Embryology proffessor and task distribution

So yesterday I and Svitri met an embryology proffessor to get some answers.

It was a good idea.

Embyros from cows (taken from the internet)

We met Paul Kingham at Umeå university, he's an excelent and very caring proffessor and he told us about how he makes neurons and other cells from embryos (cow embryos in picture to the right). By letting human embryos grow in different solutions with proteins and substances the embryos develop into different cells. It's kind of like how a human develop their proffession depending on what environment they grow up in. We even got to look at real embryos in his lab! We will come back another time and take with us a camera to take some photos.





Now we know more about how we can depict the making of the cell in the game. There can be some kind of animation where you see bottles with different solutions in them and when you place embryos in them they develop into neurons or glialcells. Paul also directed us towards another scientist who knows more about the exact solutions and does research of how neurons grow their axon in different directions.

Paul had good ideas of how the competition could look like in the game. The competition will be between the evil proffessor(s) and the player. One thing he mentioned is that a big and growin issue in the sience world is that there are people making up numbers to get funding (what you call scientific misconduct). So in the game we will have a person that does this and then get's discovered. I also want the player to feel that they personally win at beeing honest and trusting teammates, I believe that a world where we all cooperate instead of compete will make the society grow faster. But I don't want to trick anyone so we'll strive to keep it as realistic as possible. If you fake evidence and get caught, your publications will probably not be accepted anywhere and your whole career could be totally ruined. That's how it works in the world and I want scientists to take this into account. I believe that the ban of a scientist is not only bad for the scientist, it's bad for us all to loose his competence. So we as a big society should make it easy for scientists to make science by communicating and helping each other instead of competing.

The core of my game is the gameplay, that's the original thing. I've discovered that accepting new teamates made me anxious. I haven't been as great a leader as I hoped I could be. Main issue for me has been that I can't distribute assignments to others since the assignments demand that I do them. Let me clarify. I haven't done all the work needed to be done before starting the development. I didn't realise that I should have been planning more and waiting to get people onboard until the idea was complete. I have decided the gameplay basically and uncountable ideas has been written down and categorized, but it hasn't been enough. I have not until recently decided what actually will happen at level 1 for example. Before that the writer has ofcourse had troubles writing since he doesn't know what he'll be writing for. The graphics haven't been able to be begun with since the items in the game haven't been completely thought up and the same with making sounds. Basically all the things that I could delegate can not be done yet since the task isn't clear yet.

I still have all my energy though. I'm confident this project will reach a good product but as I feared in the beginning, we might not be done before deadline. In the next meeting I will tell everyone that I may need some time to create the gameplay more thoroughly and that I cant delegate so many things yet...

Mindmup

But! I've developed a better view of things thanks to mindmup. I made a mindmap where each bubble is a task. The tasks connected to this task has to be done in order to begin with it. The final task (to the left) is "Launch game". So in order to do that we have to finish the others, and to finish other tasks... and so on until we come to a task that can be done right now. I don't know how this will work out but I think it will make things easier.

Svitri also mentioned that the teammembers that want to do the gamemaking in construct 2 (a gamemaker), can start to learn it and begin to make some groundwork that is ready to be done. Like making the gamearea and the mapcontrols. I will use the mindmap-technology to make more specific tasks and color the done tasks with green to see how we all work forward, I've also shared this through google drive (,we all use google drive to share documents) so that everyone can see the progress.

So right now I'm reading my neuroscience notes and book to decide exactly what will be the goal of each level and how the player will get to know more and more about neuroscience. This is allot how teachers work when they device a teachplan, I'm not educated to be a teacher but I have written a learningplan when I studied "Computergames and learning 1" at umeå university (a course in swedish). That's also where I got in touch with the videogames and learning-book I've mentioned before.

Peace out!
//Tistou Blomberg for trust and communication