Saturday, February 26, 2011

Charter School Regional Science Fair

Science Fair
Thursday night was the big science fair that I have been planning for.  Ill just get the suspense out of the way and say that I was one of the 10% of people who now get to move on to the big regional science fair. The science fairs progress like this.
school fair > district fair (or in the case of charter schools, its the charter regional fair) > regional fair > national fair. 


My project was on how I used the Rapid Application Development model to develop my tower defense game. I knew I would not have any issues explaining my project to the judges since I have spent so much time on it, but I was pretty worried about my poster board and the book that goes with it. Im positive that out of the hundred or so in the room, mine was the only one without any color on it :) 


I also was the only computer science software project in the room, so that may have helped, even though they did not separate the judging based on categories.


Another thing was that out of everyone who judged me, none of them knew much about computer science, or programming at all. I think that may have been a good thing, because I was able to impress them with a whole area of engineering that none of them had a clue about.


Heres my basic presentation walkthrough:


Walkthrough
I would meet them, and ask if they had any experience with computer science, then I would show them a little bit of gameplay, and explain some of the features of my game. I would then walk through the RAD model, and show them how I used it to keep track of the new features I was adding. I then explained the project release, testing, and feedback methods that I used. I would then wrap up the presentation by explaining some issues that I faced, and how I was able to fix them. Then I would answer any questions they had, and I would be finished. 


More of the Science Fair
Each project was evaluated by three judges, and each judging took 10 minutes. Believe me, I could have gone a lot longer!


But anyways, It went really good! And I ended up being the last name that they called out of everyone. (there were high school, junior high, and elementary school students there) So that was really suspenseful for me. 


The next fair is at the end of March, so I have awhile to prepare my presentation better. This also means that I will not be able to work on my next game as much. Which I would really like to do. But obviously this science fair thing is way more important. 


In the Near Future
I will be releasing a bug fix version of Color Tower Defense in the next couple weeks here. The last few I've released have had serious issues due to my new game menu hierarchy. But they have mostly been fixed. Im also thinking about redrawing all of the background map tiles into more visually pleasing images instead of the basic green, tan, purple, etc. squares. I may also redraw the enemies. And while i'm at it, I might as well redraw all the images that my friends drew for me during the early stages of the game. Not only could I draw them better (no offense. The images have been a really big help!) But that would also allow me to be able to take more credit for the game, instead of having, well, you know..

2 comments:

  1. If you need any help with the presentation book, be sure to let me know. Congrats on such an accomplishment!

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  2. Congrats! Nice work and good luck on the next stage.

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