thehalo41-blog - Tumblr blog

[thehalo41-blog]

My final thoughts for my Master’s at Full Sail University

[thehalo41-blog]

Mobile Game Testing

This class I finalized a number of issues that I had with my game build, however, most of the focus was on starting the curriculum portion of my capstone.  My capstone was broken into two parts.  The first part was creating the game demo, and understanding all the pieces that needed to go into a game.  The second part was to begin designing the curriculum for the game using what I learned in creating the demo while at Full Sail.  This section involved performing a lot of screencasts, and working at making sure that code that would be given to students would be modular in nature to allow for implementing changes and new features for future classes.  This was due to the students only using the demo as a springboard for their game, and not as a copy.  My classes started while this class was still underway.  In my class, we have had a number of discussions about project scope, realism about development goals for a one-member team vs. AAA title companies, man-hours, GRATIS framework, development goals with User Stories, and developing their GDD.  The students that I have are super excited with their ideas, and are really working at getting granular with their development goals.  I have focused on pre-empting them with roadblocks that I have already experienced, so that they can ensure that they are well-detailed, don’t code themselves into corners, and are not over-scoping.  We are getting ready to start the design phase with some paper testing, and project management with Trello.  I am preparing for entering into the last class of my Master’s where I can really identify pitfalls in myself on this journey, so that I can help identify for others my issues and how to avoid them.

[thehalo41-blog]

Mobile Game Development II

    This month was a very aggravating month.  We are days away from closing on a house, and I was getting pushed in a lot of directions.  This month however, was very productive.  I got to witness my game turn into more than just an idea.  I created dialog windows, a HUD, designed a boss, and set up to save the game.  The demo slice is for the most part complete.  There are of course some bugs, and I am realizing that there may always be some issues with any game.  I have done a number of beta tests with previous players to identify as much of these issues as I can before heading into next month.  This month marks the end of my development of the game, and the start of my development of the entire curriculum revolving around the demo.  I started recording installation videos.  The key that I find that will help me to be successful in the next month is to make sure that I can keep my videos focused on features, so that they are more modular.  

[thehalo41-blog]

Mobile Game Development 1

     This was a very busy month for me.  However, I was able to really do a lot since I am now on summer vacation.  The amount of work and planning is really important.  Some of my plans for development changed, and I had to make some alterations to how I wanted to program the game.  Also, I had to change my design in subtle ways which caused much of my code base to have to be changed.  One of the biggest factors that I noticed working on a mobile environment was having to limit using static classes that store any information.  It came as a surprise that the JVM recycles and does not completely close causing the game to load without any assets loaded statically.  I had to rewrite large sections of my code base to have an asset manager that had to be passed around instead of accessed statically.  It was good practice to do it, and I am happy that I decided to make the plunge.  However, was scary that I was not going to get stuff set back up correctly when I finished.  Using Trello is really nice for seeing where I am in the process and what needs to be implemented in the near future.  However, Trello would be useless if proper planning and project breakdown was not done.  There were a number of things that I found to be very useful and good experiences during this month.  Implementing multiple windows, dialog, observer patterns, and refactoring.  All of these were hurdles that I had to work hard to overcome.  The results are not perfect, but they will get there.  Looking forward to next month’s development.

[thehalo41-blog]

SBG - Take 2

     There are a number of things that I liked much better taking this course again.  The first being that I worked much harder at having better communication.  I had the opportunity to redo my work which allowed me to break up my milestone into much greater detail.  I was also able to set up Trello for managing my individual milestones and to better identify issues.  I was really happy to be able to do this as this was one of the ways that I was planning on implementing for better management of projects for my students.  I feel that Trello can be extremely useful if the kinks are worked out.  This can easily be done while I am using it in my process for the capstone.

     There are a couple of items that I feel were hard to swallow.  The shell builds are not really set up for developing in other environments than Unity as the timing is very fast.  Creating assets instead of purchasing also creates more difficulty has these have to be developed at the same time.  I wish I would have known what needed to be done for the shell builds prior to starting SBG as I should have been developing the assets long before.  I think that seeing an example of what a shell build should look like would also be helpful, as I spent a lot of my time going way deeper than needed for a shell build.  However, the second time around did give me more time to further work on my shell builds to help better prepare me for doing the milestones.

     All of the courses that I have taken so far have been fast paced.  to me that is not an issue, however, this month and last month seemed to be the time when anything that could go wrong did go wrong.  Time management is essential in SBG, and poor planning in SBG can set you up for failure in the development months of your capstone.  I am glad that I was able to repeat SBG to fix my deficiencies, but at the same time feel that I could have avoided having to repeat if I would have taken a couple months off to develop my assets, and to finish up the last couple of months teaching at the high school.  Focusing on both was very difficult for me.

