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.

Last day at 1st Playable 11/19/15

    Today is my last day interning at 1st Playable. I shadowed three meetings about a project that they were working on. The first one went for about an hour about ideas on what is needed to be fixed for the art. It was interesting because there were only 3 people in total and in the meeting they said ideas and problems that were needed to be addressed. The second one I shadowed, the team that was working on one specific game got together and told about problems in the code and what needed to be adjusted. They said different ideas on what to do and they learned from each other what programs there are to help fix certain problems they were having. The third meeting was a conference/phone call with a client. There were 5 people listening to a conference call and had questions for the client on what their goal was. They had a google document open in order to take notes on deadlines and on the different tasks they were given. I silently watched as they listened and took notes. It was a great experience to have so know I know what it is like to be a computer scientist at first playable.

Annotated Biblography 11/9/15

www.codecademy.com

Code Academy

I use this website in order to learn the different coding languages that I need to know. By learning these languages, I know the basics of what I need to know in order to understand what people are doing in companies that use coding.

http://www.1stplayable.com/

1st Playable

This is the company that I got to internship at for a month once a week. I would shadow a worker and then test some of the games they were working on in order to find the bugs.

www.roblox.com 

This is the website and MMO game I am using in order to begin scripting a game that people are able to play. This is more headed toward younger kids. I am taking what I learned in scripting and applying it to the studio in order to make the game.

Emma Codes

This is a club that dedicates in helping people that have an interest in coding to pursue it. This gives me the practice I need to learn how to work on group projects, even if they are small.

Emma Codes 11/7/15

        I am part of a club that is called "Emma Codes". The purpose of the club is to teach people with an interest of coding to help pursue that interest by learning about the basics of coding. In the club last week, we were shown some videos on what coding can be used in real life for and how safe technology really is. Then after that we were shown a tutorial on the basics of java script. After given the tutorial we go onto khan academy in order to make a picture and use the code that we just learned. This in order to reinforce what we just learned and have an idea of what it is used for. The coding club is a great opportunity to learn about coding and help other's interests in it.