For this project I had to create a driving question. The question I had to answer for this project was, Can I create a euro game that someone can understand and play in under an hour. To answer this question I had to construct a board game. I made instructions and collected all the pieces. The instructions were a little hellish and took the most amount of time. The pieces were stolen from other games I had but the hard part were the cards which I sinked a good three and half hours into creating. I also had to play test it so it would be balanced. I learned a lot from this project especially the revision skill. I had to do a lot of revision to create this project as many components of the game wouldn’t be entertaining or work without tweaking. If the game is to basic its not engaging if the game is to complex it is unpractical. So I tried to find a place in the middle but leaned slightly to the complex side. I am super proud of this project because I thought I put a lot of effort into this project which I didn’t think I had the ability to do.
https://youtu.be/LZbzU7U7Cz0

Here is some info on Jean Talon.

Jean Talon was the the first intendant of New France. He served for two terms from 1665 to 1672. The intendant’s job was to be the intendant of Justice, Public Order and Finances in Canada. His Legacy remains as the saviour of New France from extreme poverty and establishing a firm government. He conducted a properly and well established supply of info and tools to repel the Native Iroquois.

Jean also made it an enticing option for french people to come to the new world. He built small houses before the French people would get to the new world so they didn’t start from scratch. He successfully got the population of his town to 10 000+. He encouraged population growth by offering money for having large family’s. Jean inherited this settlement that has had all its progress stalled almost to stop.

Jean had to extinguish this fire of rage between the settlers and the Native Iroquois one way or another. He contributed to the effort by supplying abundant supplies to the army. By doing this he was able to effectively defend against the “Blood Thirsty Natives”. This allowed for a more effective trading and development.

Jean returned to France as an even more wealthier and more respected man leaving behind a well established settlement. Though the foundation for a prospering settlement was set it was not meant to be. It took New France 3 years to appoint a new leader and the settlement wasn’t half of what it was with the presence of Jean Talon. Jean Talon is remembered as the saviour of the New France Colony.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Talon

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/talon_jean_1E.html

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/jean-talon/

Here is a video that uses this info as the script.

http://youtu.be/5O-tMNwfR38

For this project my group and I created a machine that represented the English Civil War. In my group was Nash, Gabi, Michael, Anatolia and Zak. We had a very skilled group as we all brought different but, Important abilities to complete our project.
Nash and Gabi were are architects and they successful created a blue print. Their skills of being neat and precise came in handy as that is what blue print is supposed to be neat and precise.
Michael and Zak are engineers and probably have the most hands on skills. They were successful at creating a machine that works 50% of the time and looks pretty good. Their were multiple components to the machine that worked well such as the scale. They had some trouble completing the pulley as it was hard for it work a 100 percent of the time. Our groups lack of experience with circuits led to the inconsistency of our pulley.

Then Anatolia and I created and iMovie that documented the creation of our machine and explained how the metaphors relate to our machine. The video we created was above standard as it document our creation of the machine in an entertaining and educational way.

http://youtu.be/fxT4-VTBS2Y

 

Overall I thought this was a fun and interesting project that go dragged out  a little too long. I enjoyed working with my group members and am looking to do something like this the future.

My debate video was just “bad”. For this project we had to create a video the activity departed two sides of a debate. Our topic for this video was field trips and wether they are worth the money or not. I took a partial leadership role in my group of 7.

We created a good educational video with what I thought were strong points but, it was BORING. It was way to long and covered every little point. And that’s were I think we went wrong was with our desire to make a movie with all the content and not just the stuff. If we had made a really well produced 5 minute video that just covered the strong points for each side it would of been a much better video.
Things I liked about this project were scarce but, the one thing that I improved on was motivating group members that didn’t seem to engaged on the task at hand. I had to employ a multitude of tactics depending on the group member I was working with ranging from aggressive to encouraging. I

Things I didn’t like about this project was the topic and outlined goal. The topic we had was school field trips which I thought was an awful topic. There isn’t much easily and reliable Canadian statics to create strong arguments for both sides. With the program I am involved in I felt that the biases towards that field trips are good is so strongly supported. So I didn’t really have a chance to make radical statements with some evidence behind it for the field trips are bad side. I think we had the perception that this had to be a 10 minute long video which I think is insane. The only you can achieve a 10 minute long video that is quality is with professional skills are a lot of work.

Overall this project was not the best showing of my skills or my group members. Here is my group members Tylo’s blog as he had a similar opinion to me.

