For my final,I decided to do a game on Bitsy based on my group’s run of the School Year. We created a school for cats in the desert called Cat Desert School. I wanted to make a game in Bitsy since that option seemed the most colorful to me and I wanted to try designing the school. For the CharNG, I decided to make a classroom that was learning something and I wanted to make up some facts about something that has a lot of scientific information about it so the information would be generated and mixed up. I put in a lot of information about Mars from the NASA website and tried to make some funny lines. I thought it would make more sense for the student cats to say it since the teacher would probably know the real information. For crowdsourcing, since I had a lot of trouble getting responses for my previous crowdsourcing project, I figured if I asked for cat names, I would get a bunch of responses. I got a few and then forced my roommates for their responses as well. I made a room of different cats and gave them the names I was given. The n+7 was incorporated in the cafeteria. I decided since the nouns were going to be changed, it would be interesting to see what food gets turned into. I took a list of what cats like to eat and then ran it through the n+7 and looked at which iterations I liked the most. I added these to the cafeteria and placed them all next to each other. For transcription, I figured making my dialogue be something that someone else was saying would fit well with the medium, so I recorded myself doing some improv acting and made a theater classroom and had a cat say what I said. For Oblique strategies, I picked 5 cards. For “do something boring,” I decided to make a classroom where the cats said facts, and put the markhov text in that one. For “ghost echoes,” I added an invisible sprite in a hallway that makes a ghost sound when you walk through it (this addition was my favorite). For “water,” I added the pool that was in the game we played, it was no longer used in the game so here I made it abandoned and added some bones you can pick up. For “are there sections? Consider transitions,” I realized I was just putting rooms next to rooms and this made me go and add in some more hallways which I feel like makes it nicer. For “retrace your steps,” I decided to add a secret passage that takes you back to the main hall of the school. The secret passage becomes unlocked only if you picked up the bones from the pool. I feel like these cards really helped me in coming up with more things to add to the game to improve and expand it. For botnik, the predictive writer, I didn’t have any ideas and went to the site where I saw beauty ad predictive text. This inspired me to make some beauty products and then make bathrooms to put the products in. The bathrooms are split by the two rival cat groups, the long hair cats and short hair cats. I tried to make their icons on the floor but it is kinda hard to tell the cats apart when they only consist of 64 pixels each. I also forgot that cats use litter boxes and just made classic tiled bathrooms. For the anagrams, I decided to make anagrams of “Cat Desert School” to have it be on theme and made school trophies. I made a trophy room for them and got the best anagrams and placed them in the room. Overall, I enjoyed using some of these to help my creative process. Others were not as fun and felt more like a chore but still added something to the game that I would not have thought to add myself.
For this assignment, I explored the format of bitsy a lot and feel like I did a good job on it. I used all of the required parts but also made some parts just to add to the game. I think I deserve an A on this assignment. I spent a lot of time making the different environments and animating all of the sprites, and making the rooms look unique. I also detailed how I used the required additions and incorporated them logically into the story. I think I put in a lot of effort into my bitsy game and am excited for others to see mine. For the overall class, I think I should get an A or B because I am engaged in the class, always have my camera on, and interact with guest speakers. I did miss a few assignments but I intend to finish them before the end of the semester. I also had Covid so it did set me back in all of my classes. I do believe that I took a lot from the class and gave it all the effort I could, but I will admit some assignments were not as good as they could have been if I had more time. However, I did try to engage with the class and do my assignments correctly. I also played the Quiet year in class and the School year and made my roommates play the Quiet Year with me so I could learn it.