Let’s start with TAG first.

So far, the idea is shaky at best, and this is not the beta phase, it is closer to an alpha. That isn’t meant to be an insult either. I just think that we’re way ahead of ourselves right now in calling this the “Beta phase” of TAG. It needs a lot more work for a few reasons. The first of which is that most high school students are not gamers, and therefore will need more explanation in order to understand a majority of what is going on. Im concerned with these students because giving such people the ability to learn whatever they want whenever they want however they want is a huge responsibility for them to have. These people will sink and give them a huge disadvantage from the beginning. Because we love WoW so much in this class, I’ll recycle an example from there. When you first enter a realm with a new character, what is the first thing you see? Well, quite a few things, but behind the HUD, the first thing you see is Tauren, Orc, Night Elf, etc with a large “!” above their head. Throughout the tutorial (roughly levels 1-20) there will be key commands like WASD and hotkeys popping up on your screen, along with a “Tip Box” that will hold your hand during key points in the game. All these things are tools Blizzard uses so people who are new to the franchise are able to move along with the tutorial at a smoother pace than if they were to blindly walk through it. The beauty of it though is that veteran players are able to disable such tips because they really don’t need it. The shortened version? Hold the hands of the new kids in order to not scare them off with too much responsibility and power and let the veterans run free.

The other problem I see with TAG currently is that there are too many changes. Changing a game is just fine but when the entire aspect is turned on its head due to seemingly every update, that is a problem. If Skocko wants TAG to succeed, he needs a consistent plan throughout the entire year.

AMP:

As you saw in my portfolio (Or will see depending on when you read this), I feel as if I “Mastered” a form of art in Photoshop utilizing the Shear tool along with mixing layers together. I have a few problems with that though. First of which is how I feel as if I never accomplished anything. The images I am showing you are all using the same process of editing even though they are all great in my eyes for their own different reasons. As far as I’m concerned, I accomplished the A and P in AMP but the Mastery has not come to me yet. I taught other people around me and I gave them tips on how to make their images better yet I failed to really master any aspect of Photoshop or even Premiere when I tried editing the video. I did try my best though at increasing my knowledge of photoshop and this year I reached out to new places I never thought I would go previously. In the end, AMP was relatively successful with me but I think it took more time than Skocko would have expected it to.

ZIM

Responsibility, reliability, morals, ethics, honesty, dedication and hard work are words that describe everything that is within the Mac Lab. The core of our learning curriculum in here, new and old, is based off these values, whether is be being honest and taking a camera to taking the time out of your day in order to help a fellow student learn a simplistic tool they should have learned months ago. I have taken these new values to heart in many different forms now. Even now as I write this, I’m beginning to type with more conviction because of Taylor Mali’s speech. No longer am I just typing “I think” and “I might” and I am actually speaking, not talking.

Story time. Back during my Freshman year on a Friday afternoon, my brother and I were driving home and as we came around the bend near our house, we saw an old man sitting down in his drive way with painting supplies thrown across his yard. As the pessimistic, cynical teens we were, we continued on home. Once we got there, we set our back packs down, but I couldn’t help but think of the old man. Skocko’s words began to ring in my head. “Make the world a little better place” he said. I looked at my brother, Jake, and said “We should go help him.” Jake immediately knew what I was talking about and we went back and helped the old man who was still sitting there in pain. It’s no “saving a cat from a flaming tree atop an orphanage which is also on fire” kind of story, but I like to think it’s a time where Skocko’s words actually made a difference in who I am as a person.

The Mac Lab does have an effect on someone in which they look at life in a different manner. A concerned, helpful manner. It’s for the better.

I’m truly glad that I spent three years in this class and I wish I could have spent a fourth.

“You don’t really know how much you can do
until you stand-up and decide to try.
— Dave“

It’s true, though. These days, we kids just sit there and think “You’re not good enough” or “He’s better than you” and it’s always a comparison of one factor as opposed to the many different dimensions we have in our characters. Or maybe I’m just over complicating a small quote from a movie I’ve never heard of in a class room which I probably won’t return to after these next 6 weeks. Just maybe.

Overall, I think AMP is something that really needs to continue. In a class based on the creativity of its students, I believe that giving us the freedom to do whatever we want is going to be a very influential step in where the Mac Lab is going, even if this whole gaming system goes down the drain. But what happens when a student isn’t that creative? I believe Skocko’s job should be to give subtle hints on the blog on where to go for some tutorials, or if a student asks for a help on a specific idea, he should give them a few pointers on where to look. In conclusion, I believe that AMP still should be continued because it has definitely benefitted my experience in the Mac Lab and over the past 3 years I think this year has the best balance between creating and learning.

