In this project, we were expected to program a game to display at exhibition. I was very intimidated by this project at first because I was not comfortable with programming at all. So, I used my background knowledge from the in class lessons on Star Loga Nova. Although I made my game in Scratch, those lessons were still very helpful. After I had my game made, my ultimate goal of the project was to figure out the probability involved with winning or losing the game I had created. This project was split up into multiple benchmarks. The first benchmark was just a brain storming sheet you created with a partner. While on this benchmark, I thought I was making my game a simulation of card matching where you randomly clicked two cards and saw if the same picture appeared. I drew it all out on a pice of paper and thought of the probabilities involved. Benchmark #2 was where you proposed the game idea. During this time, I still thought I was doing the card game. Benchmark #5 was the creation of the game. This was where my game evolved a lot. At first I started with the original game on Star Loga Nova. I was struggling even though I went in for help multiple times but, when I heard from a couple of peers that scratch was an easier program to use I was very optimistic. I then realized that since I was brand new to programming I should start small and try a simpler game. After talking to Dr.Drew we decided that I should make a variation on brick breaker. I ended up making it galaxy themed. By exhibition night, my game had evolved into "Galaxy Brick Breaker". Benchmark #4 was discovering the probability of the game. Below is a photo of my probability analysis for Benchmark #4.
How do you play Galaxy Brick Breaker?
Instructions: To start press green flag. Then use arrow keys to move platform left and right. The goal is to get the ball to bounce off the platform and hit every brick. When the ball hits the brick it will disappear. Below is a link to the game. Press the blue button that says "Galaxy Brick Breaker"
An Example of the arrow keys I am referring to. You should be able to find these on the bottom right hand corner of your laptop or computer.
Although this project was a little bit scary to me at first, I am glad we did this project. This was the first thing in this class I had truly struggled with and had to use the habits of a mathematician because of the fact I had no clue what I was doing. I started small. The first time I programmed my game I tried it with just one brick on one ball knowing I would need to duplicate it just so that I was able to make sure the fundamentals worked before I made multiple of them. The habit of the mathematician I found most helpful through this project is experiment and play. Throughout this project, i probably programmed it wrong 1000 times. Honestly there were moments where I was just hitting random buttons and hoping it worked. In the long run, I found this project to be extremely rewarding. While looking at examples the amount of programming people had terrified me but I ended up getting just as much. Below is an example of a page of my programming.
I also found patterns while programming which helped me. I realized that before you program anything there are certain key buttons that need to be used such as "when flag is pressed". While getting more in touch with scratch I learned that I made the process a lot harder then it had to be because instead of the fact I was not using the duplicate button to duplicate the code. Instead, I was writing it all out. This project changed my attitude towards programming. I can look back and say at the beginning, I did not have a growth mindset because it was a concept I was unfamiliar with but I overcame that and created a beautiful game I could be proud of.