After I poorly pitched my game, I had a burning thought, the reason I had to write this post: I felt that the design behind technology in education is poor because of the designer’s approach and money.

I imagine when a typical educational game designer thinks of a game, they constrain the game to the limits of what they perceive a kid can do. Thus resulting in worthless passive games (think film with buttons).

I believe that if I was a kid and given any educational game from today, I would have played the game for 5 minutes and trashed it. I would have deemed that the game lacked value. Yep, even as a kid I had values.

Educational game designers could take few points from the current independent game scene. Indie game designers strive to let the player learn to play the game by playing the game, without a tutorial. Indie game designers also try to make a game as accessible as possible, so even a person who hasn’t been conditioned to a similar game can play.

I think one approach to this is to take a complex system and try to simplify the interface as much as possible, without losing the core functions. My game is essentially a simplified music composition application. What else can be simplified? How about other creative endeavors: writing a book, making a film, choreographing a dance, designing a house, designing a game. How about occupations: forensic scientist, nurse, documentarian, journalist, photographer.

The other problem is sadly money. If money already greatly influences the American education system, then it surely affects technology in education. The existence of a poorly marketed two-day $80,000 prize startup pitch event perfectly demonstrates the influence.

The end result: an indie game developer rants and another terrible educational game is funded.

The Pitches

I pitched two ideas, one with a team and one without.

The team pitch development started with many great ideas but became something monstrous and out of scope. Still, I don’t regret teaming up. I feel that having a team enforces the result product to be more accessible. My personal pitch is clearly a product of my personality, and likely only works for my kind.

My personal pitch was for a game in which the player draws to create music. The x-axis is time and y-axis is pitch. The game has pre-defined sounds it can recognize and indicates the player once found. For example, if the player draws a stick figure, the game recognizes and indicates the vertical line used for the body as a clap sound. The clap sound is now marked as discovered under a list of sounds. Perhaps there’s a sound below that for applause (with a play button beside it to play it). Now, since the player knows how to create a clapping sound, he may intuitively draw multiple vertical lines to create an applause sound. In the process, the player will learn how the game works and go on to try to mimic the other sounds listed.

The possible features are exactly those of any professional music making program. Colors (different instruments), sound recording, save composition function, etc. I imagine the core sounds would progress: make a crescendo, a decrescendo, a siren sound (wave), jingle bells (without pitch), jingle bells (with pitch).

I doubt my game will be chosen. It requires too much development time; It’s not feasible. The judges likely feel it’s too complex for a 5 year old. Yet, of all of the pitches, the only game I’d actually want to develop is my own.

This is my entry Experimental Gameplay March 2012. The theme is economy. It is the result of developing a game without thinking about the core game mechanic first. It is a complete failure.

Controls:
Player 1/Player 2 – description

A/’ – Red
S/; – Green
D/L – Blue
F/K – hold and press RGB to direct military to retreat, halt, and attack
G/J – hold and press RGB to tell workers to get a specific resource (by default it auto-gathers)

Finger mapping:
Player 1, use right hand
Player 2, use left hand

Player 2′s controls mirrors Player 1

A/’ – index finger
S/; – middle finger
D/L – ring finger
F/K – little finger
G/J – little finger

How to play:
It’s just a simple real-time strategy game, except you play with a keyboard. Blue units gather resources, green do nothing as of now [supposed to research/upgrade], red can attack.

Other Notes:
As of now battles are sad due to lack of solid objects and pathfinding. Also, there is no win condition.

Post thoughts:

What was envisioned:
1000s of units, flocking, simple yet competitive gameplay (think Hokra), precise controls (think QWOP), color-collar workers (and a statement against classism), resource renewal (and a statement against resource consumption), map based off of image, able to upload map (MS paint is now a map editor!), large resolution to zoom in and out.

Why it didn’t work:
Decreasing the amount of player input increases the amount of AI programming. Competitive games require more balancing and tuning than non-competitive games. Multiplayer on the the same screen isn’t as fun because it lacks fog of war.

Also, I felt like crap while making this. It was forced. It just didn’t feel right.

