Norman's Blog

Man, reflecting back on this course brings up a lot of stuff.  The very first day Marlen tried to scare the shit out of everyone and succeeded in making some people drop the course on the very first day.  After the first class it was clear that the first day was just Marlen messing with people, and that he was actually a cool guy (if you do the work).  The second time I got freaked out was when I scheduled my first meeting and then didn’t show up, he called me out in class and I about shit my pants, yet this was just another example of Marlen messing with people and he was totally cool with it.  I was most anxious when I was going through the topic picking process; what to write about!!!  I had a assload of ideas that I wanted to write about, and I originally wanted to do the 40 page novella.   After a long talk with Marlen I completely changed my topic and my project turned into the 15 page research paper.  Once I picked my topic I was never really worried because I know a lot about it, and it’s a topic that can be as broad or as narrow as I want.    It was weird because before this class I never really did work early, I’m a pretty bad procrastinator.  Alas, I found myself doing stuff before it was due because Marlen prettymuch said he’d beat the shit out of us if stuff wasn’t done on time, and that the stuff due would take a long time.  This turned into my main strength because I thought to myself “shit dude, this is gonna suck balls, but I gotta do it and just get it over with.” Of course the previous statement refers to the blogs and not the actual writing, because I didn’t mind writing the paper at all.  It was just the tedious process of paraphrasing a shit ton of blogs, finding sources and paraphrasing again, and citing that got to be a repetitive, brain numbing experience.  I don’t really know what my goal is as a future researcher, because I still don’t know where my life is going.  However, I feel ready to take on whatever research I need to after this course, because it really did seem like graduate work that actually matters, unlike most english classes.  My proudest moment in the course was probably when Marlen said he respected me, quite frankly because I like hearing teachers tell me that I’m doing well.   Also, this  shows that Marlen actually cares about his students.  What will stick with me most after this course is just the perfectionist attitude about writing a paper.  I’ll always just think to myself, “check this! check that! Is this write? What will people think about this?” and so on.

The assignment that was probably the most useful for me throughout this course was the lit review blogs we had to do.  It was probably the most work I did with my sources, and forced me to read them in-depth and actually understand every little bit of information about them.  It was also probably the most amount of paraphrasing practice and citing practice we had to do, especially when we had to paraphrase every paragraph in two journals, no matter the length.  It also gave me a chance to decide what sources I needed, as well as the amount of information I needed to explain, because I could go on for quite a while about my topic.

The most helpful feedback I had was the peer reviews.  It gave me a sense of what other, average people thought of my paper, which is the type of people that would/will read my paper if it gets published.  It helped me know what other people thought about my word choice, ideas, and general quality of the paper.  Holes were found and unanswered questions were able to be filled.

The most difficult part of my paper was definitely the results/discussion portion.  Throughout my research on those two topics, most papers use statistics, tables, and other information that I did not have.  My results were purely informational so it was hard for me to translate that information onto paper without simply saying, “he did this, she said that, he thought this.”  The writing center helped me out by showing me how to write the results.  The easiest part of the draft was the lit review, I had a good idea of what I wanted to talk about since I picked this topic.   It was surprisingly easy to get into contact with the creator of the power of three, Tom Fulp, which was quite fortunate.

My final essay doesn’t really show my best writing in any one spot.  It’s scattered throughout the paper.  That being said, the place that best shows my opinion on my topic is in the discussion section, because the previous sections of the paper are basically just explaining information in such an order that puts my expression of my topic on paper.

After the peer review project it made me realize some of the flaws in my paper.  For one, I’m a comma whore and use a shit ton throughout my paper.  Having someone else read my paper also helped me see the questions left unanswered and things that are just flat out irrelevant.   Furthermore, it helped me see where other people are in the class.  Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and like I should be doing Marlenwork all dey erry dey.   After reading Brock’s paper I felt a lot better though, for these were just our first shitty drafts.  While editing his paper I didn’t look at grammar or sentence structure, but basically just the layout of his ideas and how he explained things.  The rubric helped by having a sort-of checklist of things I needed to look at, but I didn’t like the number scale because I feel pretty generous.  For this, however, Brock told me to blam his paper, so I did.