Honestly, I have not made the jump to mastery of any subject in my life. I’d like to blame this on my inability to give myself credit when credit is due, but I feel there’s more to it than just that.

“You’re never done in the Mac Lab”

- Skocko.

These words ring throughout my head when I think of Mastery. How can we even master something? Isn’t there something that’s always out there to learn? Is it really possible to become a master at anything in life? But I’m sure I’m just making excuses because I honestly do not believe I have attained mastery at anything at this point, yet I do believe I have found purpose.

Whenever I’m searching for answers or inspiration, I like to look at what my classmates are doing and what they’re working on. This rarely works and I have no clue why I ever do it, but when I do, I feel like I can pick apart each and every piece  of their art and tell them how to fix it. I think my main problem is that I have no starting point. I can never start a picture but I have no problems fixing one or adding to one to compliment whatever someone else has. It’s really enjoyable for me, also. I like being helpful, and I like feeling like I contributed to something whether or not it was big or small, it’s a good feeling to know that you’re helpful.

There is an ulterior motive of all this, though. I believe all of our work, our efforts, our time spent working is all a contribution to what AMP is in general. The purpose of myself and my fellow classmates is to spread autonomy to the world and fix the problem that is a broken education system. With autonomy, creativity would become key once again life. No longer would we have to conform to learning what we’re told to learn and everything that is so useless in life. Why should we have to learn something that we will never use? And I’m not saying this because I don’t want to know what happened 1,000 years ago during some war, but because that’s not my forte, and it never will be. Whatever happened, happened. We don’t need to worry if it will be different or not. The only history we need to worry about, is what happens next. And right now, with the failing education system and bills going to congress that impede human rights and freedom of speech, now is when we begin to worry. Autonomy is the key to the future but change is a scary thing, and therefore, it needs to be stopped, right? (Note the sarcasm)

If AMP is continued, I believe it will be very beneficial to our education system, and soon enough, the education system around the world. As I said before, autonomy is the key to the future but first it needs to have some sort of starting point, a launch pad. The effects of continuing AMP in the class room will be very beneficial also because it teaches us how to be more autonomous and be able to learn things on our own with out having to rely on someone else teaching us. All in all, AMP is the ideal choice for learning in an environment like the Mac Lab and I believe it’s the way of the future to learn what you want to learn at what pace is best for you.

The reason I chose this image is because I wanted to make a picture of something like a boom box (as a joke of AMP. Boom box. Get it? HAH) but even if it didn’t turn out as I wanted it to, I still like it.

We can’t truly entertain the “Facebook!” portion of people because simply put, we can’t be on such a site. What about the “Games!” portion of people though? Skocko calls this a game, but what is the real definition of a game in these days? What if there was a simple way of creating an actual game where you take your own road towards stardom within the Mac Lab? Believe it or not, there are many different engines that people can use for free if they want, where you can create your own games. Some of the world’s greatest FPS games were created on the same engine: the Source Engine. Valve designed it to be the world’s most simple way of creating a game so third parties (mainly players) can create their own games, and in return, Valve gets to slap on their name to it, generating revenue from the money made from it. Genius! Our game wouldn’t be an FPS, though, of course. It would be an FPS, maybe free roam, maybe not. It all depends on how into the idea we get. With the creation of an actual game, we can move the line, we can move towards compliance with the delinquents who want to play games in the Mac Lab, but our game wouldn’t be their Call of Duty or Battlefield 3, it would be TAG. I had this idea earlier in the year but it never seemed truly plausible because of how rough TAG had be going in the beginning. But now that it has begun to smooth out, why not go the extra mile and make the Mac Lab game, an actual game? It would be simple, heck, we could even just use Gary’s Mod which is a game where you make a game. There’s only one problem: we use Macs. I don’t recall any sort of port for Gary’s Mod to a Mac so if anything were to happen, it would have to an “At home” project. That’s my two cents on how we can help improve the Mac Lab/TAG program, so if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, oh well.

This year I want to primarily revise and recreate the entire TAG system so it can be more understandable and easier to jump into for future students to enjoy in the festivities of what we call The Mac Lab. Although, I do want to increase my abilities in Photoshop and Illustrator, if I had to chose a specific talent to strengthen, I want to start doing more photography and creating my own images, my own photos instead of mooching off the stock images like I did last year. It may be a good source for inspiration, textures, etc. I want to stop relying on it so heavily like I did last year. So this year, I want to take the camera out once or twice a month so I can have a plentiful amount of photos to chose from, even if they aren’t really top tier in my eyes. Lastly, I would not mind utilizing my resources at home where I can a vast amount of programs to make Skocko a 3D world where we can actually embark on quests in a game I can make. I’ve never really tried making a game, but I know for a fact I can teach myself and, if it actually works, it would be monumental in what we’re doing for the class this year and future years.