Future:
I feel like a game could be created with these initial ideas, but I can’t bare to look at it again.

I am now gearing towards Jenova Chen’s philosophy. Making a game that causes the player to feel a certain way.

Thinking about film for a second, as films have greatly influenced me, I cannot think of an experimental film that greatly affected me. The films that the were meaningful to me, that influenced me, were ones that made me feel differently. [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did come to mind]

I can’t name many games that directly express a feeling. Most current great games have a novel game mechanic and fit the secondary art (story, graphics, music) around it [in good taste] to express the feeling: Ico (care), Shadow of the Collosus (epicness), Braid (enigmatic). Few games have a more direct approach: Dys4ia (frustration) [IMO, amazing], …But That Was [Yesterday] (sadness) and Between (lots!). Okay it seems now I’m just naming some of my favorite games. But perhaps that’s the reason they are my favorite. They were meaningful because they made me feel a certain way. They moved me.

Isn’t that the core of art, an expression of feeling?

What place do purely mechanical games such as (glancing at IGF) Spelunky, Antichamber, Beat Sneak Bandit, The Floor is Jelly, even the mechanically genius Storyteller have? In order for it to be meaningful to me, will these games have be fully developed, realized, harness an emotion for it to have a pronounced affect on me? [Botanicula did make me smile]

I think so. I don’t even care about most of those game as of now.

If Braid did not have the story, graphics, level design, and music that it did, would it have been great? I don’t think so. It would have just been another puzzle game with cool new mechanics. A forgotten IGF winner for best design. A squander.

The importance of “finishing your game” is reiterated. And by finish, it is implied to develop the game until every aspect is fully thought out, until you’ve spent years of your life creating something, something that somehow your life now depends on, in hope that it will be equally appreciated by others as it is to you.

- The game of horse. One player creates the gesture, the second player must match it.

- When a player touches, a line connects each touch, allowing the player to create shapes. A simple game would be to let a variety of shaped objects fly by, and the goal would be for the player to try to accurately encapsulate the shape. Imagine a shape that has 10 vertices!

- A Mario Party / WarioWare like game. A bunch of mini games in which players compete or cooperate. Example game: drag the [single] coin to your corner. This may cause physical roughness. I haven’t played BUTTON, but it seems like I’m thinking of old ideas. =/

Games based off of feelings:
- A romantic game. I mean Wong Kar-Wai shit. Atmospheric. Poetic. Now with interactivity!
- A game that captures city loneliness. Hmm…

Games based off of a new game mechanic:
- A game in which you can move portions of an entire level, a room. When rooms are connected, the objects inside them can traverse through each room. Eh, difficult to explain in writing…

- 3D folding. See Fault Line by Nitrome for 2D version. Further thinking and exploration required.

- A two player game in which the players’ screens contradict each other (think Between by Jason Rohrer). The game could start out with the players’ screens matching (to condition the players what’s normal), then introduce differences. For example, the one player could be helping the other by feeding him cake, but on the other player’s screen it is shown as poison, and is only noticed through interaction.

- A game in which players play one at a time in order to create a story. Can even use an existing story making game. Hmmmm, I remember playing this on paper before…

- A slightly different idea. A game in which players play one at a time in order. The current player can see all of the past players actions. Each player goes through an avatar creation screen to create an avatar. The current player’s avatar interacts with a main character at some point in time, a memory. The choices the players make influence the main characters path. Will the players cause the main character to defeat the enemy, wonder aimlessly, or cause suicide? Players should be able to see past play-throughs of the game.

- A 2D game with multiple layers. The player must traverse the layers, complete actions within them, which combined, solves the puzzle.

- A game which uses microphone input to move a character around, which also emits sound waves. Think Metal Gear Solid. The player quietly says “up”, and the character moves up whilst emitting a small sound wave. A guard gets closer, the player panics and says “up” with a louder volume, the character moves up and emits an even larger sound wave. The sound wave mechanics can be explored. There could be items within the game that affect the sound waves in different ways: block it entirely, reduce the size, increase the size, rebound, invert. Could even make the game 3D. Devil Tuning Fork? So Pretty. Based off of an old prototype. Note to self: MAKE THIS HAPPEN. 2D, likely.