[thehalo41-blog]

SBG Mastery Journal

This month was a crazy month.  I was unaware that I had to do a shell build as I finished the previous course with the understanding that I would be working on the assets in preparation for my development.  That has changed.  I rushed to get some assets done to be able to start building the shell of the game.  Mainly, I was focused on not just the shell, but getting a good build to see how an Entity Component system would work.  I finished the first build with one that I implemented, however, it was buggy and prevented me from being able to get to the data that I needed to for further developments.  I almost completely rebuilt the game based on some suggestions from my professor, and to better incorporate the Entity Component System.  The second build is built much better, but I have to fix the animation.  I was however, able to implement a lot of code features that I have never had the opportunity to do, but have researching.  I was able to build an Asset Manager, customer classes for helping to create the entities, a box2d body generator that I can use for any enemy creation.  A menu  system that uses Json skins.  I incorporated software that I was not wholly used to in order to create the assets which has given me a much better understanding of the software.  When I had to refactor my code to incorporate the Ashley ECS, I was able to see issues that I did when I first coded it, and was able to improve on the coding.  I learned how to create Json files and read from them to make it faster to make changes to an entity design.  I also was able to set up a Map factory for creating my maps, and Map Manager for loading new maps.  This will make it much easier to incorporate the maps that I create as I can just add data to map layers to change maps.  I still have a lot to do, but I am actually getting excited as I can start to see this game getting fleshed out.  I have never made a full-blown game before.

     I do still have some problems.  The documentation that we are supposed to write is difficult to understand what should be written as I have never seen examples.  It would be good to see examples from full blown games that could be used to identify just how much detail should be put into these documents.  I also was having a hard time trying to input touch controls using the Ashley ECS framework, but was able to get simple touch to work.

     I am exciting for this next month as my high school is winding down, and I will have more time for working on this game.  Hopefully, I should be able to make much faster progress.  All of the research and late nights studying is starting to pay off.

[thehalo41-blog]

MBG Mastery Journal Entry

     There are a lot of things that I have learned in this course that applies to game development.  The biggest for me is planning everything needed in the development process.  This does not just include doing the code.  There is a lot of research involved to ensure that your game is designed to want to be played by others.  There needs to be a plan set in place for marketing and revenue generation.  When there is a development team then the complexity increases dramatically as you will have to have ensure that everyone is on the same page and meeting their development deadlines.  If there are investors involved then communicating with them and ensuring they are happy with the process increases the partnership, but decreases the time that coding is being done.  My capstone has a lot of moving parts, but it is primarily just me looking at my code.  However, the amount of planning is astounding as I have to make sure that I am meeting project deadlines, refactoring code, doing screencasts, writing lesson plans, and polishing.  Coding even for my project is not all just coding, there are many more details that are involved that need to be considered and planned into the schedule.  The old adage that if you fail to plan you plan to fail could fit better for the game development community.  None of these small pieces can be left to chance.  The other tidbit that I learned that I feel fits very well is that contingencies need to be properly planned.  It is not helpful or healthy to over-scope your project, or plan to be able to produce a ridiculous amount of code in a short time.  If there are hiccups then your schedule is completely thrown out the window.  It would be better to promise a realistic goal then let someone who is not a software engineer make empty promises and try to have development done meeting a ridiculous deadline.

     This course was useful to me as I was able to get a real gameplay for my capstone project, and do my green light presentation.  This was helpful because I could really start planning out my project from start to finish doing a bird’s eye view which I felt was really helpful for me to grasp all of the nuances in the capstone.  

[thehalo41-blog]

Usability Engineering

This class went by really fast.  I didn’t spend much time coding in this class, as it was more research based on designing for the user.  It was a very interesting class.  I learned a lot from the class, and the coding program at the end of the class really helped to show how much I have improved in coding since I started this Master’s program.  I felt that I was fairly effective on my time management, however, I would have liked to have access to all of the week’s assignments as I could have planned my time better, and started the programming project earlier.  Having only a week to implement new sets of controls into an existing game is quick if the game was not built in a deadline.  I had to rewrite a lot of code to be able to plug in components like different controls into my game that I used.  That is not to say that it was bad.  It really highlighted how I had to throw out some code and restructured my code base to be able to take the component.  I really liked that aspect.  I think that the project should have been opened at the start of the course, and due at the end.  I did not use Unity for most of my projects, and as I have done the research on doing different aspects of things in Unity like the camera feature that is really just a few lines of code, doing the same thing for Android Studio with LibGdx results in several large monolithic classes that would have taken a long time to set up and make sure that they are working properly.  I like that I am forcing myself to stay in Java as much as possible, but some of these project turnarounds are not feasible in a week turn around.