Results:

Article 1-

The results section of a research paper shows the reader the results from the data obtained.  The data can be presented in different ways; a graph, table, diagram, or written text.  The raw data is usually in an appendix at the end of the paper.  Every result should be backed up by an explanation.  The author should highlight significant parts, such as trends or relationships.  Make sure that data from the graph isn’t repeated.  There are 2 common ways to present data; present all the parts and then a discussion, or presenting one part and then a discussion, followed by more results and another discussion (Writing up Research).

Article 2-

The results section does not interpret the results, this is done in the discussion section.  One problem with the result section is trying not to give too much information.  One way to prevent this is by being less specific.  It is advised to show the most relevant data in a graph or table.  Text in the results section should resolve unclear points.  One general outline for the results is to show all the information, followed by discussion at the end.  Another way is to present some information, discuss it, present more information, discuss it, and so on.  Negative results should also be included.  If a shortened version of the raw data is used, then the use of an appendix is not needed (Shuttleworth).

Article 3-

The result section shows the reader the outcome of the research.  Organize the results in the same way the hypothesis was laid out.  It should start by the statistics and tests used in the research.  Be sure to explain connections.  Also, describe each connection and group used in the tests.  Furthermore, make sure the results are formatted properly, based on the formatting style being used.  End each description with a statement saying how it did or did not support your hypothesis.  Tables and other figures should be used sparingly (E-How).

Article 4-

A good results section shows not only textual representation, but graphic representation as well.  Raw data, along with graphs and tables should be used.  The results must be explained with great detail, but not necessarily explained themselves.  Only use the most significant issues, and don’t use irrelevant information.  If an appendix is used, it is placed at the end of the paper.

Discussion:

Article 1-

The discussion section explains the results of the research along with what was already known about the topic.  This section connects the introduction by saying how far the research has moved forward.  Some important questions are:  do your results provide answers to the testable hypotheses, do the findings agree with what others have shown, and if not do they suggest an alternative explanation, with your conclusion considered, what is the new understanding of the problem, and if warranted what would be the next step in the study.  The active voice should be used in this section.  It should be organized to address each test in the research, and the interpretation of what they mean.  Findings of other researchers are used in your interpretations, so make sure that no new results have been found.  Relating your work to the work of others is essential, this allows for comparison of findings.  Don’t include new results in the discussion section.  Acknowledgments must be made if help was received with any ideas (How to Write Guide).

Article 2-

Relate the results back to the hypothesis.  Provide a detailed description of the important parts from the introduction and the  results.  Don’t make it seem like the information found from the research is the final result.  Find relationships and patterns between things.  If the findings did not support the hypothesis, explain why.  Talk about weaknesses in the research.  Talk about what future research may include; like the next steps (Hanover College).

Article 3-

The discussion section generalized what was learned from the research.  Explain the consequences of the research.  Findings should relate back to the introduction.  The discussion should relate directly to the thesis, and no new information should be presented here.   Also, it is usually written in present tense(Formal Research Structure).

Article 4-

This is the section where the results are explained.  Explain why the information gained was found, and how.  Is it what was predicted?  Talk about the limitations of the study, and also talk about the next steps that should be taken for future research.  Describe how your research pertains to theory and practice (Kahn).

Conclusion:

Article 1-

The conclusion is part of the frame around the body of the paragraph and is generally one of the hardest parts to write.  Also,  the conclusion gives the writer the chance to give last expressions and ideas about the topic.  It gives the paper meaning in some manners.  One unique attribute about the conclusion is that it is not bound by the paper, it can expand.  It can show broader issues and make new connections.  There are several strategies to writing a conclusion.  One strategy is to play the “So What?” game.  Every time a statement is made in the conclusion, a friend says, “so what?”  The author then can think about the question and answer it.  Another strategy is to return to the introduction, make the paper go in a full circle.  Synthesizing is another method.  Show how points made  in the paper support examples.   There are strategies to avoid, too.  Avoid using the terms, “in conclusion,” “in closing,” and so on.  These terms are acceptable in speeches, but not papers.  The thesis should never be stated in the conclusion.  New ideas or subtopics should never be introduced here.  Evidence should never be shown in the conclusion.  Four kinds of ineffective conclusions are the “Thats my story and I’m sticking to it,” “The Sherlock Holmes,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “the Grab Bag” Conclusion.  The first method simply restates the thesis, the second method is when the writer places the thesis at the end, the third uses emotion to make it seem appealing, and the last uses information the author found but couldn’t implement into the main body (Conclusions).

