Getting familiar with the beginning of this semester.

I would get sick the first week of school. I am feeling a thousand times better and was able to attend my in-person classes. I do not have anything to report as far as my research project goes this week as I am getting settled and familiar with how this semester is going to go. I am trying to schedule how I will manage my time with classes and the research project since I will be taking 5 classes. I plan to do the same project I started last semester, the batmon game project. I will focus my research this semester on how games can improve your cognitive abilities and how we can bring the importance of bats to the public. 

Image from: https://www.edubloxtutor.com/what-are-cognitive-skills/ 

Final Blog Post of Spring 2021

This semester was wild because of the outage, school trying to slowly move us back into the classroom, and debates on the COVID vaccine. I am glad it is all over and hope fall 2021 will be a step toward getting things back to normal. This week in terms of research, there has not been any. My new stresses are getting transferred to ASU, applying for scholarships, and stressing over passing my summer courses. First, I need to get the ASU application out of the way and pass my summer classes to graduate on time to be eligible for the ASU TRAIN Scholarship. Then, if I am accepted, I apply to many scholarships to attend and then deal with the nervousness of starting over at a new school where you have to learn how everything works there differently from what I already know here at community college. Everything is happening so fast, and I am trying to stay calm. So, for the next two weeks, I am going to give my brain a break. I will read all the books I have been wanting to, working out as much as I want, and maybe practice a little bit of java code here and there to handle my summer semester smoothly and have another well-deserved break, then be ready for the fall! I am also trying to figure out my presentation points for my poster as well. I cannot wait to see everyone's projects and presentations. 

Research paper final and final exams !!!

 Working on my final paper, I was tempted to go deeper into my research because there is so much more to analyze, but I don't have enough time to incorporate as much as I would like; a semester is not enough time! If I am accepted back in the fall, I want to go deeper into my research and hopefully get closer to actually recreating the research methods I have found. Today I discovered that bats droppings can be an organic alternative, and there is so much when it comes to the chemistry of their excrements! I wanted to include so many more articles I found with chemistry and bioengineering but simply listing them won't do the paper justice. Final exams have been draining, but we made it to to the finish line! I hope everyone has an awesome summer and takes advantage of their free time if they aren't busy. I myself am taking summer classes to accomplish my goal of graduating in two years, kind of frightened. However, I am terrible at math and slow at programming, two of which I will be taking acceleratedly! I literally bought so many statistics books online because I am scared. 

Week of big final assignments and practice exams

The end of the semester is finally approaching, and we are being hit with 100 point assignments, practice exams, and final exams. It has been really hectic with the limited time we have left to complete my programming projects. This week as far as the project since I had time to focus on exploring Unity and not papers,  I was attempting to fix problems I ran into I was examining Josh's project because I needed help with the background and finally discovered that my project does not have to consist of the same background the entire game and there can be layers added. I want to add layers to build the bottom portion of the scene with sand and maybe a road? My next goal is to add either object on the bottom to be the sand and then slowly move the bat through the scene into maybe an abandoned house and add more background layers to make the bat fly through a longer scene. I have not started coding yet because the graphics themselves take forever and have taken longer than I thought they would. I now see why game developers take years to release a game. 

Coding errors and new bat

 This week Unity, the program I am using to create my level in the game, was acting weird, and I had to delete some of my progress because my coding scripts were not complete, and the program was not wanting to work with unfinished scripts. During this process, I realized that I have to have my bat begin coding the bat movement within the game to start. I thought I had a bat asset already downloaded from the program's free store, but I did not, so I took the time with some help; we got the bat drawn from scratch and uploaded it onto unity. I will include the bat drawings below. I have started coding the bat movement now and have to work more on my background images to add more layers and depth. After I saw our bat drawing come to life, I got really excited, and I am so eager to see the progress with this level; I want to take time in the summer to keep this process moving. 

Background paper and ideas

 This week the background paper was due so it took most of my time as well as how hectic getting assignments done has been. I have come up with more planning ideas for the game; when I was planning, writing, and editing my research paper rough draft, It sparked new ideas for how I will test my research. I want to use my family and close friends to research the game when it is done. Due to COVID, I cannot really ask anyone else to help with research. So far, I have started reading more articles on conducting the research and keeping track of it. The atrticles I have been reading describe that there is already a lot of research proving video games enhance cognitive abilities and help learn more than traditional methods, but not many tests using a video game than traditional learning. It is more simulation and apps. I am excited to start building the game but I know building and coding is a tedious process; it will be a long process. Regardless I am ready. Below is a picture of the tools I will be using to conduct research, drawn terribly by myself. 

