson was to help us not keep on repeating the same words all the time in our assignments.  I found this exercise very helpful and it has helped me improve my vocabulary.

After this we started assignment 3. This is the assignment when we get to make our graphics for the game we are doing in a different unit. We got to do this till lunch however we did get to do some after lunch. I have finished what part we got up to so I am quite proud of that.

Finally because it was Thursday we had to do a quiz. It was about Artificial Intelligence what I found very interesting and useful. We had 15 questions to answer however I only got 5/15 because I did not make enough notes from the video and my spelling was off. The quiz Thursday really makes the day good and it is also good learning about new things.

I'm happy about the progress I have made today and I can't wait tomorrow. Bring on Friday!

Tuesday

Today we got to learn about fonts. This was quite interesting because I never knew there was so much about a font. There are several different parts to fonts such as the serif and the x height. Also I did not know how much fonts had changed over time. For example the old English writing is a lot different to the current types of fonts what are around.

Also today we played a game like pictonary. For the first round we had 10 seconds to draw a  picture of the word Adam told us. For example the first was to draw a cat. My first attempt did not work at all. We had 8 words to draw for the first round and 8 words again for the second round. For the second round we had 20 seconds to draw so we could get into some detail with the pictures. This was fun to do and it helped me work out different ways you can represent things.

After that we got to start to develop some ideas for making a game. We need to get 5 ideas down before we move onto the next stage what is knock it down to 3 games then 1 game. At the moment my favorite idea is a platformer where you have to collect artifacts to escape the jungle. One of the power ups would be a temporary speed boost what would be acquired from one of the artifacts.

This has been a fun day today and I will finish off all the game ideas tomorrow.

Colour Theory!

We started the day off doing some colour theory. I quite enjoyed learning about colour theory because its quite interesting learning about what colours mean. For example red is quite evil and angry but yellow is more happy and cheerful.

Also today we got to do some more Photoshop and we were changing pictures to Monotone, Duotone and some others. This was quite fun because I had never used the settings before and it was cleaver how you can select certain parts and just change their looks without affecting the whole picture. I selected to do Luigi because he is quite good to do and has quite a few different colours.

Another activity we did in Photoshop today was making banners. The size of the picture had to be 750 x 200 pixels and we had to base them on 3 things. The first was happiness then technology and lastly royalty. I did ok with all 3 banners however they didn't look as good compared to other ones in the room. The best banner I did was the royalty one because it looked quite royal because of the purple colour.

Here is the picture of one of the Luigi's I did:



Overall I'm happy what I did today and the information I learnt today and it will help me later on.

Friday!

Another week over at Develop. Today we carried on working on assignment 2 what I will be finishing tonight and tomorrow. I've got a little bit more to go on M2 because I didn't decide to do D2 because it was a bit confusing.

Also today we got to play some games and evaluate them what was quite fun. The games weren't the best but they were quite fun. My personal favorite game was called The Pill. You had to pick up objects to get to the next level. There was some not so good games such as Shopping Rush because that was quite basic.

Another thing we did today was peer review someones work. I reviewed Ashley's work and it was good. It helped me work out what I should write in my work and it has made me more confident in finishing off M2.

I can't wait for Monday! Time for a nice weekend break.

Bad internet!

We started the day off as usual with finding out the blog stars who were Adam and Joe (who was not here today). After that we were going to be doing a quiz about there, their and they're however the internet down for most people so we had to get some paper copies. This activity was to help us remember which type of there we use in certain situations. 

Next off with the internet down with everyone we went into 3 groups of 6 to discuss about certain words. The 3 words were discussion, evaluate and conclusion. Once we had discussed that in our groups we fed back to the whole of the group to share our ideas. I found this quite helpful discussing the words because I was not entirely sure what they all meant. Then we got to do a quiz about the words what I got 9/12 what I was pretty happy with.

After that we had the option of doing D2 or not. I chose not to and carried on with the M2 work what I had started yesterday. The people who were going to do D2 went off to the other tables so they could discuss there. At the moment I am onto the second part of M2 discussing the software needed, tools, file format ect for printed game related artwork. I'm hoping I can finish that off today and get onto the next one. 

So far it has been a good day except how the internet keeps going up and then down. It really shows how much you rely on the internet everyday. That is one limitation of Google Drive because you need the internet to connect to it!

More assignment work

So here we are again. Another day has passed at Develop. Today we started off finishing P2 what was the table. I finished it just before break and I proof read it twice just to make sure that I have done it right. I am pretty confident with P2 after proof reading it twice.

After that we moved onto M2 what is quite confusing at the start. Adam talked through it and then we got on and started doing it. I wasn't sure how to start off but then Adam put up a slide with how we should lay out the work and that was very helpful. I had a look and wrote down all the sub headings then I got to work on writing it all up. We had to add some examples of the tools what can be used. One of the  tools I selected was the Magic Wand tool in Photoshop because that is very helpful.