My “creative journey” so far has been a rough one to say the least. This is what my logotype was originally, yet apparently it was the greatest of abominations I’ve ever created. I guess Skocko never played a cell shaded game, then. The year has been interesting for me because I’ve been picking at the design of his game he created for us. I don’t really want to get into too much of a rant, but my only thought for this post will be: If this is the beta, I don’t want to imagine what the Alpha looked like. At the moment we’re still working on typography, and as you can tell, it’s my mortal enemy. But even though I know next to nothing about typography, I can tell I disagree with Skocko’s idea of art. Earlier in the year, he pointed out a girl who made a logotype, in which he replied that it was awful and such, much like the kind of words he uses to describe my works. I found this aggravating because of what he turned her art into. I don’t want to link it because I don’t want to seem like I’m calling her out, but it was a bright blue and colorful piece of art that honestly didn’t look to great, and when she added Skocko’s revisions, it was a gray font, mixed with a gray font, mixed with a gray back ground. (Upon further remembrance I think I saw a blue in there.) When I originally saw the bright blue yet ugly logotype, I saw someone who was learning, someone who put themselves into their work. In the finalized project, I saw a suit. A follower. Someone who had put nothing of themselves into their work, and gave the bare minimum. “Simplicity” as an Apple would say. This got me really thinking about what the Maclab really is. Conformity. Do what others do. Don’t make your own rules, that’s defiance. Never, under any circumstances, be an entrepreneur. It really would not have bothered me if he didn’t force her to change it to such a plain design. “I didn’t force her to do anything” I’ve tried ignoring Skocko’s heeds and I was sent back 5 more times. Which is how I came to my current finalization as you see above. What you see up there, shows nothing of me. Y’know, maybe the chrome colors show that I’m into something futuristic, but that’s not the point. Anyways, after 5 more tries from the original, a few contemplations of how I can manage to something that represents me, I managed to create a “professional” look. And having a professional look is all fine and dandy if you want to have a boss, work in a cubicle and conform to everyone else. You may want to be a professional and tell everyone how you work and what they’re going to get. Or you can be an artist, and show them what you really mean. 16.7 million colors is nothing compared to shades of gray, Skocko.

For a lack of better words for an ending: I guess the Apple doesn’t fall far from the generic tree.

At this point, what’s done is done and the rocky start from the beginning is no longer redeemable. We can still get our footing and continue with the game. But honestly, all I can do is wait and watch as year rolls on.

I CAN however help point the next year in the right direction. With that said, Skocko is going to have to recycle videos again, or spend a summer making new ones, but who would want to do that? Right now, the best advice I can give would be to plan it all out. Maybe not the whole year, but, for the sake of an example, create an entire starting area. The Valley of Trials. (Hopefully Skocko was smart and rolled Horde ) What’s the first thing you see, after the character creation screen, when you play ANY MMORPG game? The first objective. (I would say quest but sometimes you have to look depending on if your character spawned the wrong direction.) In WoW, the first thing an Orc see’s? That golden “!” What’s the first thing an Undead see’s? A set of stairs. Leading to the first quest. I think Skocko did a good job with this in the Mac Lab this year, but he is known to do a of “Think about it” exercises, so I wouldn’t put it past him to hide it. But getting off the tangent, the first 6 weeks really need to be straight forward and to the point. You don’t see Blizzard throwing in twists before level 13-16ish do you? As I said in the previous post, keep it bottle necked, choked off, whatever you wanna call it. I think the thing Skocko needs to do IMMEDIATELY when the year starts is to keep an extensive quest log. Not the XP Scoresheet, I’ve found out the hard way that it’s very easy to mess up on that thing. But that quest page needs to pre-planned and not as complicated as it is now. And it needs to have every quest there is. There shouldn’t be more than 1 or 2 secret quests for every.. I don’t know, 50 quests? I mean, they COULD be fun, but after someone finds it, they could spread the word about it, and where’s the fun in that? Anyways, the quest page needs to include everything. I would personally do it as the first list being mandatory quests in order by date, then an optional list. Oh, and none of this crap -

[2] @100 XP: Upgrade Gravatar (Journeyman) 3 XP — Logo Motion

[2] @100 XP: Upgrade Desktop Picture (Journeyman) 3XP — Logo Motion 

Going to the Logo Motion page just confused me and that’s why I never had a desktop picture when I went to present. Maybe a little “Watch ALL videos on this page before making your desktop picture. Then watch this video on what to do for your picture”

Would have made a lot more sense.  I actually don’t see how I didn’t get how this worked before. My bad.