This was an extra week for us to complete are project. We were able to finish the machine, blue print and almost finish the iMovie. The blueprint looks pretty good and I think Nash and Gabi are happy with it. It is simple but, understandable which I think all blueprints should be. The machine that we made works, sometimes. I think it is near impossible to get this thing to work a 100% of the time with the resources and skills that we have. There are just to many parts that could go wrong and there is no easy solution.

https://youtu.be/pHGAANWBNgc

I am mostly happy with it though as it does work sometimes and it is pretty cool when it works. The iMovie is not that close to being finished. Most of the filming has been done and some voice overs have been made. Next we have to get a final video of the machine working a 100% and looking nice. We also have to finish the voice overs. Finally we have to do post production editing. It might not be closed to finished, but I think we can finish it time for the due date. I am overall happy with this week and the progress we made and we just need to make some final touch ups and we should be done.

This week was a testing and refining week. I “finished” my instructions last week and I wanted to test it. So I had created a mock draft of my board game so I could test it. I started by creating the board. Then I made the cards. Finally I collected the little pieces and dice and my master piece was completed. Next I decided to test my game on Thursday with Ms.Willemse, Mr.Hughes and my friends Cashel and Zakaria. It went, ok. It had some serious balancing issues. By the end of the game the board was just filled with pieces and nobody had enough money to buy anything. If you just forget that it was pretty good. The players loved some of the core game mechanics such as the auctioning and the random events that happen each turn. They also gave me a lot of good feedback and ideas in which they think I should add to my game.

http://youtu.be/w2oaOILWcyI

So next week it is back to the drawing board and hopefully by Wednesday I can have the game finished and I can start making the actually game so it can be finished by next Tuesday.

This week was the first stage of the creation of my game. I dedicated this entire week to creating the rules for my game.I am really enjoying this project so far as I have a large background knowledge in board games and I am now actually being able to use it for something useful. 

  

 I wrote 1500 words of instructions to outline how to play. I took many ideas and some game mechanics from other games which I mashed into mine.I feel like I have created good core game mechanics and I am hoping to test it out next week. I have also looked into some of the piece and parts I will need to create an ecstatically pleasing board game and to be honest I am slightly worried. I will have to leave a large chunk of time to actually buy or create pieces for my board game. As buying pieces online would be optimal but I just don’t have the time. Overall this week was a step in the right direction and now since I have my instructions “done” I can get away from the tedious construction of them and actually starting the fun and more interesting revision.

This week was a productive week. We built a lot of individual pieces that need to be slapped on to the base of our machine. Gabi and Nash have the final blue print like 50% finished and are just waiting on the engineers to complete the machine so they can finish the print. Me and Anatolia continued to document the creation of our machine. 

I have been helping with a lot of the grunt work for the creation of our machine and I made a really vivid connection when I was gluing the popsicle sticks to the scale. I burnt my self and I had a Harry Potter moment when I remember burning my self for my year end grade 7 socials project.

Here are the two videos.

Ultimately I thought this was a “get stuff done week” and I thought we did that. If we continue down this path I see a successful final product. 

Casino Kings

 

This week was the planning and brainstorming ideas for my blue sky project. I had trouble coming up with an idea that was super original. So I went back and thought of something simple and put a twist on it. Create a board game, easy right. Well not so easy if someone has to understand it and play it in under an hour.

 

The game will be based on running the operations of Las Vegas. It will be a 3 to 4 player euro game. Your goal will be to have the most money at the end of the game.The game will end after 10 turns. I will follow the timeline of the city from 1900s to the 2010. You will create casinos and the casinos will specialize in certain areas and you have to capitalize on all the tourist and the revenue you bring in. Idea of the game is that you have to attract tourist and make them spend money.

I began to make progress on my project.

I created a timeline for when I want to get stuff done.

I started to look through some of the games I have and look at their best qualities.

http://youtu.be/D14Q5PQP5hw

Overall I thought I was a little slow this week but hope to pick it up this week and try to get an outline of how the game will play and look.

 

This is the third week review of our metaphor machine creations. This weeks energy was spent on the actually creation of some real objects. We have created a to scale blue print, started the actually creation of our machine and elaborated on our metaphors. 

The blue print was created by Gabi and Nash our two architects. The machine ended up being 24″ by 35″. They drew the ramps the scale and the bell to a 1 to 1 scale of what our machine will look like. They are kinda at a stall with drawing some of the objects, because we are kinda in flux deciding how some parts of the machine will work.   

  

The actually building of the machine is not going quite as well as I hoped it would. We are lacking the odd material here or there, so we will have to make sure we bring some more stuff so we can get stuff done! What we did get done I am happy with. We created the ramps for the machine and got the pulley system some what functional. 

  

The metaphor creation and elaboration on our script went great as we got a pretty cool sounding script. 

  

My only worry is that we won’t actually be able to use all the metaphors because we won’t be able to create all the machines.

Overall I thought this week was a little slow, but I am mostly happy with our progress. I hope next week we can put our nose to the grindstone and get some stuff done.