A Sudden And Very Fortunate Windfall?

My 2 seminars today actually went really well! For the Visualisation seminar, we had to present our work on the rollercoaster so far, the designs, research etc and my presentation went better than I thought tbh. It was credited to being a good concept which Im happy with and I agreed with the feedback I received as it was what I needed to do with the concept, which includes reducing the amount of things I include due to the time frame I have left to work in.

Simon also recommended I work on each of the areas of the track as separate files to make it as a lot easier for me and connect them up in one file later on instead. Or instead of connecting them, I could just render a movie clip for each file and compile the final movie using the clips, making sure the transition is as smooth and unnoticeable possible otherwise that will ruin it.

The Games Design seminar actually really shocked me because I was pretty stressed about the card game. I was struggling to get a decent design and I even came up with a 4th idea, but that was too similar to Blackjack and Solitaire in all honesty. The reason for the shock is what happened with my 1st design actually. None of the 3 original ideas I came up with were anywhere near complete and they had their major flaws. We had to test the prototypes for our ideas so I just went with my first one and decided to improvise as I went along.

Me and a friend of mine tested my first idea and we ended up improvising as I hope, we actually made a much better design in the end! Brad sent someone called Matt I think to give us feedback as we played, and he gave me some pretty helpful feedback and also found my project to be really damned good which what cheered me up so much! I already was happy with it but then he made a couple of minor suggestions to improve it and he said the idea was one of the most versatile and unique ones he's ever seen. He's never seen a card system like it before, he designed 3 in 3 weeks that all failed in their first week, and he said the card game was so simple yet strategic and fun, it was brilliant! Matt pointed out that the card game is easily adaptable for all ages by changing the rules slightly and thus creating a range of difficulties.

The fact that I used original playing cards kept it simple and I didn't go down the path of designing a completely new card game with it's own characters, cards etc, it's a new game that utilises the original playing cards in a new way. He said is actually quite educational as simple maths is involved in it with a frantic pace which adds thrill and excitement to it as well. Due to the educational factor, it can be used in schools by teachers and seeing as the difficulty can be altered based on the ages playing, it can appeal to anyone too and also he said there is a good market for this as there's nothing out there that is like this really!

Hearing that really made my day to be honest and it's given me a lot more confidence with myself and the project! I'm really pleased with how things have turned out as well as shocked still, and I'm actually quite excited about finishing this project and actually playing this game!

My friends liked playing it a lot too and their projects turned out brilliant too, I ended up giving them helpful ideas and advice too and they've used it to help better their projects too, all in all the testing and feedback worked out extremely well!

I actually posted on Facebook that I was on fire due to how well I was doing today and recently, but I'm just receiving replies from friends worried if I'm ok and if I got burned? :S Something tells me, they have never heard of that phrase being used as a way of saying how well you are doing, I cant think why...