I’m really spending this much time on the ‘Valley of Trials” scene because it’s by far the most important part of the entire MMORPG scene. Players need to be dipped in without the hassle of learning too much at once. Which is where Skocko began to slip. Why do you think you train on virtually defenseless enemies from level 1-5? To learn. It felt as if we were thrown in and then about 30 seconds later Skocko yelled “DON’T FORGET YOUR QUEST BOOK.”

I honestly don’t know where to go with quests from there so I’ll move onto the XP system.

I was dozing off in Physiology on Monday just after Mac Lab when I realized why I kept getting confused on which game TAG seems more like: WoW or Runescape. Then I realized that it wasn’t one or the other; it was both. The Beauty of TAG isn’t some generic copy of a video game, it was a mixture of many different elements. The main ingredients were obviously WoW and Runescape, though, but that’s beside the point. In layman’s terms, TAG has the questing of WoW with the leveling of Runescape. (Or at least it should have the leveling system of Runescape). What’s the true point of XP right now? Yeah, it gets you a grade, but I consider that “A” mandatory.  What if you could become more? What if you could actually obtain Mastery in Photography? Or the Pen Tool? Or even Photoshop and Illustrator? If you’ve never played an MMO, XP actually stands for experience. Do you see it? Did you take a really good photo? Great! 20xp. You should have done this, this and this. You took another photo? Great! Wait a minute. You did the same exact thing wrong. 0xp. Now obviously Skocko can’t look at ever single picture so there’s still some element of self assessment and the Honor system (HAH, PvP jokes </enabled>). But I feel like these cheaters will be caught when they claim mastery and they’re still taking MySpace pictures. Now, I want to say, before I forget, that being a “master” in any form of it, doesn’t not and will not mean that you are the best and there’s no where for you to go afterwards. Being a master just means that you are a reliable source for teaching others in your niche. So really, it shouldn’t go novice, apprentice, journeyman, expert, master. I think it would be MUCH more suitable for it to go something along the lines of Novice, Student, Apprentice, Teacher, Expert. Of course it would have to have fancier names than the ones I gave, but it seems to make more sense than to allow people to claim mastery in anything they want. What my awkwardly stated sentences are trying to say it that the levels need to be revamped and actually used.

Novice: Someone who is interested in the craft but has little to no experience in it.

This is for people interested in a specific craft but has little to no experience in it. Base XP required – None

Student: In the midst of learning the craft, knows basic knowledge of the item in question.

This is for people who have shown interest in the craft, but has not delved deep enough into the world of whatever they may be studying. Base XP Required – 200xp.

Apprentice: Knows much about the craft, will most likely know the answer to your problem at hand and where to find things

This is the hard part. Do or die trying. If you ascend past here, you’re probably going for expertise in the craft. But this is also entering PvP territory because you’re claiming the knowledge you may or may not have. Base XP Required – 500xp. Skocko’s PvP rules apply.

Teacher: Generally knows most of the craft and has the ability to teach you how to use it. Can even make Student Tutorials on it.

Teaching the craft is not a big step from Apprentice in my eyes. But, be warned. If you teach the craft incorrectly, the consequences will be dire. We’re talking mass XP lost or even time owed. To add icing on the cake: All PvP rules still apply. Base XP Required: 700xp.

Expert: The final layer of the Player’s ascension through ranks. Knows virtually everything about the craft, may teach, and can even challenge the lower ranks. Challenge is different from dueling. In dueling, one side wins and another loses. A challenge allows the Expert to lose nothing and for the victim: it’s pass or fail. May still be dueled by anyone of any level. This rank will probably only be achievable by Players who spend the entire year practicing and then some.  Base XP Required: 1200xp.

Now what I mean by base XP is the experience you gain while working in the craft. Remember, there’s a variety of ways you may gain XP. You may create art for anything from 0-200xp per piece (200 being, wall art), teaching other players will gain XP (for being right), helping other as they 3 then me (Also for being right), winning duels, etc.

Also about the base XP: Once you reach the minimum increment of a certain level, you may chose to level up or not. Just because you have 700 xp, doesn’t mean you have to teach others. You may still be an apprentice if you want. You might feel as if you don’t deserve the level up so you can wait, who knows. It’s up to you.

My head hurts, so lastly, the way people will be named according to their profession(s):

Name, Overall level (from Mandatory quests), Rank of Profession, Profession.

Dane C: Level 3 Novice in Photoshop.

Mike S: Level 10 Expert in Pen Tool.

I’ll go over overall level tomorrow.

I hope this regurgitated essay of a blog post might have brought some ideas to you or made you think. Good night.