Semester Project -Vladimir Ventura

My semester project was to create a program, in which the player acts as a female artist from the past. The main focus of my program thus far has been Hildegard Von Bingen. The story starts off as she wakes up from a hallucination, or vision (it is unclear to the player what is going on at first). You navigate your way through your parent's castle, only to faint again. The next portions go through her life -- first when she was sent to Jutta to become a nun, and how she met Volmar, one of her supporters, and how you learn to read, write, paint, and figure your life out.

However, midway through programming, I decided to upload both the buggy program (it is not at all complete, and is very hard to do), and the design concepts that I drew out (and I used the measurements on the drawings as measurements on the program). Various bugs that came up were: getting the chatbox to stay up (it would go away randomly at times), getting the graphics to match up with the logical processes of the program, selecting the right data types (selecting decimals for pixel measurements was a mistake; you cannot have half a pixel), and so on so forth. Additionally, I am not great at graphics or image-making (e.g. photoshop), so my visual/graphics output is very lacking.

I was making this project both as a challenge to myself, as a programmer, and as a way to figure out how to best present an issue using gameplay (which has become so popular nowadays). My audience is everyone; anyone can play a videogame! The message would not be clear to see at first, but through the gameplay (hopefully through the first gameplay, the message will get across), the message would be that success was an impossibility for most female artists, even those with extraordinary circumstances. Hildegard happened to be in a very extraordinary position, having divine visions in a time when divinity was praised and valued, and being able to use these visions to have a voice that would be heard.


The program link, design drawings, and other relevant documentation are here: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0BwQPVe1E7TmEWGdrZ3IzRFlTZ0E/edit
P.S. in order to run the program on a Mac, run Terminal (in utilities folder), get to the directory in which you downloaded the .java files using ls -l and cd [folder name], and then type java Draw (if it gives errors, try compiling first using javac Draw.java, and then java Draw).
P.S.S. In order to run the program on a Windows, install JDK from the java website. Then install an IDE (Dr. Java or JGrasp, for example), and then open the .java files, compile, and run all in the IDE program. Hope this helps.

Works Cited

A., Justin and Steven D and Jason. “The Caslte Kitchen”, ThinkQuest, Oracle, 1997. Web, 3 December 2012 http://library.thinkquest.org/10949/fief/medkitchen.html
Anonymous. “Medieval German Castles”, Medieval Periodm. n.p., n.d., Web, 3 December, 2012. http://www.medieval-period.com/medievalgermancastles.html

Flanagan, Sabina. “Hildegard Von Bingen.” Hildegard. n.p. 1995, Web.  13 November 2012 http://www.hildegard.org/documents/flanagan.html
Horst, Roland. St. Hildegard of Bingen. 1996, Web. 13 November 2012 http://www.hildegard.org/

Kiefer, James. “Hildegard of Bingen, Visionary.” Rowan University. Rowan University, 17 September, 2012, Web.  13 November 2012. http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/09/17.html

Knight, Eliza. “Cleaning in a Medieval Castle.” History Undressed. n. p., 28, July, 2008. Web, 3 December 2012. http://www.historyundressed.com/2008/07/cleaning-medieval-castle.html
Kosbie, David. "JComponentsWithEvents API" n.p. Spring 2010. Web, 13 November 2012 http://kosbie.net/cmu/spring-10/15-110/handouts/JComponentWithEvents.java

Wikipedia contributors. "Hildegard of Bingen." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 7 Nov. 2012. Web. 13 November 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen