Monday, 22 November 2010

DND - Rise of the necromancer, Fall of the party.

When life gets you down, Make lemonade. When life gives you lemons...you kill someone. Wait what? Oh yeah my blog, *coughs*

On a dark and dreary night...somewhere in Ipswich. A bored student arose from his rest.....Then he got the dungeons and dragons box out and texted for his party to come try another roleplay.

The scene was set, Our brave heroes (minus tom and kelly and replaced with adam) ventured into an arcane tower where reputation had it that a powerful necromancer lived. The only objective set was to kill the necromancer and get out alive, Easy enough? HA wait and see....

The game started with many rooms guarded by the odd skeleton and zombie with the occasional spider and dire wolf kicking around. Easy setting for 3 brave heroes, As soon as the portal had closed the dwarf ventured into the gloomy corridor to find treasure. The elf pursued a quest of knowledge and once again the human bumbled behind in look for his quest. Mistake made, The dwarf stood on an arcane symbol summoning a demon to the realm, The demon offered the short being a modest choice. Give half of his health in exchange for his party hitting twice as hard in combat, Or take half of anothers health in exchange for twice the power of his weapon. The dwarf grew weary and attempted to slice the demons hand, as the demon retreated into the portal he muttered, For each undead risen you shall have another accompany it! The dwarf shrugged and pursued his party. The wizard sprung a trap and was ambushed by a giant spider, with poison cursing through his veins the human pulled him to an altar and helped him to heal. They stood by eachother casting curses and shooting the oncoming horde back to back.

The dwarf had a plan and ordered the wizard and human to follow him, they wittled down the bare outskirts of the horde of undead with bullet and spell, and the occasional axe to the head before they retreated into a puzzle room in a hope to obtain better equipment. The wizard at first proved to be unlucky as his mind was ravaged by a demon and forgot one of his most useful spells. In return for his misfortune the demon offered a truce, Give half of your health in exchange for a staff so powerful its imbued with blood itself or take the staff but let one of the demons spawn into the dungeon to reek havoc. The wizard in a noble deed allowed the demon to remove his blood. The new staff was formed and the wizard banished the demon once and for all, The dwarf looked upon the ashes to see a golden scroll embodied with the head of a dragon to seal. It felt warm and without warning burst into flames. He looked to his axe to see the same dragons head now sat neatly above it, Illuminating the axe in a blazing burnished fury. Once again they charged forward, The wizard used all his might and set fire to a large section of the cave, destroying most of the undead in seconds, The human picked off stragglers with his rifle before the dwarf ran into the fray and began slashing and spinning through the undead. The necromancer spun his staff and the horde that had previously perished stood to their feet and began to pile into the dwarf. The human and wizard began to fire again, The struggle was in vain, For each undead that fell they were replaced in double, the dwarf cursed the demon. The horde kept coming with the dwarf moving barely a square every 2 turns.

The human had a plan, the undead had not moved from the room for the love of fresh meat. He quickly began to run to the opposite chamber in order to shoot the necromancer. The wizard galiantly began to hold the horde off himself whilst the dwarf raked through the undead. The necromancer sensed the human as he ran past into a good vantage point. He sent a few zombies after him and a few more to surround him, it was in vain. The dwarf had managed to get close to him and caused a savage 20 points of damage reducing the necromancer to a near undead state. They struck blows against eachother when the human took aim and with a smooth click, Landed a killing blow on the necromancer. The wizard watched in amazement as his pursuers fell into dust. The battle was won.












Monday, 1 November 2010

Bibliography how are you necessary?

Using what I was taught last week, I attempted to use Zotero (a source program) to write a basic bibliography to help with notes and quotes. After firefox disagreeing with my customised operating system, and nuking it at least 20 times we decided that it was best off doing it the old fashioned way.


Through using bibliographies, students can take notes on specific pages, areas and paragraphs with ease. The traditional method of writing something down to remember it has now become a computerised masterpiece as examiners alike have now been able to see where the students have taken notes and quotes from without trekking through the books for specific parts. A few examples and descriptions are explained below.


Paper based research


Books - When citing from a book it should be explained as follows.
1. The surname of the Author/Editor.
2. The Initial of said creator.
3. The year in which it was published.
4. The full title of the book. (Underlined or in italics to show its the title)
5. Finally, The publisher and city of where it was published.


Magazine or journal entry
1. The surname of whoever created the entry.
2. The initial of said creator.
3. Any other authors necessary to the publication.
4. The year of publication.
5. The full title of said article.
6. The season of printing necessary to the articles release date.


Contribution to a book
1 - 4 the same as ever
5 - The In editors surname
6 - In editors initial
7 - Full title of containing work. (Italics)
8 - City of publication.
9 - Publisher.
10 - The scan of the extract.


Video related material


TV Programmes
1. Episode title
2. Name of the series
3. Year
4. Channel
5. Date


Alternatively if the episode is online, A citation could be made the same way with a link and the 00:00 of where it is.


Now comes the tricky part, I'll be adding up to 6 references into the next part from mixed media.


Books
Busby J, 2010, Mastering unreal technology: Volume II: Advanced level design concepts with unreal engine 3, Sams Publishing, Indianapolis.
Van der Spuy R, 2009, Foundation games design with Flash, Friends of ED, Berkeley.


Article
Dickey M, 2007, Game design and learning: a conjectural analysis of how massively multiple online role-playing games (MMORPGs) foster intrinsic motivation, Educational technology research and development, Volume 55, Issue 3, Page 253-273.
Gros B, 2007, Digital Games in Education: The Design of Games-Based Learning Environments, Journal of research on technology in education, Volume 40, Issue 1, Page 23 - 38.



Contribution
Caillois R, 1962, The Definition of Play: The Classification of games, Salen, K, The game design reader: A rules of play anthology, Cambridge, MIT Press, pp 122-155.
Folmer E, 2007, Component based games development - A solution to escalating costs and expanding deadlines, G, Schmidt, H, Component-based software engineering: 10th international symposium, Medford, MA, page 66 - 73.

So there you have it, A bibliography that doubles as a trophy of my remaining sanity.
Till next time,
Jack