10th grade year
Well, This project has earned the title of the longest project I've ever done. However, I quite enjoyed it. My team was rather pleasant to work with and we got a lot of freedom with what where we wanted to go with our game. Fortunately, we had Gamemaster to guide us along our way showing us what we needed to get done before we submit. We started by rapid prototyping our own games and play-tested them all in the same period. After designing a little game and creating some very bare-boned rules for about an hour, we would spend the rest of the time playing the game. When we played we would time it to see how long it takes to finish and just see if the game flowed like it should. It usually didn't but their was a time where we almost had a decent rapid prototype but to no avail, it needed a lot of reworking. Then we would record what we found out along with additional comments. Then we started thinking of our real game. Our group collectively decided on a resource management game. Later we decided that it should be about the player being stranded in the woods and they had find certain items such as clothes, food, water, and shelter. This became a game of chance and you would roll a dice to dictate what item you earn. We tried to spice it up by allowing you to design your character. But once again, it just didn't feel right. We got some feedback saying that is we had a main character and a solid backstory, there would be a drive to win. So, that's what we did. After some discussion, we settled on an aliens that crashed in the woods who is trying to blend in. We came up with our mechanics which was that each player takes an action card and that dictates where you move to. And we have a modular board which you get to set up before you start playing. I did learn that the game design process is not as easy as it sounds. Also that it is very stressful. However, I was quite happy with how close we are to perfecting our game. We just proofed a version of it and now we just need to fix our mistakes.
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Over my years of writing and trying to beat deadlines, I believe that in my eight years of writing I have grown a lot. Of course I've been writing since the first grade but, anywhere between first and fourth grade was filled with improper punctuation and run-on sentences. Fifth grade is where I made a large jump in my writing skills because my teacher made us write a story every week for the newspaper. We would be given a topic and we could write whatever we wanted to as long as it related to the topic. Not only did it really improve our writing skills but it helped drive our creativity and our stamina with writing. This made long essays seem easier.
In our World Studies class where World History class has been mashed together with English class. Our teachers tasked us with writing an essay about The French Revolution and William Golding's Novel, Lord of the Flies. This was a challenge but I was excited to see how this would go. As usual I started with my introduction paragraph and worked my way through my middle paragraphs but instead of working through them one by one, I added to them all at the same time as the ideas came to me and as I went back through my notes. I did my conclusion paragraph and took a small break to refresh my brain so I could try to review the essay to the best of my abilities. I was still extremely tired and I still missed a lot of stuff I should have caught. When I got my feedback was kind a big slap in the face for me. I totally agree in the grade I got but, I know it could have been better if I hadn't procrastinated. However, I would still consider this one of by best essays. Well after completing a project which initially sounded super cool project i found out it was not as fun as it appeared. At first I was like, "Oh sweet I'm going to key-frame every frame to make a very smooth video!" But it was nothing like that. After about of week of endless key-framing reality finally kicked in.
I decided that I needed to start key-framing only when I needed to and it kind of hurt me deep down because I really wanted a high quality video. My video was long... One minute and twelve seconds The deadline was creeping up me and wasn't even half way done. The saber compensates for the frames that aren't edited so that made it a little bit easier. I started to fly through the key-framing. Before I knew it I was finished. Then I had to add some music. My background music of choice was the Mortal Kombat theme song. Yes, the word combat is spelled with a "K." it was pretty easy to put the song over the video in premier pro. I felt like it fit the video style since the video looked like how a Mortal Kombat game looks. I just made sense to me. Overall this project was kind of rage inducing due do how long my video was. If my video wasn't as long I possibly could have enjoyed it. for those who would like to see the video here it is: Video Hamartia; a term derived from Greek, the official definition being “ a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero.” Many characters have a fatal flaw, ones that can often be their undoing, however, people believe that it extends beyond literature and that humanity has a fatal flaw. Instead of one, there are actually many, but that all narrow down to Greed, Pride, and Power, three words that will be the main focus of our paragraph to come, and how not only are they in the books we read and the movies we watch but within our society. Humans are greedy. Wars are started because someone wants more land or wants to take resources that the other land has like oil. Maybe that's due to the fact that everything cost a lot now. You can see it for yourself in movies, specifically ones based on true stories. You can see the greed in movies like Deepwater Horizon. The movie follows Mike Williams who is a mechanic for the oil rig, Deepwater Horizon. Shortly after he arrives he sees that many things on the ship need repairs. When he addresses the CEO, Donald Vidrine, he just shrugs it off leaving Mike a little aggravated. Ironically after Donald being told something needs to be done soon, the rig explodes. Mike quickly gets to his feet and starts getting his friends to safety. People start jumping off into the water to swim to rescue boats. They start taking role of everybody who should be there, eleven people didn't respond… Now that we’ve talked about greed, it’s time to get into pride. Pride is something seen in so many characters, specifically Achilles and Oedipus Rex two examples of characters whose pride was ultimately their downfall. Achilles, one of the greatest warriors in Greek mythology, met his fate because he believed he was completely invincible, only to die from a wound to his ankle. Oedipus Rex, another character from an ancient Greek story, who had so much pride he ignored his own prophecy given to Oedipus by the gods. His prophecy was that he would kill his father and marry his mother, things that eventually all happened and resulted with a despaired Oedipus stabbing his eyes out. We often see this in real life, hundreds of years after this stories were written. Granted there are not any ankles or prophecies from gods, but in our society, an overwhelming amount of pride can be a dangerous thing. Take political leaders for instance, too much their pride can have devastating effects on people, whether it’s the words they speak or the actions they do, if it’s fed by pride, it can lead to the harm of others. To quote an article from The Washington Post it says, ”A leader with an overweening, compulsive pride finds it difficult to learn or change”, and, “ A narcissistic leader finds it difficult to feel sympathy for those regarded as failures and losers, for the wounded and disabled, for strangers, refugees and the vulnerable.” Think of that too, on smaller scale, not every political leader is overly prideful, but not every overly prideful person is a political leader, meaning there are everyday people who are and act like this towards the people around them. The last flaw left is power, something that is fueled by both pride and greed. In the world of the popular fiction book, the Hunger Games power is one of the strongest themes throughout the book. The Capitol, he government system within the book, holds all the power. To maintain that power and show it off they pick two kids from each district and makes them fight to the death while broadcasting it on live TV all in the effort to let the people know who is in power and look what they can do with it. Now a little different, because we as a society haven’t reached that state yet, however power is still a fatal flaw within humanity. Again using political leaders, Nixon and the Watergate scandal that evolved out of trying to get him reelected is a president is just one example out of so any individuals, of power getting to someone's head. Humans have many flaws. These seem to tie together. Greed for example could be caused my money. People want money and things money buys. If you have nothing, you are nothing. This is how society works. Having so much nice stuff with some extra money gives people a sense of pride. With pride, comes power because you can't truly have power without a sense of pride. People will do whatever they can to get to the top of the food chain. Lie, cheat and steal. In some cases… kill. It is very true when people say that money/greed can change a person. When someone dawns those two traits chances are they have power. Greed plus pride equals power. Paragraph 1: 100% Isabel Paragraph 2: 50% Brandon, 50% Isabel Paragraph 3: 100% Brandon Art Idea : Brandon sources: Movie (Deepwater Horizon) IMDB Google Why Wars Happen Google Characters with Tragic Flaws Google Harmatia |
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