Slow progress

 Honestly, this week has been hectic; all of a sudden, I am behind in a class, and my entire schedule gets thrown off. It has been stressful trying to divide up time evenly because I have had to dedicate more time to the class I am behind in. This week in terms of the game, I have not done anything on the program, but I researched how to get started on editing my background. I want to insert multiple pictures and layers to the background instead of one image. I want to insert the night sky on the top portions of the game scene and then at the bottom have a dirt road or actual road. I have some coding experience, and I started researching that you can use code scripts to edit a background scene's dimensions on the game. I thought it was only through the Unity platform, but no, there is a lot of coding involved to edit the game scene. 

image from: https://answers.unity.com/questions/620699/scaling-my-background-sprite-to-fill-screen-2d-1.html

Level Foundation

This week I have taken more time to actually begin the process of establishing the foundation of the level of the game. I already had planned on how it was going to look at the beginning of the game, and I decided that it would begin with the bat flying at night time. I downloaded night sky bat assets and started coding the foundation of the game. I started making the 3 basic game objects that are basically like the foundation of the game, starting with the main focus on appearance. I added the night sky background with some cloud detail. I am still thinking of adding the moon to be visible in the entire game or to be visible only in the beginning. I got the night sky from the free assets I downloaded within the unity asset store; unity is the program we are using for the game. Surprisingly, actually building the foundation takes more time than I thought it would. A LOT of components go into the game, such as how big the actual screen the user will be looking at. We have to input actual dimensions. By today, I input some dimensions of how big the game scene will be, input the background photo, create the code basic test code script that will be run to see if the script is working in the game. I am posting a screenshot of the background photo set into the game below. 

Background paper and outage

 This week has been crazy overall. The highlight of this mess that we have been experiencing is that we had an extra week of spring break. Monday was hectic because I, probably like many other students, stressed due dates and how my classes would progress. I got myself organized on Monday, and all my teachers have been. Pushing back the due dates by a week or longer has lifted a massive weight off my shoulders. I dedicated more time to the background paper and finished my assignments on time, with other work being pushed back. I did not develop anything yet; it mainly wrote reports, researched, planned, and played with the environment. Next week I want to dedicate more time to the actual game solely. I have a lot of plans to start creating the game and how I want it to look. 

image from: https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-blur-books-close-up-261909/ 

Midterm week before Spring Break

 This week has been hectic with midterms and huge point assignments. I had one midterm today that had my brain tired for hours. I have another exam tomorrow, and a 100 point journal assignment which I know will take me all day, but it will make me enjoy spring break more. This week I have just been aware of the feedback I received on my proposal; I put it in a document to go back and make the changes. In terms of the research project, I downloaded the unity file version that josh made the batmon game with, so I start adding things and downloading the material I need. I have started looking at assets in the asset store within unity and searching for programs to create sprites or things like cactuses, rocks, and other background materials I need for my game level. I have looked through tutorials for help in maneuvering the unity program. I have also started to write ideas for what I want the game to have. As of now, I want to find a way to include a small note-like page before the game starts with very brief but informative information on my chosen bat for the reader to get to know the bat before playing the game. The game level will be focused on my chosen bat and the user will pass the level by avoiding the correct predators, obstacles, using echolocation to feed, and the right places to rooster. Basically, this week has been about beginning to be comfortable with the unity platform and planning the game specifications since last week was all research. Not much time was spent on getting to know the platform. 

Research Proposal and research progress

 This week, I spent time researching on the bat that will be my focus for the game level. I picked Townsend's big-eared bat, the scientific name for it is Corynorhinus townsendii. This bat in particular interested me because I have never seen a big-eared bat I am used to seeing the typical bats on television and shows that are usually black or dark brown, with small pointy ears, and a big nose or mouth. The bat I chose is the opposite, it has long ears that when extended can reach to be about half of its body length and they have pale gray or brown fur. They have a similar habitat to other bats, caves. The Townsend bat is native to Arizona and throughout the western united states. Surprisingly, they can fly 6 to 13 miles per hour. They do have predators but are hard to be captured because when they fly they are really good at dodging, hovering, and landing perfectly to get upside down and sleep. An article I was reading mentioned that humans have trouble capturing this type of bat because of how smart they are at dodging objects and flying so well. I thought it was how hard it is to capture them. No one truly knows how beneficial bats can be for the ecosystem and humans, which I hope is proven in my presentation as much as I can and the game itself. 

 image is from https://www.lcrmscp.gov/species/pale_townsend_big_eared.html