Project Summary

            Atomic Inertia is a website that serves the purpose of an online professional portfolio. Originally, I wanted to create a website that contained some games. One thing that I love to do in my spare time is play video games, as a way to escape whatever I have going on by a means of just taking a break. The name “Atomic Inertia” came from a video gamer name (Atomic Effect) that I have for an Xbox game, Rockband, and “Inertia” is primarily for the “animation” part of my website, and in the Physics law that means the tendency of a body to maintain its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force. (Meaning the pictures are not in motion until clicked on *external force*.)

            I have grown up around and with computers, and I am continuously going online for information, or to play certain games. So after typing in the same web address time and time again to play an online game of billiards, I began to wonder how much work went into creating the webpage that I was viewing every time that I went online. There were flashy pictures, and popup’s of very complicated looking animations showing up everywhere, and I knew that it came from an original picture and someone used a program to create it. The only question was HOW did they create ANY of these fancy visuals that in which you are seeing when you go online and see pictures doing animations, and how much work goes into creating games.

            So I decided to take up an interest in Adobe Flash, which is a program that uses ActionScript as its programming language. It is all over the Internet, and one of the bigger competitors to JavaScript. (Both that are widely used to create animations, websites, and games all over the Internet.) I originally wanted to create a Flash-based website that had a “few” games that I would create imbedded into my website. This was going to be very difficult given the short amount of time that I was going to be getting for this project, but I was willing to see what all I could learn from what is out there.

            I started with researching HOW to create a website, and once I figured out where I needed to begin, I started building my website. It did not come together as smoothly as I planned, but I got as far as figuring out how to do a basic homepage. There were no additional resources that could help me get to a point where I was inputting data and games into the website. I wanted to take a break, so I decided I would focus my efforts more on building some games with Flash.

            Building games in Flash is EXTREMELY time consuming!! This is a TERRIBLE choice to take on as a beginner with such a short time as I was allotted for this Graduation Project. I had nothing but problems when I began trying to build games with Flash. I could get as far as the basic visuals drawn out and have everything that I would need to make a game, and whenever I tried to compile my work all together to make it work, it would never work. It was extremely frustrating, because I would keep trying over and over to just get something basic and simple to just work. Then I would have SOMETHING to go off of to troubleshoot my other games that I was trying to create.

            So finally, throughout my experimenting with Adobe Flash, the only thing that I have had any success in is animating pictures. It is a little difficult at first, but it is something that makes sense to me and I can actually do it with satisfaction. The ActionScript language is completely new and foreign to me, but it is not something that anyone should just give up on. ActionScript is extremely powerful if you know how to use it, and after having put myself in a position where I can experience what ActionScript is and how it works, I really feel that it is something that I am going to continue learning more about.

            I do not want to become a game designer, or do web design for a living, but it is fun to have something that is creative and can give your mind a break, and Flash is a great way to have fun doing really neat work. However, I do feel if I would have had much more time to work on this, and if there were more resources out there for you to browse through, I would have been able to do exactly what I wanted to do; which was make a website and games all based on Flash. But just because my deadline has come, does not mean that I am going to lose any interest in this project. It is something that I want to continue to learn more about and maybe someday I will even learn how to teach others how to use Flash!