Currently I have created A lifeguard hut and a beach.

I began by creating the beach. Once I had the beach landscape created I added water. Once this was realistic enough I added a sun and sky. While the sun cannot be seen it is shining at an angle that creates the shadows in the pictures.

The lifeguard hut took a while to create  and once it was created I loaded it into the same frame as the beach.

1. Introduction: This sections will describe the objective of the essay, how im going to research it, write about it etc.
2. Addictions: In this sections I will discuss addictions in general and then a few specific type of addictions.
3. Main: This will be the main part of my essay ere i will be talking about computer game addictions and the research into it by various researchers.
4. Prevention: This sections will be about government, parent and other ways that are being implemented to prevent and treat computer game addiction.
5. Causal Relationships: This section is about the relationship between computer game addictions, alcoholism, gambling and obesity.
6. Conclusion: This will conclude the essay and I will be talking about my own views on the matter after researching computer game addiction.

While I have decided that this will be my own guideline I have not set it in stone. If necessary I will make changes as I am writing the essay.

There are many reasons why this has become a major health problem with things like diet, computer games, television and a lack of physical exercise receiving the blame for obesity. For the computer games industry the fact that they are being target as one of the major reasons why obesity is now a problem in children is a worrying one for them. The big question is, are computer games one of the reasons child obesity is on the rise?

One of the reason that has been attributed to computer games causing a rise in obesity is that computer game playing replaces physical activities in a childs daily routine. The reason for this is that if a child is playing a computer game for hours they have less time to excercise and burn of calories which is leading to obesity.

Another reason that I came across during the course of my investigations into the link between computer games and obesity is that because computer games are one of the most immersive types of medias children spend hours playing them and that when do go outside they tend not to excercise as much as they should. This seems to be due to children having so much fun while playing computer games that they do not feel the need to play sports.

What I have found so far in my investigation has been that computer games are receiving a lot of blame for being one of the reasons that obesity is on the rise without having proper scientific research to prove it. Years ago television were the main blame for obesity being on the rise and now the blame seems to have shifted to computer games.

Until new research had been done that proves computer games and obesity are actually linked rather than implied we will not know if they are truly linked. At the very least we can see some possible reasons for there being a link but this doesnt mean it’s truly there. Realistically we have to look at the fact that diet, lack of parent control, genetics and numerous other factors that are probably combined are causing the rise of obesity and that it isnt just one factor alone that doing it.

If any one know of proper recent research into the area please leave me a message as I would love to learn more.

In my 4th year of study in college I was asked to develop a business plan. This was a team project and when Haoming, Thomas and myself met up for the first group meeting we had a discussion on possible business ideas such as an iPhone application for finding books in a library or the creation of a computer game for educational purposes. After thibking on all our ideas we eventually settled on StudentBookCentre.com.

StudentBookCentre.com is a website that will facilitate the buying and selling of second-hand books for students in 3rd level education.

The reason we felt this would be a success is that a lot of student buy academic books for a module, use it for one semester and then never use it again. This is a waste of resources and money. Our service will provide students with a way of connecting with other students from any college in Ireland to sell or buy their books at a cheaper price.

My Involvement

When we were researching all the aspects of the business idea we took separate sections of it each. My main focus was  to investigate the potential customers and the benefits they would receive from using the website. This involved looking up how many 3rd level students their are approximately in Ireland and investigating them. This was important because it tied in with the financial projection that Thomas was doing. The number of student helped us figure out the approximate income from that sector would be. Once I had completed my part I then started to help out the other lads  with there sections.

I helped the lads with writing and structuring the wiki page as well as proof reading Hao Ming’s sections for him.  Out of all the projects I have undertaken I think this has been the best for team work as the work was split evenly and once we had each complete our sections we helped the other team mates out.

Outcome

I was really happy with the outcome of this project. We were able to come up a good idea that we think will make money.

These are our presentation slides.

In recent years there has been a number of computer games that have incorporated religion into them. Some of them have shown them in a good light, others in a bad and others in a neutral way.

There are many games that involve gods, cults, church’s and other religious themes.  An example of this is in many RPG games where the player can choose to join any number of in-game religions. These religions generally aren’t real religions but can some times parallel real ones. In the games being a member of a religion normally boosts certain player attributes.

Computer games that involve real world religions tend to be a delicate subject. Generally there are a lot of people, with a lot of beliefs and for a computer games company to make a game with religion in it they either need to be neutral or expect to alienate a certain amount of people.

What you might think is … couldn’t you make a religious game where critics, fans and retailers would all line up and universally say ‘Here’s a game that has some sort of moral or educational value?’,” said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. “But people tend to take religion extremely personally and therefore have more opportunity to be offended. If you make, say, a Christian based game, are you going to make it a Protestant game? If so, that might offend the Catholics.

I have looked into computer games and religion a bit and cannot find any games where a religion is being portrayed in a negative way. There are a couple of games created by a company called N’Lightning. N’Lightning is a game company that is dedicated to providing the gaming community with high quality Christian computer games/Christian games. Other than computer game companies like who are making games to promote  religion in sometime abstract ways.

The are many computer games that have taken terms from a religion and incorporated these into a game. They are taking these terms that are commonly used and incorporating them so that the games will have more depth for the players.

An example of some of the terms used are ark, god mode,  angels and demons. There are many more example however they are generally easy to pick out.

A computer game series that I follow is Final Fantasy. This game series normally has references to Shive, Odin, and other gods. They can also have characters who are paladins or fight demons in the games.

Music

Is it wrong to download an album or piece of software? Are they stealing by doing this? these are the important question that people need to ask themselves in this day and age.

It is argued that downloaded music is wrong and that it is in fact stealing because the artist or maker of the product is receiving nothing for their product. The fact that the maker can spend hours making the product only for some one who doesnt want to pay to download it in the space of hours is probably sickening.

The other side of the argument is that it isnt wrong and that people should be allowed download files without repercussions as the product isnt being stolen, just copied. Another point people make is that for years the big companies have been making a ridiculous amount of money and now is a time we get something.

Other

Another aspect to the internet these days is that with the internet it has made it possible to stock people more efficiently, or in some cased brag about heinous acts that you are about to commit.

There have been numerous cases in the last few years of people who are about to commit murder posting this on the web and then committing it. In class the other day we were discussing whether or not it was the responsibility of the website developers to report this sort of posting or if it was solely the perpetrators fault.

This is a serious topic that should be thought about. There are arguments that website developers should be flagging and reporting people who are claiming that they are going to commit a terrible  act. This can be easily done as the developers would only have to set up a search system to check there site for key words.

The problem with this is that there have been cases of people being reported for doing this, cops checking it out and then the act still being committed.

Another argument is that really the only person to blame is the person who committed the act and not any body else. How could they, they didn’t do anything.

There are many arguments on how much blame goes to each party involved and its a delicate subject that will more than likely be defined in laws in the years to come. We hope.

]]> http://kingofconfusion.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/computer-ethics/feed/ 0 kingofconfusion http://kingofconfusion.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/getting-immersed-into-a-game/ http://kingofconfusion.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/getting-immersed-into-a-game/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:44:06 +0000 kingofconfusion http://kingofconfusion.wordpress.com/?p=209 ]]> Ever gotten Immersed into a game so much that when someone talks to you, you don’t hear them.  If your not sure here is a brief explanation of how people can get immersed into a game.

Computer games are being design these days to suck a player into the game world so much that they don’t want to leave until the game is complete. The computer graphics, story and interaction are being designed to make a person focus solely on the game. They get absorbed into the game so much that hours pass in what feels like minutes. When people talk to them they might not hear them or if they do its like hearing an annoying noise in the background.

This is what it means to be immersed into a computer game. Is this good or bad is the next question. In one way you could look at it as being bad because they player is being sucked into this artificial world that doesnt exist when they should be interacting with the real world.

Another argument is that it can’t be bad. Why? because it’s not the only medium that causes people to be immersed into it. Take reading as an example. When reading most people are fully focused on the book. They nearly always ignore everything around them. This is the same with computer games.

My own personal opinion is that being immersed into a computer isnt bad, it just means that you’re enjoying the game. Whats wrong with that when the same thing happens when you reading, watching tv etc. I know it happens to me more than a couple of times when playing a game, and I can definitely tell you it happens every time I read a book.

This is an interesting topic in the computer game industry. What makes a computer is the question really. Is it just the main character, gameplay and the story or is it everything that is in a computer game down to the smallest of details?

The industry is so competitive now that video game companies are going all when making game. There pouring millions  into creating a piece of art for the players to interact with. The importance of game space can be seen when you take a series of games like Call of Duty.

This game series is almost virtually the same in every game, except that the gameplay and graphics are slightly better. Do we like the game just because of the game play? Hardly.  Can you imagine a game with the quality of todays games and the graphics of 10 years ago. They quality of gameplay would be wasted. In order for a game to do well it needs to find a balance between gameplay and game space.

1. WordPress.
2. LinkedIn
3. Pulse

WordPress:

WordPress is an online community were you can blog about whatever you want to. It’s a community that really lets you express yourself and talk about your opinions and ideas with people. I joined this community for a course module but after using it for a number of months I found that I really enjoy using it and could see its benefits.

I’ve hopefully contributed to the community by blogging and commenting on other peoples blogs. Blogs that I feel in particular that contribute were the blogs on I wrote on how to set up a WordPress account and how to edit your tagline.

If you any difficulty figuring out how to sign up to WordPress or on how to edit your tagline then my hopes are by reading these blogs it will make the process that bit easier.

I am going to keep blogging about WordPress and the general things that users should know with the hopes that the blogs will help them. I have also joined the new facebook group that will provide help to people if they need it.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn in as social networking site used for professional networking. This community allows its users to connect to other professionals in any industry that they know. I joined linked in and after about a month have connected a number of classmates and people I worked with during cooperative education, as well as connecting to a cousin in the same industry.  This is my LinkedIn profile.

This is highly beneficial because no matter where in the world you are you will be able to contact people in the industry.

Pulse:

I will be using the Gamebryo Lightspeed engine to develop a section of a computer game for my Final Year Project in college.

Gamebryo Lightspeed is the only professional technology for start-to-finish multi-genre/multi-platform game development. The game’s development engine allows its user to develop a computer game for any platform or genre.

Due to this I have decided to join an online community called Pulse. Pulse is an Emergent community that provides a place to find everything you need to know about how to develop a computer game. It does this through tutorials, code and samples to a variety of blogs and connections to others people who use Emergents products.

The community will allow me to talk to Emergent developers, evaluators, academic participants and technology partners during the development stages of my game.

As this is a big project I will be posting questions and generating talks on the best approaches to using the game’s engine for certain tasks.

I will also be meeting regularly with other people in the college who are going to use this games engine and we will discuss methods we used, that could be used or just general talks about the engine.

I will also be blogging about the engine  to give people a general idea on what it it, how it works etc.

• To demonstrate to my supervisor, and the other attendees, just how well I understand the project.
• To outline the amount and quality of the research I have done in the area so far.
• To describe my plan for how I intend to proceed for the future.

I delivered my FYP presentation in front of 4 supervisors and 4 students.  It was a 15 minute presentation with 5 additional minutes for questions and answers.

For me this was the best presentation I have ever delivered in college so far and I was happy with it.

At the end of the presentation each supervisor asked a question or gave their opinion on the project.This was a beneficial process for me because I got to here there opinion on the project and I was able to take there comments in and redefin some aspects of my project because of this.  From their comments I have decided to

1. Create only a section of the game rather the full game, by doing this I can outline the full game in my FYP report but concentrate fully on only implementing a section of it.
2. add a testing period to my development cycle so that people who have and haven’t been involved in water safety can test the game demo and give me feed back on it.

As I have now finished my background research and given presentation I will start creating a decision tree, story boards and sketch’s for the game.