     Regardless, I have learned a lot from this class, and had a great meeting with my advisors for my capstone project.  I am really excited where my capstone project is heading and how helpful it will be to future programmers at Licking Heights.

[thehalo41-blog]

Mastery Journal - AGE

How well did you utilize your time in this course?

What have you learned / achieved in this course?

How does the material you learned in this course relate to your thesis / Capstone Project? **

What steps have you taken in your capstone adviser process this month, and what was the outcome of that interaction? **

Are you ready to move on to the next phase of the approval process? **

This class came at a hectic time in the school year for me, however, I feel that for the most part I used my time wisely.  Week 3 was not planned so well, as I just started the first week of the second semester and I had a lot of school related engagements that I had to be there for.

     I have learned a lot about the different software developments cycles.  I have completed my curriculum and GDD for my capstone project.  Probably, the best thing that I learned is how much I have grown when porting a previously done project.  I chose to do the pather project over.  This time I used LibGdx.  I don’t think that it was just using LibGdx, but I have a much stronger understanding of what I had to do, and how to code it.  I also coded it in a different order so that I could always work from a place of success.

     The material that I learned in this course does have application in my capstone as I can use it to ensure that students are not trying to implement all of the features that they can at the start.  Instead, I will be teaching my students to work from the least viable product and to rapid prototype.  Once they have a decently working framework then they can add features later on.  I got this idea from the Agile Software development framework which just makes a lot of sense to me.

     For my capstone advisor process, I had to develop a curriculum breaking up the demo into units that students would create various parts of their game using my demo as a model.  It was a pretty lengthy document that took a long time to plan out the individual steps for scaffolding and progression.  I am sure that it will need some tweaks, but I am happy that I accomplished that this month.  I also finished the GDD for my game, which was a little difficult as I am not designing a game from scratch, or designing a full game.  I am porting a game to the mobile environment, and only doing a small sliver.  I am doing this because I am developing everything from scratch to include sound effects, all images, and even building the tile sets from scratch.  I am creating the game engine from scratch as well.  The idea is that the students will get a feel for what goes into creating a game, and can appreciate the process needed to design a game to completion.  Students will also have a much better appreciation of using a game engine like Unity or using remade assets.

     I need my curriculum to be in the correct order and everything defined for the deliverables because the will determine how and in what order I am coding different aspects of the demo game as students will use the screencasts as examples that they can reference.  I believe I will still need some tweaking from my professors.

[thehalo41-blog]

My Full Sail Online Profile

It might not be much, but I love being a student.

https://online.fullsail.edu/class_sections/30927/people/141956

[thehalo41-blog]

Here is my Elevator Pitch for an advanced computer Programming Curriculum at Licking Heights High School that I am doing for my Capstone Project at Full Sail University.  

[thehalo41-blog]

Mastery Journal-GDF Take 2

How well did you utilize your time in this course?

What have you learned / achieved in this course?How does the material you learned in this course relate to your thesis / Capstone Project?What steps have you taken in your capstone adviser process this month, and what was the outcome of that interaction?Are you ready to move on to the next phase of the approval process?

Things went much more smoothly things time around.  There were a number of things that helped me to meet my demands.  The course felt longer because of the Thanksgiving break which allowed me to implement all of the technology into the first game using Unity.  This freed me up to focus on creating a demo for my capstone that was not using a premade game engine.  This meant that I had more control, but it was a lot more work.  The Thanksgiving break allowed me to focus for three days and get almost all of my first game BattleCars created.  My kids feel that the game is the most fun game that they have played to date that I have made.  I am finding that it was also much easier creating the two games as I have went through the process, and better understood where my capabilities lie.  

     I have mixed feelings about using Unity.  For one, my goal in this Master’s program is to create games using only Java as that is what my school wants me to teach the students.  This caused me to love and hate Unity.  I liked that I could get something up and running so fast, and it was pretty intuitive trying to create what I wanted.  I have never used C#, but I felt that the code was very similar to Java, and did not take that much work adapting to it, at least in the amount that I used it.  There were a number of things like Photon Network that did help me to create a multiplayer set up.  The GPS, accelerometer, and vibration were also very easy to access and get working in Unity.  What I did not like was that I did not feel like I was accomplishing as much as for my demo which admittedly was less than what I did in Unity.  The major difference is that Unity was an engine, and using LibGdx was just libraries.  Everything for my demo had to be coded by hand, but I felt that I could polish a lot more in LibGdx than with Unity.  Libgdx does have some cool features that does make it easier to use than coding completely from scratch using just Java.  I was able to set up a game state manager that I thought worked well for transitioning to different screens.  I was able to do player, npc, and weapon states that ran independent of each other.  My Zelda clone demo is the first time that I have ever done animations, and edited sprite sheets.  I was pretty happy with the results, and am excited for doing it more.  