Article 2-

Some papers may end with the discussion section and not need the conclusion.  For papers that do indeed need a conclusion, the ideas are synthesized in this section.  Ideas are unified and shown significance.  The ideas should relate to the introduction (Formal Research Structures).

Article 3-

It is argued that the conclusion is the most important part of the essay.  All the research from the essay must present results.  The thesis must be restated, and show how all the material found and used measures up.  Analyze the main points of the paper for the readers.  No new information is given in the conclusion, but the conclusion contains original information, it shows the value of the research and the author’s understanding (Research Paper Writing Guide).

Article 4-

A good conclusion is important for many reasons;  it allows the author to have the last word on the issue, allows the author to summarize ideas and show additional implications from the research, shows the importance of the research, and shows the audience new ways of looking at the idea.  The conclusion should be simple and clear, and should not simply repeat information mentioned earlier.  Show opportunities for future research.  The conclusion also shows the importance and strength of the argument.  It shows the most important evidence.  The conclusion also restates the research question after the reader has been presented all information (8. The Conclusion).

References:

“Conclusions.” The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Web. <http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/conclusions.html>.

“Formal Research Structure – Structuring the Research Paper – Chapter 4: The Research Process – Online Guide to Writing and Research – Effective Writing Center (EWC) -.” UMUC. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://www.umuc.edu/ewc/onlineguide/chapter4/chapter4-13.shtml>.

“How to Write Guide: Sections of the Paper.” Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWsections.html#discussion>.

Kahn, Jeffery. “Sample APA Paper for Students Interested in Learning APA Style 6th Edition.” Illinois State University. Web. <http://my.ilstu.edu/~jhkahn/APAsample.pdf>.

“How to Write the Results Section of A Research Paper | EHow.com.” EHow | How To Do Just About Everything! | How To Videos & Articles. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://www.ehow.com/how_5737710_write-results-section-research-paper.html>.

“Research Paper Introduction and Conclusion :: Research Paper Writing Guide.” Custom Essays for Sale – $13.95/page – Buy Essay Online. Web. <http://www.tailoredessays.com/how-write/research-paper/introduction-conclusion.htm>.

“Research Papers: Research Paper Writing. Need Writing Services?” Custom Essay Writing Service. $10.49/page. FREE Plagiarism Report! Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://custom-writing.org/research-papers#th>.

Shuttleworth, Martyn. “Writing a Results Section – Announcing the Findings.” Scientific Method – Understanding Science, Research and Experiments. 2009. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://www.experiment-resources.com/writing-a-results-section.html>.

“Writing a Results and Discussion.” Hanover College Psychology Department-Department Information. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://psych.hanover.edu/Classes/PSY220/ResultDisc.htm>.

“Writing up Research: Results.” Language Center Website. Web. 30 Mar. 2010. <http://www.languages.ait.ac.th/EL21RES.HTM>.

“8. The Conclusion – Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper – LibGuides at University of Southern California.” Home – LibGuides at University of Southern California. Web. <http://libguides.usc.edu/content.php?pid=83009&sid=615873>.

After combining the three sections of the paper, it gave me an idea of how far along I am on the project.  So far, I think I have enough information, but some of it might not be in the right place.  For example, I mentioned something briefly in my introduction, and then explained it in detail in the lit review.  I don’t know if I should take it out of the introduction and only explain it in the lit review or not.  The transitions were prettymuch already made when I did each part of the paper, so I didn’t change much there.  I marked the end of each section just so my peer reviewers knew, just in case my transitions are shit.  I definitely need to edit the introduction some more, and probably the methods.  The methods were tough because it’s basically explaining as much information as you can-without having any information.  Once I have my data collected, I’ll hopefully have enough information to pound out the rest of the paper, along with some editing.

