Feeling Overwhelmed?

I know that sometimes keeping up with things can be a little overwhelming. I'm no different than most people. When I first started being an intern, keeping up with things (updating my progress chart) was a little difficult, and also finding the time to complete my work as needed. I was able to overcome this. I decide to set aside time from my schedule of being a Father, a Husband, and a Student each week to work on the things I needed to work on and update the documents that needed worked on. I explained to my family and school that I have made a commitment to this and I need to see it through. I planned when to do my homework, and I also scheduled time to be an intern. To my surprise, everyone was very accepting of this. I guess all I needed to do was to exercise my time managment skills. I know somethings in life at times have to become before others, I never forget this. I'm not saying I'm perfect, I still at times struggle to balance these 3 roles I play out, but if people are understanding then things will go well.

I hope you find inspiration in this.

Top 5 tips on managing your wiki

Managing a wiki can be a hard thing to do if you don't stay on it. If you only update your wiki once a week, then you'll have to think back or look at your notes on what you did, upload all the files that need to be uploaded, and after awhile it can be a bit of a headache. But I have 5 tips for you on successful wiki management.

1). "Constantly update" If you constantly update your wiki, you won't fall behind on it. Even if it's the smallest, tiniest bit of content such as a word or a picture or sentence, take a few minutes and just update it. Upload that one picture you have and add it to the page needed. 5 minutes max, even if that.

2). "Organize and Structure" Organization is key. When you upload a swf file to be viewed in the wiki, put it in the right section, possibly with other swf files if needed. Also give it a name or a title if no name or title is appropriate for your file. Pictures can be done this way as well. Give your page or pages some structure. Use categories or sections.

3). "Spelling" If you are unsure of how a word is spelled, use any spell check you can find. If you can't find a spell checker, use http://www.dictionary.com/ . Not only is this good to do anyways, it'll make your wiki look a little better and make people think you know what you're doing. :)

4). "Check out everyone else" If you are using an RSS feed to see changes on wikis, don't hesitate to look to see what changes someone has done. This might inspire you or keep you on your toes. If it's in a class situation, you'll see what you have missed. Seeing what someone else has done may help you out with your own wiki.

5). "Link It!" When you create a new page on a wiki, make sure that the is a link to that page. Don't let it just sit in wiki-limbo. If you worked hard on it and put some great content on that page, make sure that there is a link to it. Also place the link in the correct section (See: "Organize and Structure"), area, or even with an object where it's needed. Maybe near something related.

These are my 5 tips to you as a wiki user and a wiki master. You may have different ideas on managing your wiki, but these topics are key and very helpful. Plus it'll make for good looking pages.

Ideas for games

I've been trying to think of current social issues for games so it I can make it easier for new students to find ideas for their games, but I haven't been able to find a decent topic. It seems right now what the papers are covering is the upcoming election, war, and and tensions between the US and Iran. I want find something new. maybe I'm not looking hard enough. Well, the search still continues.

Paper Prototyping - July Workshop 2008

Daniel had a great presentation on paper prototyping. He showed his video that he produced a while back. He included some audience participation and let one of the educators "play" his paper prototype. I thought that was cool.

WWWS July Workshop Press Conference

This press conference is great. I am starting to understand a little bit better where this program is going. The purpose of Globaloria / WorldWideWorkshop is becoming clearer. Seeing the new schools coming into the program for year 2 pilot, and seeing the look in their eyes, made something in my brain "click". I can't wait to see what year 2 is going to bring. The new schools and students for me to help out. There is a lot pushing this forward and I'm glad to be helping it along.

A Concept to teach

I am in process this week to create a game concept that will help current and incoming students to chose what kind of game to make. Whether it be a game for social change or for educational purposes. I'm not exactly sure how to go about it. A concept that I have in mind is like a poll or a personality quiz of such to help them out. Each answer would add to a total, then after the game was over, based on the score, an out put would reveal to them what type of game they should make. A listing of ideas would then be presented to them. I hope this works.

A possible game

I found this game online. It's called Mencia Madness 3. The game is hosted by Comedy Central and based off of their show Mind of Mencia. The game itself is uneducational but I believe I can do the same thing, but with a purpose. A purpose to teach maybe a health game. I'll find the link to the game again and post it here to show anyone what their game is like. (maybe you all can give me some ideas)

Lost: One train of thought

It seemed to a little hard this week getting back on track. the presentation took a lot of my attention. So any ideas I had before the presentation, went right out the window. lol So if any ideas come to your mind, let me know.

