Week 5: Drafts and Head Colds

This week brought some unique challenges. We did some peer reviews in class over our in-progress How To Guides. I’m doing mine over a free-to-play looter shooter called Warframe, a game I’ve been sacrificing my time to since I was 12. I debated for a while on which elements in the game were most important to mention, as it has a wide berth of elements and mechanics.

I eventually went back and replayed what I could of the tutorial and opening questlines through an alternate account that I normally use for review bombing on Ubisoft games. I then chose three mechanics that the game doesn’t naturally explain very thoroughly and constructed my guide around them. I decided that the game’s robust movement system is the most important of its mechanics. There’s a lot of parkour and chaining different techniques together. I also decided that the game’s modding system wasn’t super self-explanatory, so I’ll be trying to explain that to new players. Drop chance, mod abilities, and mod improvements are all elements of modding I’d like to talk about. The last thing I’ll be discussing is build synergy. This was difficult for me to grasp when I first started, as I figured that if a character was good and a weapon was good, then a loadout with both of them would be good. But that’s not the case. Some weapons and characters have inverse properties, so delving into what works and what doesn’t should prove useful to new players.

I always struggle with peer review, as the nagging voice in the back of my head tells me that whatever I’ve submitted is never good enough for other eyes to read. Self-criticism taken to its most extreme. That being said, the feedback I received wasn’t that scathing. My war with Markdown has continued. The battle this week was trying to implement photos into my guide, which was ultimately unsuccessful. I did get some better footing on italicizing, bolding and making numbered lists, which feels a lot easier now that I’ve had some practice. I’m really enjoying taking some old creative writing projects and formatting them with Markdown.

Unfortunately, my yearly head cold reared its head on Tuesday and didn’t leave me until this morning. A completely stopped up nose combined with a pressure headache that left my brain feeling like it was aggressively rubbing against my skull was enough to deter me from walking in the rain. This untimely event knocked me out of my Wednesday and Thursday class meetings, so I had to play with CSS from home. I liked some of the coloration that it provided, as my guide is incredibly monochromatic and could use a splash of color. We read chapters 4 and 5 of Verified, which really taught me that most of what I see in Internet searches requires further research. It’s not enough to just look for sources about a topic with a Google search. That initial Google search requires an exploration of whatever source I’ve found, whether that’s exploring a site with more than a passing glance, or a bunch of other searches regarding the source’s origin. I’ve definitely fallen victim to citing a noncredible website once or twice, and being appropriately ridiculed by friends and family for my folly.

I’m not gonna lie, it has not been a blockbuster week for me. I lost my dog of 10 years last Friday and ended up sick this week. I’m still suffering through formatting my guide, as well as some other projects, but that’s okay. I’m not used to taking non-literature classes, so my class “loadout” is a new and challenging to me, which is okay. I’ve just not quite gotten the flow of my current courses and how to do the work well in them. I am adjusting, though. I’m looking forward to making my guide look prettier, and learning just how incorrectly I’ve used sources on the Internet in the coming weeks :).