Non-experimental
Games that would be fun to make and play (party games?):
- A multiplayer game that requires the teamwork of 4 players. Each player has a certain occupation or skill.
- A one versus all multiplayer game. Any genre. For example, if it were a platformer, have 3 lakitus and one player

Games that are minutely different so that I can finish a game without killing myself:
- An auto-runner game, but in which you have to manipulate the obstacles

Games that could do well with a minimalist approach:
- The Settlers like game. Or make on that works.
- A real-time strategy game. A simplified Company of Heroes. Arena matches. 3 vs 3 units, 5 vs 5 units.

Games that express a statement:
- Occupy Wall Street – A game that simulate OWS. Top down, think Risk (board game), for each area of New York. The player can allocate protesters to each area. There would have been statistics for number of protesters, peacefulness, arrests, deaths, impact on the economy, etc. The main point was to show the player that peaceful protests do not work, only violence brings the attention of the public to make any useful change. Yeah, lame.

- Corporate Workplace – Eh, I had an idea, but this is overdone.

- Impact of Human Resource Consumption – Might make this for EGP 3/12. Mechanics should be similar to a Settlers game, or a god game, so it’ll be interesting enough to program.

Rules:

1. Each player (vendor) is given a set of n blank cards. N being the number of players or 5 at a minimum.
2. Each player draws a single item and duplicates it on all of their cards. Example items: A spaceship, Obama, a Macbook Pro, Excalibur, an empty tin can.
3. Each player writes the value of their item on the card. Example values: 1, 1 million, 1/3, 1283, $1.99, pie.
4. Each player keeps 5 cards in hand and discards the rest. (This is done so that players can evenly distribute their cards when they get eliminated)
5. The player with the highest valued item begins the first turn (barter).
6. Turn: The current player must barter with another player. The number of cards exchanged must be equal on both sides. Example barter: “I’ll trade 1 spaceship, 2 Obamas, and a Macbook Pro for 3 empty tin cans!”. The players exchange cards. The other player must now respond with the new total value of his goods within a time limit [5 seconds]. If the other player succeeds, the game continues. If the other player fails, the player is eliminated and must evenly distribute their cards among the remaining players.
7. If a round completes, the time limit decreases by [1 second]. The time limit resets to the default value once a player is eliminated.
8. The game continues until 2 players are left. In order for the final player to win, one player must fail a barter and the other player must succeed during the next barter.

Optional Rules:
Players must role-play as a vendor. Example vendors: the merchant from Resident Evil 4, Crazy Dave from Plants vs Zombies, an ambiguous Middle Eastern vendor.

WARNING:
This game has not been play-tested.

Copyright issues:
The title may have been inspired by Ridiculous Fishing.

How this came about:
I actually wanted to make a game in Unity but my windows partition had insufficient space, so I started thinking about analog games and new media. The main idea was written during public transport. I worked it out a little more on a composition book. That’s it.

I have MacBook Pro (13″ early 2011, Model Number: A1278) with 196GB allocated to the Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) partition and 42GB allocated to the Windows 7 partition. Bad idea, as I’ve found I use Windows 95% of the time now. After a searching a little on Google it seems there is no recommended (reliable and popular) way to re-size the partition, instead I must re-install the Boot Camp partition.

While researching I thought this would be a good time to finally upgrade to a solid-state drive and do everything at once.

After little research I’ve decided to choose the Samsung 830 over the Crucial m4 and Intel 510 (all 256GB versions) based on the few MacRumors threads I read. I calculated my Windows install (applications, but no media) takes the full 37.9GB with 4GB virtual memory, and my Mac OS X install takes around 80GB (or was it 60?*). I don’t want to run into this problem of low space again, so I decided on the larger 256GB drives. From what I gather the Samsung 830 controller is newer/better, compatible with Mac OS X, and can update the firmware from within Boot Camp. Normally I’d choose Intel so I don’t have to worry about reliability, but I did not see any price or performance competitive options from Intel. Besides, I loves me some Samsung.