Charleston Presentation

I can now start back to blogging. It has been a while since my last post but I have been so busy getting the final touches together on the game and the presentation with Leah. But now I can put it all to rest and get back to my normal duties, online mentoring and creating tutorials. I was so nervous about the presentation that I couldn't get to sleep until late last night. Coffee became my best friend today. I enjoyed meeting everyone and getting to see some new faces. I hope things went well and that our presentation was enjoyed by all. I was nervous, and what made it worse was that Leah and I were to go last (at least I thought we were last). I hope the game we created can go on to be further expanded.

On an interesting note, when we were presenting the game in the beginning, when everyone was going around checking out the games, First Lady Manchin was looking at our game and said to me, "Maybe the tourism department should have this on their website." That made me feel like we did something fantastic! Also, if I'm not mistaken when I was introduced to Fmr. Gov. Gaston Caperton, I think he recognized me by name. That made me feel great. Overall, it was a fantastic event. I had a great time.

Whoever reads this, and you were there.... thank you from the bottom of my digital heart. And Lee, the Clay Center was great, thank you sir.

Completely Unrelated

Let it be known on May 5th, 2008... I became CompTIA A+ certified. I just thought I would shout this from the roof top. Sorry for the inconvenience. That is all... carry on... stop looking at me!!! lol :P

New tutorial on the way

I am starting to make my donation game for Globaloria. I have some great ideas while working with this. I'm gonna make documentary-style tutorials on what I am doing, showing what it is like to be a programmer. I do have some great things in mind, and I hope it works out well for me.

I'm still taking requests on tutorials. Please email me at:

deering2@marshall.edu

New Resources for Globaloria

I recently received an Email from Mr. Lee Kraus asking yours truly to look over some possible new resources for students coming up these following years. I thought some of them were good for mainly reference by instructors, but then there were a few I just liked real well that shows some great aspects to game development. I put some of these links up on my del.icio.us account. Check them out and see what you think.

Man High school presentation

It was a great opportunity to see a high schools effort on their game. They had a great concept, but I just wanted to know what the reason and the story was behind the game. Great concept for the game, just needed to more.

Goal line in sight?

My class is coming down to the wire for our game. I have the rafting taken care of and I am waiting on Matt and Jerry for there part so we can slam it all together. I have found some great work arounds for what I did. I am going to make some tutorials about the Actionscript aspect of the game I believe this going to be great!

I found something....

I found something that will be really great for ideas and tutorials.
Flashperfection.com.
it seems to be what the gaming side of things can help with and that it has other wide variety of things dealing with flash. I haven't explored everything just yet but I believe this to be a great companion to any flash class or course.

WebEx RTC Presentation

I thought the presentation of the Randolph boys were great. I liked the game and where they were going with it. Alot of advice was given and I hope it was taken into consideration. The only problem I had with the session in particular was that apparently my phone was giving the feed back, so I had to ask questions through the chat window, but they were ignored. Hey what am I gonna do about it right?

Mini-Worshop

Recently I attended a Mini-Workshop, a virtual workshop on the net. It was very cool on how it was presented. I know stuff like this has been going on for awhile, like teleconferences and video conferences, but seeing the action going on on your computer was just cool as ever. I would like to be apart of more seminars like this. This also maybe a new way of schooling for those who are home bound or sick and able to see up close and personal what is going on. I know video classes happen but doing it from home would be great.

Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V

I recently heard of an incident where there was something that went not as the person expected when it came to copying code. I have had problems like that in the past and trust me it can be very frustrating when you think you got it. Here's a little tip, higlight the section of code you are looking for and hold Ctrl down and hit C. That is the keyboard shortcut for copy. It's very quick as opposed to right click and copy. Then when you have the code you are looking for, go to where you want to put it and hold Ctrl down again and hit V. That's to paste the selection where you want to to br... Yet another keyboard shortcut.

