Blog 18 Evaluation

Overall myself and Scott are convinced that this design and prototype stage has been reasonably well for us. The project has come along nicely and we have both learned a lot of things and looked into a range of different areas that we hadn't before. Personally I delved into areas of C# that I hadn't before and implemented things for the first time across any programming language. I'll go through a few points that I feel are worse going through with regards to the progression and outcome of our project.

The first thing that came up was our limitations with the development platform. We could only realistically choose XNA C# for the project, but having done just the one project in it beforehand, we knew we would run into a lot of challenges which would be hard to gauge. Though overall I think we were able to move past most of these within reasonable time.

Our decision to go with a mini game style approach to the game instead of a single stand alone game based on an event of the Highland games had its ups and downs. It was good that it meant we could think about the design of more than just one game, and since we were in a group of two it meant we could have a good chunk more to write about and think about for our design document. We were able to come up with five ranging mini games for the Highland games theme that would engage different aspects of a player. The one real problem that came from deciding to do it with a mini game style, was that a key feature of collection of mini games is a menu system that allows the user to go between the different games, and in our case we wanted them to be able to look up the controls and high scores without having to be in the respective game to see it. I quickly learned that a lot of work needed to go into setting up a menu system properly and fully as to not cause any problems later on down the line. Effectively what this has meant is that a lot of time has been spent making a good deal of code that there isn't a lot to show for in the screen and video caps. I think there is actually more code in this prototype than there was in the previous project I made in C# but not as much happens when the project is run. It's not something worth getting to hung up on hopefully since it means the foundation is set to put the mini games on later on.

Something that has been a problem in previous projects is unreliable team members or poor communication, but since we have the benefit of living together, we didn't run into any of these prior problems in other groups and were able to work well together often. A smaller issue I would note on is our poor art skills for the graphics used in the game, but this is something I've mentioned in previous blogs and it would be something we come back to and improve later down the line.

In conclusion it has been a worthwhile project that we have both been able to take away something from and feel the output will reflect that. With a good framework laid down, this project has a positive future once we move it forward from this design stage.

Blog 17

Just really using this as a checklist as we package everything up for submission. The design and technical documents are completed, as well as the project plan which includes the two gantt charts for the proposed and actual progress of the tasks. The project plan also contains the statement of risks for the project. Bar the evaluation entry which is shortly to follow, the blog entries have been completed to what we hope is an acceptable degree. We will link to these blogs as well as put them onto pdf format as well. The screen-caps and the game-play video are finished as well and just need put on the disk with everything.

Blog 16

Just a short entry to say that the video cap has been taken which to be honest is a little bit lacking since it really only goes through the menu which shows the same as the screen shots, thought the title screen music can be heard as well. Not much else to really say at this point. We'll be packaging up the project in a day or two and will do an evaluation blog to sum everything up.

Blog 15

The screen caps have been taken and saved. They pretty much just go through the different pages of the menu and shows the information that is available on each of them, as well as showing the different lists and selections that can be made in the game for choosing events. Just need to take the video cap and then package everything up for handing in on CD.  Will be getting about that shortly.

Blog 14

Doing a second round of testing with Scott to make sure it's working properly before we start taking the screen and video caps of the prototype project. We weren't able to find any program breaking problems when we tested it. Only things to really note would be some changes we would make to the page layout of a couple of the screens, namely the control page which is a bit cluttered. Though we will fix that at a later date when we move past the prototype stage. The menu system is working well and executes a gameplay screen, though it doesn't currently have a game to execute but that will be added when we push forward from the prototype stage. The foundation seems to be set for the mini games to be put on.

Scott will start taking some of the screen caps and video caps after I just tidy up some of the code.

Blog 13

Really just spending a lot of time effectively debugging the code and have been making progress fixing some of the problems I mentioned beforehand. The issue with going back to previous states has been rectified and had to do with me trying to create the state again when I tried to move back to it when I had to be popping the current game state off the stack which returned me to the desired screen state. The graphics problem got fixed as well and was pretty much just down to an error with some of the coordinates I had set them in and put some of the initializing code in the wrong game state classes. Will do a second round of tests with Scott to make sure everything is working properly before moving on.

Blog 12

We're both just starting to test the menu code and see what the main problems are. The issue with it being a bit strange regarding going back to previous states is still there, and there are a couple of issues with the background graphics as well not being aligned properly that need fixed. The title music seems to be working after a silly error had me stuck for a couple of hours. I'll need to go back and look from the beginning to see if I can figure out why I'm getting some of these errors and start trying to fix them.

Other than that Scott finalized the design document, though I don't think there was to many major changes required at this stage.