week 7

OK I have say WOW, this is probably the quickest week of all. I had to start working on all the game reviews, research papers, progress reports, developing the research paper of this program., find a lit review related to gaming and education, and not forget the weekly projects we work on.
this week I starting working on developing email and leader board interfaces.Now the challenge was to work in java script  This is a new language for me. I started developing  clickable and hovering actions on backgrounds, buttons and labels for each interface. This a lot of searching for functions, patience and testing. After so much work, I feel grateful  because I learn and even though I get stuck on this small problems, I can always ask the grad students for help and 98% of the times, these students solve the problem.

week 6

OK so this week that passed was of lot work, fortunately I had already read the two research papers last week so this week I didn't have to worry about this. Working with grad students,we were able to correct the tables that we were working for the bots game. The good part of this week was that we accomplish our goals. we were able to create all the queries for Player's achievements table.Next we were able to implement it to the php code where integrates the queries with other php functions. This will be used to later to upload to the bots game online. In This was a major accomplishment.  It was a huge relief on my part because I was learning new ways of creating queries. I kept a log of all the queries that I have worked on.I also did a game review. The name of the game was Guitar hero II.This was fun due to that I was able to play it in the games lab in the huge screen, which is always a plus. What was particular this week was that we had a bunch of elementary students come to see our lab. We had a good time telling, showing and explaining to the students  about the bots game. Of course we allowed the students to play the game. The most rewarding part was that a few students wanted to keep playing this game in their homes.

week 5!!

OK so I can't believe it is the fifth  week already! The time as passed so amazingly good. It has been doing a lot of work and have been  long hours on the computers, however what makes it worth it, is that the goals are getting accomplished little by little. Even though the goals are getting tougher the graduate students in the lab have been of the best support to us reu students. They are patients and super knowledgeable.  This week our goals are to create the leader board, create new table that will allow us to make sure that the player get achievements and awards when that have passed some criteria. This week I reviewed one of the most scariest games ion 1996. Resident evil 2, was a must in this review. This game rated M, was a great success in that year. I enjoyed talking about its greats side of the game.

week four!!

Ok this week our gears shifted. We were rapping up the features of the 3d town we were creating for the bot. We develop stability for the bot, gave him a bow collider, created a menu script, created GUIs for the player, coded in java scripts, reading the research papers and reviewed a game called TWISTED METAL II.
Of course some other goals were not accomplished like finishing
the 3d tutorials in unity and give animation to the robot however the important things got done today. our focus was that next week we finish the tutorials in 3d , complete the small town for the robot to run around. Create new table in the games database link them them to the web game, and keep track of a leader board. The research papers we read were so much easy to read this time. I enjoyed how this program is focusing on the details on how to grab the player’s attention. The goal is to finish out what are the features that make players keep playing while at the same time trying to implement learning methods so that player learns from the whole game interaction.

week three!

OK so this week  our goals were the following goals of this week were geared toward finishing the 3d buildings on
  Google sketch, import these building these images to UNITY, give the robot some movement. . our focus was that next week we finish the tutorials in 3d , complete the small town for the robot to run around. Have the camera follow the robot, finish some coding on the coding that the robot has and read research papers plus the review of the a game I chose Crash Bandicoot 2. This was definitely a time to express all my knowledge of a game I beat inside out. The great part about it was that I was able to critique the likes and dislike of the game even though this game is amazing.
Of course, we have planned the research readings and the game review. What I liked about the readings
was that we found difficulty on one of the lit reviews and ease on the other lit review. This way were had criteria what judgments to take when we are going make our research papers and presentation

week two!

This week we a had more challenges. we had more defined goals and we were getting use to Unity. we had the privilege of reading four research papers. Two where our guidance on how we should read research papers and the last were on research the current grad students  are conducting. This was definitely helpful because it will prepare me for when I want to pursue the graduate level. On our specific project, our small team of four people , were working on a creation of a three dimensional world for the game called "Bots". This game consist of a blocks on a plan surface. There is a robot that is on one block space. There is also a ball and on the blocks of the surface has an end point. The bot is suppose to go and grab the ball and bring it to the end point. The way this is done is by having the player program the robot. The player has a menu where the he can select turns, forward steps, backward steps, pick up and pick down. The sad part is that the player has only a set amount of moves he can produce. In this case, the player can use computer science concepts to prolong his moves. The options that the player has are creating  methods such as "while, for loop and if statements"and at the same time create functions that will allow  the user to reuse his loops.
The user also has the power to create levels , play his own level and after passing it, the player can also play levels that another play has created. This is possible because each player creates an account in order to play. This can be seen from different menus, such as score boards, my level, winner, contact other people.
This may seem very technical however this is a quick view of this game. It is at its infancy and there is still a lot work to be done. 
We had dedicated with my coworker to create a 3d world. the goal is to create a building of some type for each selection on the menu. we have been working on the texture of the world, the buildings and reading other codes.
we have been also fortunate enough to hear from other professors how to present and enhance our public speaking for our presentation the end of the program

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first week

As I arrived to warm city of Charlotte, I pictured a lot of hard working students and active adviser at the University's lab. My first day was just like I imagined. Every one was actively pursing their own project and the adviser served as a guide to the students in their need for answers. When I was welcomed to these hard working students, I felt relived because they were so helpful to me and they took their time in explaining the new software(SVN Tortoise, Maya and Unity ) I was coming across. I have to say that for the first week, it took me time to adjust to the change however, I felt like this was just the beginning.