adding animation and navigation to our game

So as Brandi and I venture into our forth coming days of this class, we need to learn a few things, like how not to panic every time we mess something up, because the might inventors of Flash CS4 (Adobe) created a magical thing called an "undo" button. Today we learned about adding animation and navigation to our games, and while we've had some experience with these topics, we're gunna need a little practice with these next couple topics. (My point, you can refence the unbeatable bunny game...)

I think the coolest thing about the animation is how simple or how complex you can makes it, this stuff seriously amazes me every time I think about how long it took to build and animate a working game.

So my video today is not only an excuse to laugh, but to enjoy some chilidhood memories, and my favorite song. Our game is about music, so of course I'm going to pick a parody that will make anyone laugh even if they have never heard the song before. I also feel that Jim Henson's team does a pretty bang up job with their animation.
There is also a good possibility that this video may not even show up, I seem to have this kind of luck with these kinds of things.

Drawing in Flash (yeahhhh...)

So learning to draw in flash is pretty difficult I must say, it's a pretty cool thing to learn though, hopefully we (brandi and I) can get really good at this flash nonsense.
We haven't really learned anything since we updated our blogs moments ago, I guess we should have waited to do so, and just combined these together. We've made some progreess on our game however, we have an instructions button! We also almost have our title done..

Planning your game?

So, Friday we got to start actually designing our game in flash, oh and we created our team pages, we decided an appropriate name would the ASC kids, (aka "The Action Script Challeneged" kids). We had some minor discrepancies about spelling, as usual, and about what we wanted to do, but I think we are through the worst for now, I'm slightly argumentative when I think I'm right, even if I'm wrong so we'll see where this goes.

What I look forward to most by far is FINISHING. If we can finish and have a decent game that works (reference the unbeatable bunny game of mine) I will be overly thrilled, and probably throw a party in celebration of victory.

Paper Prototypes, oh no!

Well lets just say this was an interesting experience, Brandi and I learned that not only am I not good with computers, I can't spell. I was taught (I think that's correct, not really sure) that "loose" is not "lose" needless to say we had to re-do some of our lovely sheets of paper. I also missed the day that we filmed, because I was sick, so brandi was left to her own resources to do that, again I'm sorry brandi.
When we started this process it took quiet alot of thought, and considering we don't have much artistic skill this is going to be something we have to work really hard at. Alot of other paper prototypes look awsome in our class, like alex and michael's (yeah you guys are going to get alot of praise in all of my blog posts, I'm so jealous), but there are a few things I like and a few things I don't like persay about the whole paper prototyping process.
I'm going to start with the likes, the paper prototypes:
-make you think about how you really want your game to be formatted.
-are alot of fun to make most of the time
what I don't like:
-They cause frustration when you can't come to an agreement with your partner
-They show off your lack of artistic ability.
Now if only games could be made with a canon rebel, then we'd be good as far as artistics..but until that is plausible we aren't doin' so hot with this drawing nonsense haha.

Our game :)

So Brandi and I are venturing into this process together, but to to circumstances she wasn't here today so I'm vouching for her and saying we are doing a "save the music"-esque type game. I'm pretty excited because we both have alot of ideas, it's just putting them into perspective, and learning more about how to do things in flash. It will be a challenge for us seeing as how we are the ones in the class going "uhh what's going on?" "I don't know, did you see that, how come that moves, but ours won't!?"
We are the action script challenged kids, but we'll get through it. I've learned so much about this topic just by being in music programs my whole life. I can't imagine being denied the right to learn an art form just because the area where I live is cutting the program for funding. I applaud VH1 for their efforts to help give kids back their right for their musical heritages. Songs tell stories of the past, they preserve who we are that moment in time, and without that we are left to paper and pencil which eventually go away, music has been around long before we could write or form an understandable dialect, and have formed significant pieces of history. Including times of peace, war, celebration, and inaugerations of leaders.

Mini-game project

WE FINISHED!
After a week or more (yay for snowdays) we all finally finished our mini games. The worst and best part of the mini game was the action script. I never thought that coding (that was already written for us) would be so hard to use, you forget something your game stops working entirely. The best part was learning how to use the action script without it overwhelming us. The mini-game wasn't hard to make, but it wasn't one of those "it comes naturally things" to me, for others (*cough* Alex) their gamese are amazing, for others quiet like myself, our games are very basic, I just got excited when something worked like it was supposed to, especially after missing a few days in the beginning and having to get caught up.

The only games I've ever really played in my free time have been the Sims 2, for PC, and Spyro for PS2 when I was younger, I haven't honestly played many games since 7th grade, where I'm always on the go.