“I guess they don’t like the shooting idea.”
“It’s no biggy. Just take it off.”
“Yeah, it’s easier to program anyway.”
I continue to click on the picture of the mushroom sprite (that was to be our so called “bullet”) and pressed the delete button. I thought it was a pretty cool idea though…
“I think popping balloons with a car is easier anyway.” I said reluctantly.
“It could’ve been challenging.”
I looked over at my partner, Brian, who had shrugged when he said it… and I said “Yeah, it could’ve…”
In ICT, my partner and I have been working on creating a scratch project similar to a mini-game in the wii game Mario Party 8. It’s a two player game, wherein depending on the color of you car, you have to pop the balloons of the same color of your car before the other player does. The thing is, you have to dodge the balloons of the other players’ because you can pop theirs if you run over them.
We aren’t the only people involved in this project though. A school in Michigan, Valleywood, is a part of this, and 2 students from that school are our partners. They were thinking of a car crashing game, where we said that it may be too hard to program and offered our idea. We added the shooting idea because we thought they would like it since we didn’t agree with the car crashing game. They were cool with our idea though, but didn’t like the shooting idea. I was a bit confused at first, but decided to just go along with it.
Now, there is a time difference between Michigan and Vietnam, exactly 12 hours, I believe, and we can’t necessarily connect when it’s nighttime in one country and day time in another. We connect by using a Google Document that is similar to Microsoft Powerpoint Presentation. We put in pictures and comments about ideas we want, and share the scratch projects with them for them to program it themselves and to see how it would work.
All in all, we aren’t exactly finished with our scratch project yet, but we’re doing a pretty good job. We’re cooperating, and sending ideas. We’re sending different sprites and backgrounds for the different courses.
I am enjoying doing this project. There will be times when you can’t always do what you want, but you’ll learn to accept the other ideas that others have to offer. There will be times when you feel like you can’t seem to work out the problem or that you can’t fix it, but there will always be a solution. Sometimes, it may also feel like it’ll take forever to get this done, but you just have to be patient. Everything takes time… and this is what I’ve learned from working on this Scratch Project.
This project is not completed and is still in progress. This is part of a collaboration. Now, instead of the cars bouncing off of the green area, they return to the starting position.
By: Justine on March 18, 2010 at 12:33 pm
@Mr Wood,
Thank you very much. It is quite difficult, but it’s always fun to interact with other people around the world, especially when we work together to program a game, hahaha.
@wmchamberlain,
Yes, actually, but it turned out pretty well, and we shared many ideas that I would’ve never thought about. It would’ve been easier to program it the way I wanted, but it would turn out better with many more ideas and opinions from other people.
@Mr. Miller,
I am glad you enjoy reading my blogs. Creating even a game is difficult, but when you enjoy doing it, it makes it all the easier. Thank you so much for your support! My partner and I are still tweaking our project, but we hope for success as well.
By: Mr. Miller on March 13, 2010 at 11:56 am
Hi Justine,
I enjoy your writing style and am interested in your approach to creating a game. Creating a good game is a very difficult challenge and you are doing an excellent job explaining the process. I am a teacher an enjoy using games to teach students how to be better writers and storytellers. Keep at it and best wishes for success with your project.
By: wmchamberlain on March 13, 2010 at 9:44 am
Working in a group can be extremely difficult, especially when you have a specific personal vision of what you want but it isn’t shared by the others. Do you think the game you wanted to build would have been better or worse?
By: Mr Wood on March 13, 2010 at 3:55 am
That is an amazing project, I am very impressed. I think being able to work collaboratively with students around the world must be hard. Sometimes my students find it hard to work with each other in the same classroom.