Upon reading the current Best SSDs For The Money article by Tom’s Hardware I stumbled upon a neat solution which allows you to install a second hard disk drive in the optical bay. MacRumor users found a cheap alternative form Amazon. I’m thinking about ordering one and placing my hard disk drive in there.

Just thinking ahead of a good video editing system, I could store the original footage on the hard disk (HFS+) and edit on the SSD. My current external hard drive uses NTFS and I use a NTFS driver (NTFS-3G or Paragon, I don’t remember) to read it from Mac OS X. I remembered reading something about the exFAT file system. That sounded like the perfect file system for external drives, but after a little research it wasn’t. I’ll have to do some more reading.

I’ll update this post early next month with my results. It might even be separated into two posts, resizing and buying a SSD.

UPDATE:
Success. I was able to clone my Mac and Windows installations. For the most part I followed this well-written guide. It was an overall smooth process.

Here’s a tiny list of hurdles I went through:

Before I began I uninstalled NTFS for Mac driver. I’m not sure if this was necessary.

2. Follow the wizard to create a BootCamp partition. This partition does not need to be the same size as your old Boot Camp partition. When Boot Camp Assistant asks you to insert a Windows install disk quit Boot Camp Assistant. Your partition is created.

During this step, when I clicked install in WinClone, it would ask for a Windows disk without creating a partition. I had to insert my Windows 7 disk for it to partition. After that, my PC restarted and booted from the Windows CD. From here I selected the Boot Camp partition and selected format (after clicking advanced options). I don’t think this did anything though. I then quit the setup, restarted the PC, held options to boot into Mac, and continued to recover the image from WinClone.

8. Turn on your Mac holding down the Option key on the keyboard. You should see your Boot Camp partition as a boot option, (it’s probably labeled “Windows”). Select it to boot into Windows.

The first time I tried to boot into Windows the PC displayed a blank black screen with a Windows mouse cursor. I had to hard power off. The next boot worked perfectly.

After I was done I was able to use Samsung Magician software to update the solid-state drive’s firmware within Boot Camp. I used the Windows update option, as opposed to creating a bootable CD or USB.

I also checked to see if disk defragmenter was turned off in Windows as it is not needed for solid-state drives.

Finally, Mac OS X feels as nimble as Window 7. As I had guessed, the hard drive was the bottleneck. The good old Core 2 Duo lives another day. Also, it’s nice not to have to move files around to compensate for the lack of space. So worth the time.

Other Resources:
http://guides.macrumors.com/Extend/Resize_Boot_Camp_Partition
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1056464
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1177020&page=19
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-review-benchmark,3115-6.html

My sister told me her car stereo wasn’t working. I checked it and found that it displayed Err-3. After a little Googling I discovered this is part of the anti-theft system and must have triggered after the battery had recently died.

Here are the steps to reset the anti-theft system:

1. Check if your car has a sticker with a code written on it. Here’s a video that shows possible locations. If you find the code, skip to step 5.
2. Pull out the stereo to obtain the device serial number and keep it pulled out.
3. Write down the serial number so that you don’t have to remove the stereo again
4. Get the code by supplying the serial number, VIN, and other information. Try this website. If that doesn’t work, call a dealership, ask for parts and services, and tell them you need the code. If they don’t give the code or try to charge you, try another dealership.
5. If you came from step 1, disconnect the car battery, wait 30 seconds, and reconnect. If not, disconnect the power cable from the car stereo, wait 30 seconds, and reconnect.
6. Enter the code
7. Celebrate

Other Resources:
http://honda-tech.com/showpost.php?p=33226689&postcount=5

There’s far too many choices. Do I get a consumer camcorder, a prosumer camcorder, a DSLR with video capabilities, or a real professional film camera? Well, the consumer camcorders have the consumer look, prosumer camcorders produce the same quality but have more buttons, DSLRs are missing features to consider it as a video camera, and a real film camera costs $7000.

A “pro” would say. Buy a real film camera. If you don’t have the money but know that film is what you want to do in life, save up for a real film camera.

