Game or Project - 王朝网络

I've heard it said, "To play the game of life…" This time, I played my way through a project.My 8th grade year, last quarter of my junior high career, the big project this year was called "The Civil War Project". The Civil War Project was of course based on the American Civil War. Every student was required to choose a topic of some relevance to the war. Some students chose individual people such as generals and heroes, the guns used, battle tactics, events, but by far the most sought after topic was a great battle. By the end of the first day, the few quick students had gotten the prize of doing a project on a battle with easy to find information. I was one of them. I got the "Battle of Antietam".My favorite movie in the entire world is a movie called, "Glory". Every time I see the movie, it brings tears to my eyes. It describes the first regiment of black soldiers in the civil war. They marchsintosbattle under discrimination and infighting, but in the end everyone dies. That scene will stick with me forever. I truly believed that I could do a wonderful project. Now came the tough part as always, what to do for the project? Mr. Henrich required that we do three things. Write a lengthy summary of what you topic was all about, prepare a presentation for the whole class, and show the project through a visual project. At this time, we had just gotten over the little "incident" with Ms. S. She was completely opposed to our creative and original project. Even in other classes I felt uneasy doing original and outrageous projects, all except in Mr. Henrich's class. In his class, the last thing you should do was be unoriginal or a follower, someone who only knew how to copy.Another thing I have learned from doing so many projects, is that if you involve something you like to dosintosthe project, you work much faster and definitely more efficient. This is very obvious to many people but the "why?" still eludes them. Also there is something driving that is much bigger than, "I have to do this" it's more of a "Hey, this is pretty fun!". So from my vantage point, I saw a win win situation here. I thought about what I could do that I really enjoy doing. I was kind of sick of doing something artistic every time I needed a good grade. I even felt that sometimes I was cheating myself because other kids were out working hard and researching while I just relied on my art skills to pull a higher grade than At the time, I was very interested in something called MUDS, an acronym for Multi User Dungeon. For those of you who have the Internet and are familiar with what a MUD is, I know you can seeswheresI am going with this. But for the majority of you who are right now saying, "What is he talking about?", a MUD is a game that is played on the Internet. The basic gist of it is that you are a character that you make, and you interact with people all around the world. The game is set in a fantasy world created by MUD area builders (for more information about MUDs, please turn to the hobbies section). I was crazy about MUDs at this point of my life. I had the software to actually build my own MUD, which other people could come to and play on. Was it possible to use MUDs in such a big project? I had been playing around on my MUD for about a week and thinking about it when I finally got one of the most creative and ambitious school project ideas I have ever had.One day, the picture just clickedsintosmy mind. What would be the best way for someone to experience and learn about a real Civil War battle? Take them to one! So I set about to create an extremely ambitious idea that kept sounding better and better. Right now, I just realized that I might be going just a bit too fast for those who don't understand what a MUD is. I'll take a few lines to try and explain more clearly. Stand up and look around the room you are currently in. Try and describe the room to yourself in beautifully written language. In essence you just did what MUD creators have been trying to do for years, to simulate life. Basically a MUD is a game that simulates life with pure text. There are no pictures in a MUD. You start off as a person of your picking, strong or smart, tall or short, powerful or tactful and so on. You progress as this character through an entire world of text and beautiful descriptions. You develop your own character's personality. You can be passive or aggressive, friendly or truculent it's your choice. There are monsters on the MUD, which simulate people; there are items that simulate items. On a MUD, you could actually gosintosa hotel, rent a room and sleep for a night there or sit down and have a glass of lemonade. The point is to bring you to another world through the Internet and text.If you are getting by with a hazy understanding of a MUD, then please read on, but if you still have no clue as to what I'm talking about, read on anyway it might help you understand.Ok, let's get back to the story.So I decided to build my MUDsintosthe "Battle of Antietam". I thought it all out in my head. I would first go get some researched information on Antietam. What the area looked like and pictures of it, so I could start building it on the MUD. Then I would research each major General and the plot of the battle. I would then make the characters one by one. I would have to program a personalitysintoseach of them and still provide accurate information. In my mind I was already done, but around halfwaysintosit, I had realized I had taken a bigger bite than I could swallow. Error after error popped up here and there. I would fix one here and it would cause another one somewhere else. I spent weeks just fixing the errors! The last week before they were due, I was still working like a maniac. Half my friends were done or finishing! This wasswheres"liking what you were doing" saved my sorry hide. I stayed up late nights that week, working on the characters, the programming. In my mind, everything had to be perfect! I had completely finished and was so happy I was finally done. The day before my presentation, I realized something. Could they see my MUD from school?This realization came a day before they were supposed to be due. My MUD was built on my home PC. If I was going to present this at school, I would need a direct connection from the school computer to my computer. If I couldn't find a way, I was cooked. I quickly asked Mr. Henrich if I could check something on his computer. Of course, being Mr. Henrich, he smiled and said, "I don't want any viruses, ok?" and let me use it. I found that the Macintoshes we had at school had no way of connecting to my MUD. I just wanted to scream. Like always, I work the best under pressure. I used the rest of the day, which was about 15 minutes, and found software on the Internet that allowed the Mac's to connect to my MUD. I downloaded it and with three minutes left I installed it and made sure it worked. I got on the bus seconds before it was about to pull out, knowing that tomorrow I could connect to the MUD. Then I realized something again which made me think whether I was fully awake that week or not. This one problem could