I have a lot of options for my research methods, and I think I have them narrowed down enough.

My main method will be to do an observational study on a programmer, an animator, and a composer.  For my animator, I can observe my brother, as I have been doing my whole life.  I will also contact Tom Fulp, the creator of the idea of the power of three.  Fulp and my brother know many other artists out there and can hopefully guide me towards a programmer and composer that I can contact.  However, Fulp also has programming experience so I can interview him about that subject.  I plan on doing an online chat, as transcribing a phone conversation is a bitch.  If the online chat doesn’t work out I can always do an online questionnaire type of deal.  I believe that only three participants are necessary, for they each cover the field of research, as well as give background information on the power of three, from newgrounds.

Questions that I will ask may include:

Can you describe, roughly, the process of what you do?

-Is there a step-by-step process/where do you start?

-What programs/instruments do you use?

-Where/when did you learn to do this?

How long does it typically take to finish a piece of work?

What are your thoughts about the power of three/ do you think collaboration is a good idea?

What type of environment do you see yourself working in, after doing work such as this?

-Freelance,small or large studio,etc.

The only danger I can see is using Tom Fulp’s name in the research.  To guard against this I may have to substitute his name with “the creator of the power of three” and other names such as that.  Also, I can supply an informed consent form if necessary.

Article 1 -Writing up Research: Method and Research

The purpose should allow readers to see how the data was collected, as well as see how it is analyzed.   The way the data is collected affects the results, so it is important to be able to see how the data is gathered.  Also, it should be made clear why the chosen method is used.  The consistency of the method can also be seen by readers.  Appropriate research methods must be chosen.  Possible problems should be discussed, how did the researcher prevent them?  Other researchers may want to duplicate these methods, so having a good methodology helps.  Some possible problems include irrelevant details.  Also, readers aren’t beginners in the topic, so don’t treat them as such.   Only explain what needs to be.  Don’t pretend problems when gathering research don’t occur.  Recording the step to get over the problem may help future researchers get over their own problems.  The methodology fits into the final draft as a key component.  In the intro,  objectives are given.  The literature review explains sources and why they’re important to the research.  The method section explains how the data was obtained and the analysis.  The results and discussion show the results of the research.  And the conclusion explains how the question was answered.  There are many research methods, which include; analysis, case study, comparison, correlation-prediction, evaluation, design-demonstration, survey questionnaire, status, theory construction, and trend analysis.  When writing the method section, keep aware of the purpose.  Keep notes of what happened, and be aware of the audience.  It is suggested to use passive voice to avoid the use of “I” (Writing up Research).

Article 2- The Methods Section of a Paper

The methods section of a paper is extremely important, it shows the validity of research.  Thus, the author must show a clear guide of how the research was obtained.  This allowed readers to judge the paper, or other researchers to duplicate the methods.  Cause-and-effect relationships can be found through the methods.  The two main sections are the materials section, and of course, the methods section.  The materials refer to what was examined, and the methods describe the analysis.  For writing this part, first explain the materials used. Then explain how the materials were prepared, the research protocol, calculations performed, and the tests to analyze the data.  Also, this should be done in past tense.  Compound sentences should be avoided, as well as describing irrelevant details.  The data analysis presents the results of the statistical tests.  In short, the methods section is an extremely important part of the research paper and should be done in a clear and appropriate manner(Kallet).

The methods section of a paper is indeed important.  It shows credibility of the research, and allows others to judge the paper and methods.  If the appropriate methods are taken, with the appropriate explanation, others can duplicate the methods.  Furthermore, credibility is key when people judge the paper itself, no one will believe or want to read a paper with bogus sources and methods (take the Killing Rampage article discussed in blog 9).

References:

Kallet, Richard. “The Method Section of a Paper.” Success in MRCOphth by Professor C.N.Chua BMed Sci, MB BS, MRCP, FRCOphth. Web. <http://www.mrcophth.com/publishorperish/methods.html>.

“Writing up Research: Method and Research Design.” Language Center Website. Web. <http://www.languages.ait.ac.th/el21meth.htm>.

