Journal

Journal of Meetings:

  • 1/15/04, Meeting with Professor : Possible game designs are discussed with Prof. Pozefsky, the pros and cons of each are pointed out. Examples: blind Pac Man, blind Moonlander. Basic sense of the design schedule is made clearer. It is decided that Eden will make the web page.
  • 1/15/04, Post-meeting : After much deliberation, the design concept is chosen and elaborated on enough to present to Gary Bishop.
  • 1/29/04, Meeting with Gary Bishop : Game design concept is presented and approved. Prof. Bishop gives more information of fmod and other helpful utilities to aid in development.
  • 1/30/04, Meeting with Professor : Eden, Daniel, and Matt in attendance. Patrick is sick with the noravirus. The game design agreed upon with Gary Bishop is introduced to Prof. Pozefsky, and questions are raised about the nature of the levels: are they created by us or randomly generated?
  • 2/2/04, Meeting with Professor : Not much was accomplished over the weekend due to absences. Some more discussion, and then the post-meeting begins.
  • 2/2/04, Post-meeting : A first pass is made at the design document, and effort is made to nail down the various details, to get everyone on the same page. Various other games are observed to check for game elements we have not thought of. Most details are decided upon, it is decided that the document will be finished by Daniel. The initial division of responsibilities  goes as follows: Patrick, OpenGL code; Eden, sound code; Matt, voice code; Daniel, game logic.
  • 2/9/04, Meeting with Professor : More details hashed out: how to implement design of  levels, ignoring most keyboard inputs, illustration of how classes worked with one another.
  • 2/9/04, Post-meeting : Dan explained what he has already coded and how he has put the classes together. Eden explains the details of fmod. All discuss the fundamental working of the game levels; it is decided that there should be "blocks" that we design of coins and obstacles--patterns that can be called randomly in order to generate random levels. Project Plan completed. Each planned to continue working on aspects of the game as decided on 2/2.
  • 2/16/04, Meeting with Professor : More details hashed out. Architechture determined to be very simple. Resolved to work harder on writing the design on paper.
  • 2/16/04, Post-meeting : Everyone discussed and completed the Use Cases for the game.
  • 2/23/04, Meeting with Professor : Discussed methods of testing and decided to worry about that later. Went over deliverables and what was required, and then pushed back some of the due dates. Said one big problem was that it was hard to distinguish between objects that have the same sound, so we have to improve sound testing.
  • 2/16/04, Post-meeting : Discussed the deliverables some more, and divided up some of the documents that had to be written. Ran our sample program and discovered some bug with the sound, didn't know if that was a hardware problem or a code problem.
  • 3/1/04, Meeting with Professor : Discussed the deliverables again, checking off the ones that had been completed. Use cases, design documents, and architechture need to be edited. Brought up some potential problems caused by sound: couldn't determine if there was a graphics card problem, a processor problem, or a software problem (relating to speed of the game). Resolved to specify next month's goals in the Gantt chart to allow us to track our progress.
  • 3/1/04, Post-meeting : Finished the powerpoint slides for the presentation and roughly outlined and practiced our presentation for 3/2/04. Designed architechture document. Tested the playable alpha.
  • 3/15/04, Meeting with Professor : Went over the deliverable dates, checking off the ones that had been completed. Discussed depth buffer problem. Set new dates for deliverables such as user manual, requirements docs, and user testing.
  • 3/15/04, Post-meeting : Assigned tasks for the coming week. Patrick and Matt will work on sounds for the intro and menu screens, Eden will continue to work on improving sound testing, Matt will finish text to speech implementation, and Dan will continue to work on game play.
  • 3/22/04, Meeting with Professor : Discussed the need to update the use cases: exactly how to select menu items, define what a level means, sound feedback if at min/max speed already, high score for top 5 ("you are number n"), change "extra lives" to "lives remaining." Also discussed depth buffer problem again and developed contingency plan if we could not get that to work.
  • 3/22/04, Post-meeting : Discussed progress from the last week. Played and evaluated intro/menu music .wav file. Discussed potential solutions to the depth buffer problem. Discussed when to set dates for testing game with Gary's subjects.
  • 3/29/04, Meeting with Professor : Discussed the design documents. Discussed the change from OpenGL to Direct3d. Discussed the meeting with Gary and the Microsoft demo.
  • 3/29/04, Post-meeting : Discussed the Microsoft demo and the change from OpenGL to Direct3d. Made a new division of work. Patrick will now be mainly creating sounds for Eden to use. Dan started on a menu system.
  • 4/5/04, Testing with Adolph : Our first meeting with Adolph. We tested the gameplay mainly. First we explained the game to him. We started off by letting him and Diane Brauner hear all the sounds and told him what they were. Then we let him play it with the headphones. We gave him a level with just a few coins. After he played it two or three times, we made another level with more coins. After he had mastered that, we put in some obstacles too. Upon testing, we found some issues that needed to be fixed, such as putting in keyboard input delays to prevent switching two lanes at once and making sounds stop before they went behind the player.
  • 4/6/04, Meeting with Professor : Discussed the testing with Adolph - how he liked the game, how well he picked it up, what problems did he have. Discussed the test plan. Patrick will work on the tutorial. Tested the game on Prof. Pozefsky’s machine and found that it had the same sound issues as Dan’s. Narrowed the problem down to Creative Labs sound cards.
  • 4/6/04, Post-meeting : Worked out how the tutorial would be. Discussed the next test on Wed. next week.
  • 4/12/04, Meeting with Professor : Discussed the last few things missing from the game. We’re going to test on two kids on Wednesday.
  • 4/12/04, Post-meeting : Listened to some of the new sound clips. Discusses high scores and any remaining sound issues. Planned for our testing on Wednesday.
  • 4/14/04, Testing with Michael and Paul : Testing with Michael and Paul and showed off project to Gary Bishop and Diane Brauner. Everyone was impressed with our game. Found a few minor issues that needed to be fixed, such as clearer instructions. Michael and Paul both picked up the game very quickly and got far in the game.
  • 4/19/04, Meeting with Professor : Discussed the testing with Michael and Paul. Both of them were already gamers, so they picked up the game really quickly. Both did very well.
  • 4/19/04, Post-meeting : Figured out all the last little things we needed.
  • 4/23/04, Meeting with Professor : Demoed to the game to Prof. Pozefsky. Discussed any last minute issues on the final presentation and the project handoff.
  • 4/23/04, Post-meeting : Discussed design doc and final presentation. Patrick will do the last remaining sounds.