render my weeks of work useless. To present the MUD at school, our computer at home had to be running the MUD at the same time, who was going to keep the MUD working while I was at school?If you have ever watched the movie classic, the Godfather, it doesn't just portray a bunch of mobs and gangsters trying to kill each other. It had some real deep meaning in it and one of them was that "your family comes first." I used a page from Al Pacino's book and believed that I could teach my dad how to run the MUD in the 4 hours I had left that night. Usually my dad loves to fool around when you are trying to be serious. It seems to make him laugh so hard, you'd believe it was the funniest thing in the world if you saw the look on his face when he pretends to be stupid while your trying to get him to cooperate. This would be the last thing I would expect from a Ph.D. but it was the first thing I expect from my dad. On this particular night, he saw that I was quite frustrated and serious about this project and the problem I was having, so he kept the fooling around to a minimum. He listened surprisingly intently and picked it up quite quickly, and around 11:30 I had him running the MUD as best as I could on such short notice. He promised to start it the next day and keep it going until I got home. The problem was that since we had a regular Internet connection, the address of the MUD would change every time we got on the Internet, so I would have to call and get the address from him before I did the presentation. Otherwise, I had no way of connecting Mr. Henrich's computer to ours. Sound risky? Guess how I felt.The next day before goingsintosclass I walked over to the office,swheresI knew the receptionist lady real well. Usually, students aren't allowed to call home with the school phone, we were only allowed to use the pay phone. But because I knew the receptionist very well (The story has been told in Ms. S's section), she let me use the phone. She said, "Kuangyan? Did you get in trouble again?" and gave a giggle and a couple "tsks" and before I even asked her she said, "Sure, you can use the phone." I called my dad and it seemed that he had been waiting for the call and picked up and gave me the address incredibly efficiently. Phew! I was finally ready to give this project that I had been stressing over for about two months. I walksintosMr. Henrich's class, a little late, but of course Mr. Henrich, who believes that teaching students means teaching and not nit-picking on little rules and regulations, "didn't see me walk in late". I ran over to the computer and tried the address. Blank! "Error connecting to remote computer." My eyes nearly popped out of my face as I saw the error over and over. I tried as many things as I could think of to make sure it wasn't the computer's problem. Nothing! My Dad must have done something wrong at home.Let me reiterate that this assignment, the civil war project, was a full-blown 200-point assignment. The whole quarter we had 600 points total. This was one third of my entire grade. Time to panic? But if I have said it once, I've said it a thousand times. I work the best under pressure. I ran to Mr. Henrich with my puppy-dog-face ready and willing to be used. I half explained and half begged my situation to him and all he did was smile. He looked at me funny for a minute and said, "Hmm, it seems that Huang is last on my alphabetical list today for some strange reason. I'm too lazy to change it, I guess your going tomorrow." He said with a straight face, which I could see the smile under. Our presentationsgroupswent by last name alphabetical order. The H in Huang was very near the front. Everyone knew that I would have to go that day. I thanked him and thanked him. All he said was "Thank me? For what? I'm the one who can't spell your name right!" and we both laughed. This was after the "Puppet Show", I was really laughing from my heart, because I had such a good teacher!Just then a messenger came down from the office and gave Mr. Henrich a pink slip. Pink slips usually meant some important information that had to be given to the teacher or a student. He handed it to me and said, "Wait, wait I think I just fixed that list. Your going today!" and laughed. I looked at the slip; on it was what seemed to be an IP Address for my MUD at home! Only after I got home did I find out what happened. My dad had been keeping the MUD going all day until I called. Right after that, something happened and the MUD shut off. So the IP address he gave me had been changed and was wrong. My happy-go-lucky Dad who loves to fool around found his waysintosthe world of MUDding and started the MUD up by himself. This was something, which I never taught him how to do. On top of that, he found the school's phone number from the phone book and called the office and requested that they send that address to Mr. Henrich's room immediately! I guess Pacino had something with that family thing after all. Even more amazing was my classroom presentation. I turned on the computer, connected to the computer, and entered the fantasy "Battle of Antietam". The idea was that you would go back in time to the time of the civil war. Inside of the MUD, I had even made our classroom, complete with Mr. Henrich. The MUD version of Mr. Henrich started to talk, "If you guys want to go and see history for yourselves, please take this key and open this door to history and walksintosthe history…" The students all wanted to volunteer for my presentation. I didn't choose Matt, I chose one of the other kids who knew a little about computers. Everyone watched as that person walked his character through a real battlefield. He walkedsintosthe Southern Frontline and spoke to the soldiers. After that he walked to the Northern Camp and spoke with the Northern Generals about their strategy on how to win the battle…The entire project gave background information all the way through to minute details of how the people looked. I not only put Mr. Henrichsintosthe MUD, but I also programmed in many of the students from our class. Mr. Henrich and the students, after seeing themselves inside of the MUD, laughed and giggled extensively. Every one of them had been brought to awe as they watched one of the kids walk through my MUD. The kids, who had played MUDs before, were particularly crazy about it. Within the MUD, I even managed to sneak some jokes inside. I made the MUD version of Mr. Henrich wearing a mismatched tie and shirt and holding a tennis racquet. Upon seeing this, Mr. Henrich laughed heartily and happily enough for 2 or 3 people. After all the presentations were over, Mr. Henrich walked over to me and showed me my final grade for the project. I laughed when I saw it because it certainly seemed like a joke. He had on the piece of paper marked:Total points: 260 Final Grade: 130%The maximum that someone could score was 200 points or 100%. He said, "The best I have seen this year. Very creative." and grabbed his tennis racquet and said, "We have practice today, you coming?"Oh yeah, I forgot, Mr. Henrich was also the school's tennis coach. After class, he was once again my coach.