April 24 - Genius Hour #5

1. What happened over the past week,
Over the past week, a friend who had a paid account of the software we were using to make our game allowed us to use it to create our game, giving us more flexibility and options in terms of block placement and the amount we would like to use. Using this account, my partner and I made great progress this week compared to last week.

2. How it made you feel (yes I want a feeling and why you felt that way).
We were very fortunate and thankful to be able to use our classmate's account to be more creative with our game because of the unlimited amount of blocks we can place, compared to the small 50 on the free version of our software.

3. What you learned, what challenges you faced,
This week we learned new functionalities such as character selecting and making blocks break as soon as your character touches it. We also learned we can implement a wallpaper background instead of using random blocks as decoration, so that was neat.

4. How are you going to overcome these challenges
Consistently referring to the tutorials section will help us overcome any challenges we have in making this game.

5. What failed (if anything) and why this happened.
One difficulty we faced was making a character selection screen, so that we wouldn't have to live with using just one character the entire time, as it gives us more variety.

6. What do you anticipate in the future?
I anticipate greater progress just like we had this week for the rest of Genius Hour, implementing new things every week and having more levels.

7. Most importantly you need to write what you learned, if you learned anything at all for that week, and if you did nothing that Tuesday, why?  Were you tired, were you not inspired to work?  How were you feeling that day?
Compared to last week, I felt very motivated to work on our game and extending our knowledge to improve it. Learning things such as character selection and having a background were some new things I learned.

8. What is happening that you did not expect? How will you deal with this?
Creating a game is more complex than it seems. Originally we thought it would be a walk in the park but we have faced some obstacles along the way so far, but those obstacles have helped us learn more about the game to improve it.

April 10 - Genius Hour #3

1. What happened over the past week,
This week we finally got a chance to fully start our respective Genius Hour projects. I was lucky enough to have a partner, as I am working with Amun to create a mini game. However, we did not get much work done feeling unmotivated and felt sluggish on an early Monday morning.

2. How it made you feel (yes I want a feeling and why you felt that way).
It definitely felt good and was a relief to finally get underway with the project but I wasn't feeling as excited or pumped to do some work, possibly because it was a very poor Monday morning for myself waking up.

3. What you learned, what challenges you faced,
My partner and I learned that making a game isn't as easy at seems with the software we were using, and were having trouble right in the opening stages of creating a game. It caused both of us to be frustrated and made us not wanna continue for the rest of the day.

4.  How are you going to overcome these challenges
We are currently looking at tutorials to solve our problem or potentially looking at new softwares to create our game.

5.  What failed (if anything) and why this happened.
Because we were just learning the program, we faced significant difficulties in just starting the game. For instance, it was a struggle to make the game character learn how to jump and run wherever we wanted it to. We hope for greater fortunes next week.

6.   What do you anticipate in the future?
I anticipate we will get way more work done than we had this week and learn the basics of our program to get to where we want for our game.

7.   Most importantly you need to write what you learned, if you learned anything at all for that week, and if you did nothing that Tuesday, why?  Were you tired, were you not inspired to work?  How were you feeling that day?
I certainly wasn't feeling the best heading into Genius Hour because of being tired and having math class first thing in the morning, which seems to have drained all my energy and reluctance to work.

8.   Name one important thing you learned in class Monday during your Genius Hour.  Why is it important?
I learned the importance of getting enough sleep the night before to make sure I am full of energy when I wake up the morning after because it is vital to successfully get through the day.

April 4 - Genius Hour #2

1. What happened over the past week?
We learned how to embed videos into our own presentations, for example Prezi.

2. How it made you feel (yes I want a feeling and why you felt that way)?
I think it was really cool and unique how you can insert your presentations in a way it can be presented straight from the website you are viewing it on.

3. What you learned, what challenges you faced?
I had very minimal difficulty in completing this process.

4. How are you going to overcome these challenges?
I learned how to overcome mistakes from my peers around me and applied it to the solution.

5.     What failed (if anything) and why this happened?
Nothing seemed to have failed it was rather a obstacle just to learn how to embed my presentation.

6. What do you anticipate in the future?
I anticipate we will be able to start our projects very soon and begin the process of completion, recording progress and any issues along the way.

8. What is your big idea?
My big idea with my partner is to create a video game about jumping over obstacles in space.

9. Why are you doing this?  What interests you about your big idea?
As a vivid gamer, making my own game to play is something that you personally dream about doing as a kid and Genius Hour gives me the opportunity to do it.

Proposal