Spring Break Thoughts

I know this week is spring break, and alot of kids are gone home for the week or if they are in college, they went to the beach to escape the cold (or get a tan). But I am here, sitting in front of my computer working on the final parts of MCTC's final game. I almost have the whitewater rafting game done. I planned on making at least 1 tutorial this week on what I have done with actionscript in this game. I have learned TONS of more code, having to look it up online and and stuff on what I want to do. My reflections on coding is this, if ya can't figure it out on your own, find someone who did and have them explain it to you.

Reflections of an Intern, Pt 1

This internship so far has been great. All the things that I have been asked to do, haven't been outrageous or ridiculous, but definitely challenging. I like a good challenge in a subject or field I am most comfortable in. Lee has been most supportive and instrumental in the progress of my time as an intern. But I would like to be, possibly, more involved at some point. I'm not sure right now in what part I would like to be more involved in, but only if they would like for me to be. The curriculum is definitely great for the students, but some of the assignments I would like to see more invasive assignments and delve deeper into the ActionScript programming. I believe that to be most important when it comes to Flash. Yeah animation is important, don't get me wrong, but it wouldn't be Flash if it wasn't for ActionScript.

That's my two cents, and I want change back please. :)

Lights, Camera, ActionScript!

I have been having alot of fun this past week working on my tutorials for ActioScript. Especially the one for hitTest. I wasn't too sure of the code myself, until I started to research it more, and then telling people about it, I started to better understand it more.

I am sure when I am asked to do more tutorials about AS, I'll have more of a grip on the subject than I already do.

Surveying the Land

I took a look at the other schools around the state, and I must say they seem to be right on with what they got going for them. But I did notice one thing though, I can't remember what school it was exactly, but they had a game in the works and the problem I seen with it was you could not see the character when it was standing still or moving left or right. The only time the character is visible is when it's jumping. I'm gonna revisit that school and see if I can get ahold of their copy of the .fla file and see what I can do to help them out. I can't remember which school it was, but I'm sure I will find it.

But as in for me, I'm looking to pop a few tutorials this week about Actionscript. I don't know where to start but I think the beginning will be a good place to start. I will be visiting AS 2.0, for that is the language I am programming in. I may find some AS 3.0 and try to compare it to what is similar in 2.0. I'm looking for these to be developed by the end of the week and posted. I have some great eBooks on my personal wiki that may shed some light on anything I haven't touched on, or did but didn't go into great detail.

Until next time, have a good day!

I'm Getting Fancy!

Hello all. I recently made a fancier looking tutorial in flash. Tutorial 5: SDeering on Layers. It was a fun tutorial to make. It was hard to get the menu system down pat. I wanted to do some fancy tricks with it.

I ran into a few snafu's but I got the bugs worked out. I liked what I did, and I might do some things a similar to what I did in the new tutorial.

I won't be going back and redoing the other flash tutorials to make them match the most recent but from now on, I'm gonna try to make them look more professional.

I am still looking for ideas for tutorials, so if you have and great ideas, email me, and I will see what I can do.

Until then have fun, perservere my friends.

Longest tutorial created yet!

I have created my longest tutorial to date and posted it for the MyGLife world to see. It wasn't so much all the coding I had to do, but it was designing the independant scenes. OMG that was tedious! Not really, but I like to make you think so. LOL :) Actually just getting my thoughts together and having to find out the exact details for each piece of code was the most trouble.

ADOBE NEEDS TO CLEAN UP THERE HELP FILES AND MAKE THEM MORE STRUCTURED FOR EXACT DETAILS!

lol

Oh well, I actually had fun making this one. I'm gonna shoot for more screen capture movies next time, but I need some ideas please. Requests would be good too! :D

Starting the week off right!

I think I'm gonna start this wekk off right with a nice blog. I have posted some old tutorials again with a new look here on my internship page. I am trying to figure out also on how to create the tutorial for the link in my new swf files that link you to my personal wiki site. I initially found it the help files, but some of the numbers within the AS is a little confusing, so I'm gonna play around with them and see what they exactly do.

Also to better understand some other ways of making other swf's, I have created a soundboard. For those who don't know what a soundboard is, it's a Flash file that contains multiple sounds, contained within buttons placed on the stage. Due the actual content of the soundboard, I will NOT be posting this on my internship page but my personal page along with the fla file so you can see how I did this.

I have also obtained some "E-Books" on Actionscript 2.0. I have these posted on my personal wiki as well.

Well I think this is gonna be a good start for the week. I am actually excited to see what I am going to be coming up with next.