Rubric for the New York Times article, “Why are Killing Rampages Increasing?”

ENGL202 blog10rubric – Note: the document is .docx which is Office Word 2007

Journal 1 – Better scripting, better games

P1 – The game industry was very lucrative according to statistics from 2007.  Large development teams are common, but game studios are arranged in unique ways.  The larger part of the development team is made up of artists, musicians, and designers.

p2 – Content creation is a very important and large part of the work.  Many studios spend a lot of money on being able to integrate the content made into the software.

p3- Content creation ideas are different in each studio.  Studios typically prefer designers to implement the content rather than software engineers, seeing as the content designers have an idea of how the players will react to situations.

p4- Usually the software developers are split into two groups, the first being software engineers.  It is up to the software engineers work on the heart of the game-play; the animation, networking, and the creation of the content creation tools.  The second team, the gameplay programmers, create the certain characteristics of a game that stand out when compared to others.

p5- The gameplay programmer is given the task of making fun algorithms.  They create a prototype for the software engineers to tweak into being able to be implemented, in which another prototype is made.  It’s an efficient process, but it is this process that companies want to either automate or speed up.

p6- The studios also want to give the designers a part in the programming process.  Tools are usually made for the designers, who have less knowledge about programming, to be able to tweak features and enable them to fit the game.

p7- A large number of studios rely on scripting language, which allowed creators to tell how an object is to act.  This is good because there’s no worry of having to implement the behavior into the actual game, and is also useful for games that require objects to interact with a number of other objects.

p8- User created content is a result of scripting. Many games have “mods,” which is a game that is made from altering the data files from another.

p9 – Along with scripting, which allows players to modify a certain amount of code, is the sandbox which is also included in many games.  The sandbox has the same functionality as scripting, but doesn’t have as much access and prevents players from creating scripts that give them an advantage over others in multiplayer games.  It also decreases the number of bugs resulting from a more board spectrum of access.

p10 – scripting should make the game play development speedy and efficient.  Furthermore, many objects share common attributes.  Scripting, which is usually a part of an IDE (integrateddevelopment environment), allow easy modification to the attributes.

p11- One downfall to scripting is that the designer must be aware of certain things about low-level processes that don’t deal with gameplay; framerate, performance, etc.  To optimize, the designers count the number of multiplies and adds in the code, which is very tedious.

p12- Content creation also has to be aware of performance.  If new content makes a game run slowly, it might not even be added, or the number of objects is reduced in the game.  For example, producers of The Sims had to place a “feng shui meter” to prevent players from placing too many objects in one location.

p13- There are a lot of techniques to improve performance.  Spatial indexes and parallel executions are two techniques used.  However, these processes are usually made by the software engineers.

p14 – A big issue, also a low-level issue, with many games is lack of translation support for many MMO’s (massively multiplayer online).  Designers are tasked with finding a way to have an efficient way of updating the game state.  Because of this, script-level concurrency makes up a large portion of bugs in the game.

p15- A way to facilitate scripting is by giving designers special tools for dealing with low-level issues.  Many new languages have been made to deal with these issues, but make programming harder.

p16- Designers have had these problems for a long time, and have been working their way around them.  Programming in certain patterns is one way to work around the problems.  OOP (object oriented progamming) is successful because of the patterns used, the patterns were being used before languages even supported OOP.  Designing scripting languages to support the patterns is a priority among studios, which also results in programmers not having to be retrained.

p17- The state-effect pattern is used often.  In games, there is a long-running simulation loop, which game to player input depends upon as being fast.  The state-effect pattern is comprised of two phases, effect and update.  The effect update is when every object selects an action and individually determine the effects.  In the update phase, all the actions come together to update the gamestate to ready for the next iteration of simulation.

p18- The pattern allows for objects to be split into two attributes, state and effect.  State is the representation of the world after the previous simulation iteration.  Effect holds the new actions which is used in the update of the new gamestate.  Interaction between objects are essentially simultaneous, so effects are not read until the update phase.

p-19  Physics in games use these patterns.  Attributes such as force, mass, velocity, etc, are saved as effect attributes, and are updated once all the the effects are summed at the end of a loop.

