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Author Topic: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress  (Read 5429 times)

Jayjayjuhwetplane

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Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« on: March 20, 2008, 02:00:00 am »

I go to Nova, an alt public school that allows me to do independents I make up to get official school credit. I'm doing a math independent based on making logic gates in dwarf fortress a la this kind of thing.
Aw yeah.

[ March 21, 2008: Message edited by: Jayjayjuhwetplane ]

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Kogan Loloklam

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2008, 02:30:00 am »

What the heck is an independent?
It sounds like some kind of political affiliation.

It's neat that you can use this game for school credit though. It shows some teachers are thinking. Video games require use of thought, I have always thought so. About eleven months ago, my experience driving fake cars in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas actually saved my life for real on the road. You don't always encounter some of the strange situations in real life that you do in video games, but video games can prepare you in advance for those same strange situations. Especially if they have some significant elements of realism in them. For example, if earth is ever rushed by the Zerg, my experience at establishing good Vespine mining systems will come in handy for sure!

;)

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Othob Rithol

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2008, 03:35:00 am »

Sweet. I campaigned for 2 years in my University to use Capitalism 2 in the marketing/management/production classes. No luck.

I read a Pol Sci Prof's blog where he was telling other Profs how to edit Civ4 scenarios to showcase specific periods and dilemmas.

When you get done making your final report, please, write up a formal wiki entry for the logic gates. I use a few of them I figured out, but we could really use a guide.

valcon

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #3 on: March 20, 2008, 03:45:00 am »

That sounds like a perfect match actually.  I've seen people do studies on social aspects of MMO's before and get credit but those games are superficial when held up to Dwarf Fortress.  Good job dude, and good luck with the class!
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axus

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2008, 04:48:00 pm »

http://www.break.com/index/marble-based-calculator.html

This made me think of all the DF logic gate plans  :)

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Bharani

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #5 on: March 20, 2008, 11:26:00 pm »

I did a final essay for one of my courses on DF, and got an A. Thanks, Toady!
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Samyotix

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #6 on: March 21, 2008, 10:37:00 am »

Games Studies is establishing itself; those interested in studying games could well try to apply their field of studies to computer games.

Basically that's how computer games studies is coming together now: Students and lecturers from various fields approaching this new topic, each from a different viewpoint.

Psychologists unfortunately tend to look at everything with a behaviorist perspective - "Hmm, a new behavior. Is it addictive? Does it make people violent? Do they stop if we lobotomize them?" ...

What goes on in the mind when we look at a @ and know it's a hero (1) is being studied more by philosophy departments, which IMO includes literature.

There, we have
narratologists (looking at how stories in general are structured, how storytelling works etc),

semioticians/semiologists (interested in how we read signs - e.g. the word "dog" is neither furry nor does it look like an animal, but it makes you thing of one: How?)

ludologists (interested in how to categorize and analyze the ways in which people play, or use playful behavior. They seem to have an unfortunate tendency to generalize rules for analyzing games in "all cultures, all times".)

cultural studies would be more interested in the roles which games and playing games has in different cultures. Can gaming be subversive? If not, why is China so strict on gamers? What about the early internet's hacker ethos and cyberpunk literature? That, and probably ritual games in ancient greece as compared sports now etc.)

On a more practical approach, there were books great for teaching, though I'm not sure if it has its own name as a field of study: Turning away from the classical method of describing "how and why the (work of art) is beautiful" ("literary aesthetics) or how it relates to the culture it was made in ( authors such as Bordwell/Thompson, Graeme Turner studied the relationship between the financing of (film) projects, the audience and the process of selling the (film) to the audience (using postmarxist theories to some extent). Applying that to games would look at how, for example, the various game age ratings systems such as PEGI and FSK influence a) the way games are made - companies sometimes make different versions of a game, one with green blood and robot parts, another with red blood and gore chunks; b) influence the content of big-budget games (since the intended age bracket is set early in development. Age 12+? Forget about sex, swearing, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and violence ...)

On even more practical levels, if you're into economics, programming, etc, there's be lots more potentially interesting research but I can't tell you much about it > :)


If you're looking for more info on the academic debate on games, here's a few links -

Digital Games Research Association http://www.digra.org/

One of the better-known ludologists, currently at MIT http://www.jesperjuul.net/

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_studies

Good introduction to the academic debate, in German though: http://www.playability.de/pub/drafts/Invaded_Spaces.pdf

Game Developer Magazine online - some (not very academic) gameplay theories by designers, lots of interesting post-mortem and technical stuff about making games. http://www.gamasutra.com/


Toady interview on Gamasutra  :) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3549/interview_the_making_of_dwarf_.php

(1) [I think I gave a fellow WoW player a bit of a shock recently when I started up Angband (another roguelike) and said "Look, my new level 35 rogue ... got an artifact armor ... ". If you can explain why he was shocked when I pointed at my roguelike hero @, and what the difference between the @ and the WoW char is, you should study semiotics :-]

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Samyotix

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #7 on: March 21, 2008, 10:41:00 am »

(Sorry for the offtopic rant   :) But if you were thinking about writing something about games for school, college, or as a thesis I'd say go for it, the field is not too big yet and will almost certainly be expanding in the future, as games have established themselves as a cultural factor by now, and we've really only just started researching them.)

[ March 21, 2008: Message edited by: Samyotix ]

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Areyar

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #8 on: March 21, 2008, 11:39:00 am »

quote:
Originally posted by Jayjayjuhwetplane:
<STRONG>I go to Nova, an alt public school that allows me to do independents I make up to get official school credit. I'm doing a math independent based on making logic gates in dwarf fortress a la http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Computing.
Aw yeah.</STRONG>

You realise that points to a blank page right?  ;)
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apache1990

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #9 on: March 21, 2008, 02:26:00 pm »

Not if you get rid of the period.

Jayjayjuhwetplane

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Re: Dudes I am going to get school credit for dwarf fortress
« Reply #10 on: March 21, 2008, 05:36:00 pm »

Whoops, thanks.
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