I should be able to get close to finishing M2 on Thursday but if not I will try to finish it on Friday when the deadline date is. I'm not sure yet if I want to go for the distinction but I will decide later on. I have looked at the distinction part on the Scheme of Learning but I'm still not sure on what to do.

The best thing today was the activity today and finishing off the P2 table.

A start to a new week!

Today I have finished my assignment 1 and I have sent it in ready to be marked. I think I did well with the assignment but I'm not sure with the distinction one because I got a bit confused on it. If I get a merit I will be happy but I might send in the remark for the distinction if I didn't get it.

Now with that assignment done we have moved onto the next assignment what is about file formats. I am quite confident with this next task because I know about the file types however I didn't know about the lossy and lossless formats. When I first saw lossy and lossless I did not know what they meant but now I'm pretty confident with the two meanings. In assignment 2 we have to make a table and explain which type of file would be best. For example we had to decide which picture format would be the best for a webpage. I chose PNG and GIF because they are both quite a small file size and they would load fast.

My goal for tomorrow is to finish off the table and explain why the file formats are good to use. I should be able to finish it off tomorrow but I might not be able to.

Thursday!

Another day of doing the P1, M1 and D1 what I have nearly finished!

I have just got to finish off a bit of D1 then proof read it all over and make sure everything is correct and everything is referenced. Looking at the information about the cites and the references really helped and I think I did all of that correct. Today I finished off P1 and finished off M1 what I was quite happy with. My goal for today was to finish it all however I was very close and I will finish off that tomorrow. In D1 I looked into the iPhone 6 and how it could help with graphics and game design. I did not know that they added so much to the new iPhone because I did't watch the revealing of it. Also the Apple Watch seems quite good because it's not just a watch. You can do so much different things with it like view photos.

We did some more Adobe Illustrator as well today what I am finally understanding more! I found the "Add Anchor Point" tool what I found was very helpful because I could be more precise with the selection. Also I tried out the paint brush tool because I noticed I was missing out some of the areas with the Pen tool so I just went over them area with the paint brush. I have not tried out the text tool yet so I will try that soon and see how it goes! There is quite a lot of tools what I will be trying out to see what I can do with Illustrator. It seems like a quite powerful program but I just haven't got my head around all the different tools.That is the same case with Photoshop at the moment so I might have a play around with that soon.

Overall it's been interesting at trying out more of Illustrator and I hope to get more out of both programs and hopefully post some photos of what I have done.

Another Day

Another interesting day at Develop. Mainly today we were doing the assignment work and a Illustrator tutorial. When we first started Illustrator it was really annoying and confusing but then I started using it more and it was making more sense. I prefer Photoshop over Illustrator but once I start to understand Illustrator more I hope it will be a lot easier.

For the assignment work I've done most of P1 and all of the references (Thank you Adam for that slide explaining it). The PowerPoint slide really did help. Also we looked at how much technology has changed throughout time what was quite shocking at how fast technology has evolved. The new virtual reality devices what are coming out look really good. I prefer the Oculus Rift because it can be used for so much stuff. The Google glass seems quite good but I'm not too interested in it because it looks a bit silly walking around talking to it. I can't wait to see it being released to the public because I'm quite interested how the sales will go for it and how the final release will work. I think it will go for about £500 but then the price might drop. It's just so amazing how fast technology can change and I'm really excited on how much its going to change over time. In 10 years time it will be quite shocking looking back and seeing what it was like then and what we were using compared to that 10 years time.

Overall it's been another fun day with more learning!

First day of graphics!

This has been a really good first day today! I have learnt many new things with Photoshop such as  removing certain objects from the photo. I had never used Photoshop before so I did not know what I was expecting with the program. At a first glance I was wondering what all the different tools did. I knew some of the basic tools like the eraser and the magic wand tool but I did not know what the other ones did. We had to compare Photoshop and Paint to see which one was better. When I switch to paint it just showed how little you can do with Paint. My favorite part of Photoshop has to be the layers because you can draw on 1 layer and it doesn't ruin the picture because you can just remove or turn off that layer. I'm hoping I get to learn more about Photoshop because this does look like a very powerful piece of software. Overall I really enjoyed the first day of graphics and I can't wait for tomorrow.

Induction Day

This has been a fun 2 days at Develop learning new things. The best bit was when we made the balloon chairs (What we won!). The information about Prezzie and Survey Monkey is very helpful because I have never used them before. It's nice to be meeting new people and people that have the same interests as me! The unit i'm looking forward to the most will be the programming unit because I enjoy making programs :D I've used Python before but i'd love to learn different languages such as Java.

Overall I'm very excited for my time at Develop and I can't wait to learn new things such as graphics.