I can feel it, the creative juices are flowing! :)

Hang head in shame?

I have been a bad blogger. I have fallen behind on my duties of blogging my wonderful stuff to you all, but not all has been lost. Progress has been made here this week. Let me catch you all up to speed.

• I have recreated my previous tutorial 1 to look better


• I am still working on getting the last of the snowboarding game to work right

I know it doesn't seem like much but it has been alot of work for me. Life can kinda side-track ya.

Well I am hoping to have more to talk about later today, so keep an ear out for me.

Until then, keep on coding!

Racking my brain

This game I am working on for my final project is nerve racking. I had to take the background and eliments provided to me and kinda manipulate them a little bit. Movie Clips inside of Movie Clips, wow. So far what I have accomplished is getting the treeline to move on the mountainside. Now just to get the character and obsticles to work right, and the coding together and I'll be okay. having to pull double duty on a game is rough, but it can be done.

Good Things Are Coming

Things are going good! I am pleased to announce that working from home is going good. But there is somewhat a downside to this, I am getting writer's (or blogger's) block.

LOL

I am looking forward to meeting with the RTC students and getting to know them. I plan on looking at their experience and see where and how I can help them. I'm not much on the art side but I am willing to help.

Well, here soon I am also hoping that I'll have some content posted on my new personal wiki that may help things out.

Until then, take care and happy coding!

Hard to understand

I am working on a game that I plan on submitting to MyGLife and also tutorials for them as well. The game is another jigsaw puzzle. There is not much to the actual animation, it's all mainly controlled by AS 2.0. I was working well into the tutorial and had my puzzle together, but when I ran the game, one of the puzzle pieces were missing. I don't understand. I compared my work to the downloaded tutorial, and it seems to be the same as his. I guess I will triple check and maybe start all over if need be. This goes to show that not all things work out to the you thought it would. I will post up the link to the game whenit's finished. But here soon, I will alos load up both my game files and the tutorial game files that I am working with so maybe not only will I tell someone how to do something, maybe they can tell me where I went wrong or over looked something. Until then, Greetings from the Land of Steward.

Trials and Tribulations

I now know some of the pains of the Video Game industry. Getting stuff off the ground is hard to do. My goal for the week of 2/17 - 2/23 was to get a beta-test of the game we are working on, is behind schedule. I am looking for the complete release of the game with in 2 weeks. Am I setting unrealistic goals for myself and my team? I'm not in over my head, I'm just... dedicated to this. Maybe more so than others. For my part in help developing this, I feel like I'm right there with my part. My teammates are getting everything done, they are on the ball. With all the people I have worked with and "been in charge of", this group is great. I couldn't ask for a better team. I just wanna see what this all looks like in the end. Only time will tell.

Laters!

So far...

Well so far as I am progressing along in the game program at MCTC, I have got to see new sides to stuff that I only used to do as a hobby. Play video games. Now I get to help create them. After completing the first part, I have a good solid basic understanding of the fundamentals. Now we are half way through the second part of the program, and we are working on the class final project.

I stepped up in the role of "Project Manager". I really don't like taking the reigns on anything, but in this case it had to be done. No one else was wanting to take the lead, so I said "I might as well", hoping that someone would say "No, I'll do it." To no avail, it ended up on me.

Jerry and I were usually the ones to speak-up during the meetings with the MyGLife-WV reps. I guess that made them believe that we were the leaders of the class. With Jerry being busy, that made me feel that it was on me. I actually dreaded taking the lead in this, but I started getting comfortable with the idea. Now as project manager, I couldn't see it any other way.

We made good descions on our project resources. I think that people in the roles that we do, this project will be successful. This week we are hoping to have part 1 of our total project ready for beta-testing. I am looking forward the completion of it all.

Well until then, TTYL from the land of Steward

Tutorial 3 posted

I have posted tutorial 3 here on how to make a animated Movie Clip.

Tutorial 2

The new tutorial has been posted here on how to make a button.

New tutorial up

I have a new tutorial on how to create a movie clip. You can see it here

Welcome to Flash Blog for MyGLife.org

Hi folks, by now you know my name is Steward Deering. I am a student at Marshall University. To properly post questions or concerns on this blog, make sure you have a gmail account/login. I also use yahoo IM to chat with during the times I am available. I look forward to our future encounters.