p-20  The state-effect pattern is used to create high-performance algorithms for special cases, because they can enhance loops.  This allows for the effect and update phases to be parallelized.

p21 – An example of an alternative execution model is automatic parallelization, which allows the game to use a control flow not provided by the programmer.  Alternative execution models are some of the best ways to improve performance.  The SGL language is an unusual execution method.  Database techniques are used for optimization.  This is similar to when programmers program on the graphics processing unit, except it’s automatic.

p22-  Iteration causes a lot of problems.  If done incorrectly, iteration can greatly decrease performance.

p-23 Scripts need to be executed over a given number of objects.  The restricted-iteration pattern aided in the prevention of arbitrary loops.

p24- Warcraft III uses the restricted iteration pattern.  For example, it has a loop that goes over all units inside a given rectangle.  Inside that loop is the function NudgeUnitsInRectEnum which forces a minimum distance between units.

p25-  That loop mentioned is essentially a f0r-each loop, which loops over a set of objects.  This method is present in a lot of code in Warcraft III, which could be the cause of performance improvement.

p26- Iteration, an alternative control structure, aids developers.  It could help with the problem of concurrency issues in many games.  For example, inventory management is a HUGE problem in a lot of games (item duplication, losing items, etc). Locks can be used to help this problem too, but are expensive and may contain errors.

p27- Lock based synchronization is incompatible with the state-effect pattern, however.  The effect variables are unable to be read, with or without locks.

p28- It’s important to realize that through this process, the programmer’s goal is to update something, but may result in an inconsistency.

p29- Companies often use languages with little concurrency support.  They also encourage good coding convention to limit errors, and being able to trust scripters allows them to do more.

p30- Optimization is a key feature in games, and there are ways outside of the scripting languages to do so.  If the game knows the correct state to be in or change to, the optimization can improve performance.

p31- Programmers already hone in on this feature by looking for patterns from previous play testing, and if found can improve performance.  However, it’s a lot more difficult for user created content.

p31- Taking note of performance is also useful for debugging, which is very hard task because one small error may cause a larger error.  Studios sometimes try to use data provenance, someone in that field tries to figure out how everything works together and what changes over time.  However, no language supports data provenance.

p32- If a script has an unusual execution model, data provenance becomes more useful.  In this way, a programmer can have a high-level visualization of what actually occurred, instead of working it out in a separate execution model.

p33- Language features can easily be implemented, when new features are added to the language they can be placed without affecting the old features.  This is not the case for game-aware run-times.  Run-time aware scenarios must be understood well from the point of execution, whereas languages can just see what works according to the debugger.

p34- Scripting plays an enormous role in game design and modeling.  They can help with performance and debugging, and influence the way games are designed greatly.

Journal 2- ideo Game Music Strikes a Bigger Chord

p1- Many people could recognize music from the game Medal of Honor in the background during campaign videos of John McCain.

p2- Game studios are spending more now than ever before on music production on big titles.  It’s estimated that the game industry is around 38$ billion dollars.

p3- Presently, some companies spend as much as 1 million dollars for composers on big titles.  This does not include hiring orchestras, renting studios, and producing the final versions.

p4- The revenues in gaming were around 19 billion dollars in 2007.  This is a considerable amount more than the box office’s 9.6 billion, or the DVD’s 16 billion.

p5- The reason for the increase in music production is partly because of new technology.

p6- Some composers for TV shows or movies have crossed over to the game industry.  On the other hand, some have started on the gaming side and switched over to movies and shows.

p7- In a movie, a listener will hear the music, but after the movie they will never hear it again.  In games where people play for many hours, they hear the music continuously.  Also, music is done last when making movies, and usually in a short amount of time.  For games it’s completely different, there’s a much larger period of time to produce and perfect.

p8- Implementation is an important topic with designers.  For example, different music plays when there are multiple people on screen than when there is only one.

p9- An example of this is the music producer for Destroy All Humans!  Garry Shyman has about two months to create three 3-minute music loops and other pieces for different scenes, which is much more time than the 3-6 weeks movies take to create music.

p10- Soundtrack composers sometimes must forfeit the rights to the music to the studios, which can cause conflicts.  But there are mixed feelings about the movie and game studios, some think that a year for a game is too long, or some say they would rather be in a movie than a game.