A smart person will tell you to film with whatever you have. If the camera is limiting your abilities, buy whatever is within your budget.

If I could turn back time I’d buy a $600 TM-900 and start shooting; Then buy things as I need them.

That didn’t happen. I over-researched, spending more time reading when I could have been shooting. I ended up with a $1150 Panasonic DMC-GH2 with the 14-140mm lens. Although I don’t regret my purchase I do regret the time wasted.

Hm, now I’m unsure if I should provide the research I did as it may enable a reader to continue researching.

Might be updated soon!

After experiencing a great film I reflect upon my life, my past present and future.

It reminds me of what’s important in life, placing everything into perspective. I immediately begin to remove anything invaluable nearby (close browser tabs, clean my desk, clear my schedule) so that I can focus on what’s most important. It keeps me on track.

Sometimes it pulls me away from my lucky American life, and makes me think about how wastefully I’ve spent my time and money. It holds me close to the ideal simple life. [Man Push Cart, Turtles Can Fly].

Sometimes it reminds me that I am not the only one and that I am normal. [The Apu Trilogy, Tree of Life, Fish Tank, Still Walking].

Other times I just ponder. It’s sadly one of the few times in my life I am not busy, away from the distractions of the modern world. An ample portion of my thoughts text file was written after watching a film. I owe films for providing me these crucial moments. I’ve made many life altering decisions during them.

Of course it’s not limited to films. It could be a TED talk, a Youtube video, a comic book, a crucial life event, anything. But it’s so convenient to watch a film in two hours on my laptop knowing that there’s a great chance of it affecting me. It’s a tough decision to risk my time on anything else when I know I can be satisfied with a film.

The film is almost too similar Once. Much of the narrative is sung or told through soft spoken conversation. It’s immediately known that the level of realism, maturity, and quality is not at on par with Once, but it still has all the charm.

In Dancing Zoo, two very young musicians fall in love, discover the impossibility of working (and assumed living) with each other, but are thankful for the experience.

The film does appear to be cheesy at times, but I felt some of it was natural as the leads were two young Koreans. I’d guess around college age but I could be wrong as Koreans do appear young. Their age and their actions caused a little conflict in my believability. Two college age Asians wondering about, playing music, living in their own apartments, living the artist way of life. Hmm, maybe they were older than I thought.

I also felt the film was somewhat natural because it depicted some characteristics that Koreans have. In the perspective of an American, the film can appear as an inauthentic, cutesy, dreamy, romantic story. Although that’s somewhat true, I felt that a real Korean relationship may certainly be just as cutesy, dreamy, and romantic. The characters’ gestures of greetings and farewells are sweet and shy. The notion of having sex after a date does not exist; Perhaps that’s an American notion emblazoned by Hollywood. The characters’ use little dialogue in communication. Well, that’s not specifically an Asian trait, that’s universal, but it felt right.

So although the film is flawed, having bad screenplay at times, disjointed at other times, and unbelievably cutesy (everyone laughed at the early romantic montage), it still retains some authenticity in the way a real, young Korean relationship could be, as I don’t know for certain and can’t compare. It even retains an atmosphere of realism throughout the film’s narrative. The characters make emotional and rational decisions, falling victim to love, learning from experience, and maturing from it.

Somehow all of this is conveyed in a film which is in song seventy percent of the time. The music never hindered my viewing. It consisted of the expected simple acoustic songwriting music and sometimes indie electronic music. I actually remember disliking Once at many parts because the same old guitar chords repeated for every song. This didn’t happen here. The music never became annoying. It fit, complementing the slow paced dreamy film.

For me the pros outweighed the cons during my viewing and I was able to dream along with the characters in the movie, forgetting it’s flaws. I wondered if Koreans are characteristically quiet and well-natured. I wondered if romance is worth the time. Slow paced films allow me to wonder. I’m glad to have experienced such a unique, independent film coming from Korea. The only Korean films I’ve seen were by already acclaimed directors Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. I can only hope for a new wave of this kind from all parts of Asia. Or perhaps great little films exist worldwide and I just lucked out by catching the premiere of this one at a tiny theater in Chinatown.