This week we finished the book we were reading, Verified. The final chapter moved away from the Internet focused strategies and focused more on you as a reader. This chapter was about feelings and how to use feelings in a way that is beneficial. Using the strengths of both feelings and analysis together is much better than depending on only one while ignoring the other. Feelings actually give us a processing advantage over extremely powerful processing machines like AI because feelings tell us what is important. Computers and AI have no way of knowing what is important information unless we humans tell them what is important. When something is compelling, or makes us feel something, we know it is worth paying attention to.
Continuing the conversation about feelings, you can also use surprise to identify key information. If you are in a research situation and you stumble across information that surprises you, then that is an indicator that that information is important and worth keeping track of. Pay attention to your context and what you find compelling, and use analysis along with these indicators to more efficiently navigate your research.
The conclusion of the book explained that it is important to use your feelings to find what is important because there is an abundance of information out there and time is very valuable. “Think less intensively so you can think more effectively” (212). The goal of everyone’s publications are to get your attention, so treat your attention like the precious asset it is.
I thought the ending of this book was great.
Twine…
We also read “A Total Beginner’s Guide to Twine 2.1” by Adam Hammond. This guide provided a lot of information about how Twine works, and I started getting ideas for how to implement the features pretty quickly. Everything that Twine offers seems to be pretty relevant and has a straightforward process. Variables, images, and adding CSS are the three biggest features that allow you to take control of how your game looks and functions.
Variables are a very big deal in Twine and in the video game world as well. Variables allow you to track the status of part of a player’s gameplay. For example, the health of the player could be a variable. By establishing this variable to track the player’s health, you can make the game more immersive and interactive. There are three variable types: numbers, text, true/false. These three variables offer a massive range of possibilities.
Images are the next crucial aspect of making an immersive game. By using images, you can change the background of each page. Doing this can give your game the appearance of moving through different settings. With more creativity you can do even more with images.
CSS is the final feature that Twine offers that we were taught about. CSS, similar to its use on websites, allows you to customize almost every aspect of the text and how it is displayed. Doing this in your game allows you to personalize and make the text match the theme of your game.
With these 3 features, the limits of Twine are really the limits of your creativity.
Comments
4 responses to “Week 12 – Finishing Verified and the Beginnings of a Game”
I totally agree, I thought it was such a good way to close off the book. I completely forgot to add in the effectiveness of “being interested.” It is such an important play in not only what he choose to begin with, but then what he decide to continue to pay attention to. Finding that piece of the article that you want more from really helps feed that interest, and often readers probably lack that as they realize the piece isn’t what they thought.
I really liked your thoughts on variables as the primary center point of your article. It is such a large portion of Twine, and really makes up the deciding factors in the end when it comes to making the game itself.
Hi! I loved your wrap up of Verified! It was a great summary of all that happened. I think for me, the biggest thing I took away from the ending of the book was the element of surprise and how you can turn that into an investigation. You touched on this and said it in a clearer way than I could, but the sentiment of surprise leading you to knowledge was really cool to read about. Also, I hope you and your group’s Twine is going well! I know my group has worked hard, and we are pretty proud of our game. I hope to play y’all’s game at the event today! Best wishes!
I like how you summarize the last couple chapters of Verified! In particular I liked when you state that computers don’t know what’s important unless we tell them. For humans, however, it’s an automatic process; when we see something, we immediately know if it’s important to us and what aspects of it are important to us.
Your little tidbits of advice for Twine are super helpful! As someone who hasn’t used this program at all before, I’m lost as to what it can do and what the limits are and so on. I think my biggest problem is that I can’t get HTML, CSS, and Twine to work together without any issues.
I really love the point about how emotion can actually make people more efficient than AI because technology doesn’t have interest. I also really like your description of Variables. All of the Twine stuff was really confusing to me at first (finally starting to get it because of the project) but your explanations make a lot of sense. I also really liked that they book pretty much ended with that chapter on attention. It really is so important to think about what we’re giving our attention and time to when there are so many different things fighting for these ever limited resources.