The first article obviously had a longer introduction than the second, though both did have introductions.  The first caught my eye by listing interesting facts about the gaming industry, such as that it made around 8 billion dollars in 2007.  The second article opened with a fact about a presidential campaign using music from a video games.  I thought that both articles had a good way to hook in readers.  The purpose of the first article is to explain scripting in games, and why it is important.  It does a good job at explaining this, as it talks about examples of games and some of the processes that scripts execute.  One thing that was interesting was that it also talked about some of the problems with scripting, and ways to overcome these problems.  The second article’s goal was to show how music production is becoming increasingly important in games.  It explains some differences between music in game production as well as music production, and the benefits.  The main research question in the article is probably something along the lines of why is scripting important in game design?  I think it’s this because the bulk of the article explains the importance of scripting.  The second article’s question is probably something like “why is there an increase of music production in games?”  I think this because the article explains that game production is spending more and more each year on music production.  Methods probably used in the first article include talking with makers of the game Second Life, and other game designers, or even the developers of Warcraft III.  There are some references listed in the article, but I don’t quite know what information came from the sources. Methods used in the second article might include the author speaking with music producers from games, such as Gary Schyman and others mentioned in the article.  The author also would have had to have a source mentioning the statistics listed about the cost in music production.  Results from the first article basically show that scripting is becoming more important in game design, and the second article is showing that music production is becoming a bigger deal and more costly in game design.  For future research from article 1, not only can i check the sources, but I could also research the games mentioned in the article; Second Life and Warcraft III. Also, I think I could look at scripting guides and manuals, or information from developers.

Sources from Article 1:

Dean, J. and Ghemawat, S. MapReduce: Simplified
data processing on large clusters. Commun.
ACM 51, 1 (Jan. 2008): 107–113; doi.acm.
org/10.1145/1327452.1327492.

White, W., Sowell, B., Gehrke, J., and Demers, A.
Declarative processing for computer games. In
Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGGRAPH Sandbox
Symposium; doi.acm.org/10.1145/1401843.1401847.

The introduction is a critical part to a research paper.  It’s composed of a small number of sentences, followed by the thesis statement.  The first sentence, however, should be something able to catch someone’s attention.  It essentially has to hook them in, or they might not want to read the article because they think it might be boring.  There are many ways to form a first sentence; a humorous statement, a quote, or an interesting fact.  What follows is the thesis statement, a direct and informative statement that sets the background of the paper to come.  After the paper is finished, it might help to go back and reform the first paragraph, also (Purdue OWL).

The first step of writing an introductory paragraph is deciding when to write it.  Some prefer to write the body paragraph first, or even write the introduction last.  When starting the paragraph, it is also important to start it with an opening statement that will inspire readers to continue reading.  A common way to start is with an interesting quote or fact.  For some papers, it’s possible to open up with a brief story or example that relates to the main idea of the paper.  When trying to prove a point, it’s a good idea to acknowledge the other side’s opinion and then lead into the thesis statement explaining why another opinion is better.  Also, remember to cite sources (eHow).

References:

“Purdue OWL.” Welcome to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL). Web. 17 Feb. 2010. <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/01/>.   Writing an introduction is possibly the most important part of the essay.  The opening statement is written in such a way that it hooks in readers and compels them to read further, which can be done in a variety of ways.  All of this leads into the final statement of the introduction, the thesis statement, which sets the background of the paper and essentially informs what the paper is about.

“How to Write a Great Introductory Paragraph for your Essay or Term Paper | eHow.com.” EHow | How To Do Just About Everything! | How To Videos & Articles. Web. 18 Feb. 2010. <http://www.ehow.com/how_5490650_write-paragraph-essay-term-paper.html>.  The introductory paragraph can be tricky, so some authors choose to write it at a later time, even once the body is done.  When writing it, however, it should open with a statement that pulls in readers, which can be done with various techniques, such as an interesting fact or quote.