Week 2 - The fun begins, and so does the real work...
What a week. We've been assigned our major projects for the Session, and I have to admit I'm pretty excited. For Logic & Design, our Professor has acquired "Scribbler" robots that are almost fully programmable to do a wide variety of things. Our task is to come up with three programs to input into the robots:
1) Simple: Make the robot move in a pattern to "draw" one of our teams initials.
2) Moderate: Make the robot drive in a set number of circles, with the compensation that if it runs into obstacles it will move out of the way and restart the process.
3) Hard: Have the robot drive along the perimeter of the room, recognizing turns, and indicating the turns it's making by raising flags, flashing lights, and making a noise that differentiates between right and left turns
We're in three-man teams, and each of us is responsible for the actual programming of one of the tasks. My teammates decided that I was most qualified to handle the hardest program, and I have to admit, it's an excercise in patience. Thankfully, I still have several weeks to hammer out the bugs, but I only have the robot to test my logic a limited number of times. This will definitely prove to be a challenge.
In GSP, we've been assigned to write a Game Design Concept document. It doesn't sound that hard, but it requires a lot of thought. We've been told that this concept document is going to be the basis of our progression through future GSP courses, and will culminate into our Senior project. Or it should. We're allowed to change our minds, of course, but we might as well turn this assignment into the first and most important step in making our final project game. I think I've got a pretty strong idea of what I want to do, and I'm liking how it's fleshing out in the Concept document.
As far as our weekly assignments are concerned, we had quite a few challenges ahead of us in Logic & Design. Of course, my friend and I also came to the realization that we've been making our assignments thus far a lot harder on ourselves. We aren't actually required to program anything, but then...I figure if we can turn the assignments into programs...why not? This week, we worked more with If-Then conditions and loops, and we learned firsthand the importance of defining global variables when dealing with subroutines. That cost us hours of work over something that should've taken minutes. But the lesson was valuables...I'm now in the habit of defining all my global variables first and foremost, and that's most likely a good habit to have.
With GSP, we had to put together a Maze game, either by modding the examples provided, or taking resources from them, and making our own. I made my own, titled EmoKid's Journey through Depression. I'm pretty impressed with myself on this one, considering I created a number of the sprites on my own, and only pulled a few things from the resource files. Once again, when I figure out a way to make it downloadable, I will post it up here for your enjoyment and criticism. I can't get better until someone tells me what I'm doing wrong.
As far as lessons go, we learned about the four types of game-players: Hearts - or Socializers; Spades - or Explorers; Diamonds - or Collectors; and finally Clubs - or Killers. We also went over demographic analysis and what needs to go into a game to be appealing to wider audiences.
And that's all for this week. Who knows what's in store for next week, I know I'm looking forward to it.
-Setzer out
1) Simple: Make the robot move in a pattern to "draw" one of our teams initials.
2) Moderate: Make the robot drive in a set number of circles, with the compensation that if it runs into obstacles it will move out of the way and restart the process.
3) Hard: Have the robot drive along the perimeter of the room, recognizing turns, and indicating the turns it's making by raising flags, flashing lights, and making a noise that differentiates between right and left turns
We're in three-man teams, and each of us is responsible for the actual programming of one of the tasks. My teammates decided that I was most qualified to handle the hardest program, and I have to admit, it's an excercise in patience. Thankfully, I still have several weeks to hammer out the bugs, but I only have the robot to test my logic a limited number of times. This will definitely prove to be a challenge.
In GSP, we've been assigned to write a Game Design Concept document. It doesn't sound that hard, but it requires a lot of thought. We've been told that this concept document is going to be the basis of our progression through future GSP courses, and will culminate into our Senior project. Or it should. We're allowed to change our minds, of course, but we might as well turn this assignment into the first and most important step in making our final project game. I think I've got a pretty strong idea of what I want to do, and I'm liking how it's fleshing out in the Concept document.
As far as our weekly assignments are concerned, we had quite a few challenges ahead of us in Logic & Design. Of course, my friend and I also came to the realization that we've been making our assignments thus far a lot harder on ourselves. We aren't actually required to program anything, but then...I figure if we can turn the assignments into programs...why not? This week, we worked more with If-Then conditions and loops, and we learned firsthand the importance of defining global variables when dealing with subroutines. That cost us hours of work over something that should've taken minutes. But the lesson was valuables...I'm now in the habit of defining all my global variables first and foremost, and that's most likely a good habit to have.
With GSP, we had to put together a Maze game, either by modding the examples provided, or taking resources from them, and making our own. I made my own, titled EmoKid's Journey through Depression. I'm pretty impressed with myself on this one, considering I created a number of the sprites on my own, and only pulled a few things from the resource files. Once again, when I figure out a way to make it downloadable, I will post it up here for your enjoyment and criticism. I can't get better until someone tells me what I'm doing wrong.
As far as lessons go, we learned about the four types of game-players: Hearts - or Socializers; Spades - or Explorers; Diamonds - or Collectors; and finally Clubs - or Killers. We also went over demographic analysis and what needs to go into a game to be appealing to wider audiences.
And that's all for this week. Who knows what's in store for next week, I know I'm looking forward to it.
-Setzer out
posted by Setzer Valorin at 3:19 PM
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