Future Ideas for the next simulation 2/29/16

    For the next simulation, we are thinking of having it explain more in depth about the reason for winning and losing. It possibly will be in a microscopic view point. I believe I might do it with bacteria cells multiplying and how the player needs to experience for themselves what it's like when at first they are taking the prescription of the medication and then they stop before a couple of days. They will do a useless fight against the bacteria while they continue to the multiple. They will be eventually over taken and lose. Then an explanation will pop up telling them what happened and what the inevitable result was. Then they will press a continue with taking the full prescription of the antibiotics in order for them to see what happens when they do a battle against the bacteria that is easier. There will be an explanation short after saying how the prescription helped them fight off all the remaining bacteria. This explanation has to be short but informative. The idea of the simulation itself is in order for high school students to learn what is needed in biology, but in a fun way that will
keep the students engaged.
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Progress 2/28/16

     So far now I been working on a simulation that has to do with slowly getting rid of the bacteria using the antibiotics. Halfway through the simulation, it will ask if the player wants to stop taking the pills since they are mostly feeling better or continue the prescription. If they decide to take continue they win, but if they don't they lose. I am currently almost done and just need to make the finishing touches to it, adding the win or lose picture that pops up when they chose yes or no.

Figure 1: This shows what happens after the player has chosen to consume 5 out of the 7 pills. The pink squares represent the bacteria and how many are left. And the blister pack has the pills inside of it.

   If it's possible, I am going to work on trying to put up a temperature gauge for the patient. This will also convince the player not to continue taking the pills and give in to temptation. What will happen is the temperature of the patient will slowly go back to normal so when the prescription is almost done and it asks this question, it will seem as if the patient is alright. The amount of coding, creativity and graphic design takes more time than I thought it would. The accomplishment I feel when completing it makes me feel wonderful.

Backgrounds 2/11/16

    As I wrote about earlier, Ron is a computer scientist that is known for making games for kids that are in less privileged cultures than we are. For example, Indians, African Americans, Hispanics, etc. He makes games that educate them about their culture and also puts in some coding into the game, making the kids learn how to code at a young age. This allows them to become interested in the math and science field so there are more computer scientists. I talked to Audrey, and she is a professor at RPI. She is going to help me learn computer design in order for me to make an even better game than I would've ever thought of. Then lastly there is Danielle, she is a biologist who wants the simulation made in order to help educate people about bacteria and antibiotics. The thing is when people take too many antibiotics, the bacteria mutate in order to resist the bacteria, The bacteria are pressured into surviving the antibiotics that are trying to kill them, so they keep that gene that keeps them alive, it takes a giant toll of the bacteria because of how much it costs for them to maintain that gene. If people only went off the antibiotics for a couple months then go back to it, the bacteria wouldn't feel pressured to maintain that gene, so they would go die off again. She is trying to get that message across to the students that will play that simulation/game. In order to make it entertaining, we have to make it into an interactive game for them.

New Opportunities! 2/11/15

        Yesterday I went over to RPI in order to begin a project on making a game! I went from 1:15-4:00. It was really exciting! When I got there I talked to Ron and Audrey about what the project would consist of. I found out that I had to learn to code a game that was entertaining for kids, but also educational about antibiotics and how they lose their effect on bacteria. I had to think of all the possibilities and how in order to teach the kids, we need to keep their attention. We can't have too many words explaining what happens or else they won't read anything, therefore making the learning part invalid. Also the same is if we have not enough words, then they won't know enough in order to learn. Around 2:45 I went over to Danielle and learned her side of things and read a couple of articles to get a deeper understanding of the material I am basing my game off of. A lot of research has to go into it before I even begin coding!
They tried to make a simple simulation to show what happens when bacteria multiplies and here is what the code looks like:

The problem with this code is that the cloning is in a constant loop so it wont stop. This will cause the simulation to crash. We are trying to find alternative ways to show that the bacteria are growing at an exponential rate. One alternative was using the show and hide button so when the cell moved and touched one of the hidden cells, the hidden cell would show in order to give the appearance of it multiplying. All the ideas to put together to fix these problems are exiting and fun to figure out, I love a good challenge.

What I Been Doing with Code 2/5/16

      For the lasts couple of months I been learning to code with HTML in coding club. HTML is a coding program that is used in order to make websites. We are doing tutorials on HTML in coding club using http://learn.co. The format is very different then Javascript and Python. In the program, in order to make a page of a website, you have to use <html> and to end the code you need to use </html>. The format and different codes needed are completely different. Javascript and Python are used to program software or games, and HTML is used to code websites. Here is an example of a simple code we had to make in one of the tutorials:

Also with all of this happening, I was messing around with lua on a website called roblox. You can script games and play scripted games by others. I am trying to think whether to work on making a guess the song game or a game with a storyline to it which is a first person shooter. It is exciting each day to see what I can learn in coding.