     This month was a pretty productive month in terms of my capstone.  I had a powwow with both of my potential advisors, and got a go ahead on one of my two game ideas.  They picked for me to do a Zelda clone.  My main advisor suggested that my capstone be focused for creating a curriculum around the game that I create.  I really like the idea, because that was my original intention when I signed up for the course.  I have some additional requirements that I still need to do, namely a UI mapping, and a goal, standards, and outcome form for what I want the kids to attempt and produce for each piece of the curriculum.  I still have a lot of work to do, but have a specific goal to shoot for in my capstone that I can build towards.  I submitted my GRATIS framework which was accepted, but still have to turn in those other pieces, before I can get the final approval.  My capstone is not just creating a game, but creating a game that can teach future generations all the necessary components in game design and creation through it, and the curriculum that would surround it.

[thehalo41-blog]

Mastery Journal Entry -GDF

How well did you utilize your time in this course?

What have you learned / achieved in this course?How does the material you learned in this course relate to your thesis / Capstone Project?What steps have you taken in your capstone adviser process this month, and what was the outcome of that interaction?Are you ready to move on to the next phase of the approval process?

I have to say that this class was a fun class.  I really liked the idea of being able to produce a game.  I am a full time teacher, and this month was an extremely busy month for me.  I felt that I utilized my time alright, but it was split between my high school classes where I teach as well.  I would have liked to be more successful with my first game, as it was my first try at creating a 3d environment using bullet physics.  However, since I couldn’t find much documentation not written in Java, I spent most of my time just trying to get things set up to work.  I was unable to develop any of the hardware components that I wanted to do in that game.  This left me with having to implement all of the components in my second game.  It seems to be that every time I have a big project Android Studio fails me, and crashes.  This time for the last game, I had to completely rebuild my project over again, as it would not longer work after I did the test integration.  the game would just not compile with no sensical dexm errors.  After I got it working again, I was able to implement the rest of my pieces, but had a hard time using the libgdx framework to get the contact listener to work how I wanted it to.  I ended up having to code around it, and manually check for positions.  In the end, I got different maps to load when a player was at a warp location and the device was rotated in real space.  I would have liked to get the Google Play Services to work to do the GPS and the multiplayer components, but when I loaded the library like the developer instructions mentioned they broke my code unless I also downloaded all of their sample codes.  Their GameUtils library just would not run as a library, and had to be removed.  I would like to implement them in the future, but as I have no more time to do it they will have to wait.  2 weeks for a game with 4 frameworks is not much time when most of the stuff that has to be implemented is the first that I have ever seen or work with.

     I have still learned a lot from this course.  Most of it revolves around better organization of code is key, and to rapidly prototype.  I have figured out how to use the accelerometer and compass for controls and would like to use them in my capstone project.  Box2d and libgdx is the framework that I want to use as well for my capstone project as I am growing more and more familiar with it.  I am strictly trying to stay in only Java development as these tools will help me get there.  I also implemented a Tiled map editor which I will definitely use as it sped up the time creating box2d elements for collision detection.

     I have contacted my potential project advisor, but I have still not gotten a go ahead.  I have waited over a month to get contacted back, and ended up writing a new two game ideas.  I did get feedback on that, but they want to see something using the components that I want to implement.  I believe that my second game shows a lot of this as it is using the map editor, libgdx, and box2d to implement the game.  

   I want a go ahead so I can start planning on which game to create.  I am fine with either one, but feel that I am needlessly spinning my wheels until I get a go ahead to submit.

[thehalo41-blog]

New Gaming Review Blog

Here is a link to my Gaming Review blog where I have reviewed 12 mobile games, and identify their playability and innovative design if they have one.

https://thehalo41gamer.tumblr.com

[thehalo41-blog]

Reflection on Approaches to Game Design

I have learned a lot from this course in the past month.  I have noticed that my programming has improved a lot since my Computer Science for Engineers Course.  However, this course did not focus on the programming aspects other than focusing on the project that is being created.  

     There was a large drive on being innovative, while considering all the different aspects involved in game design.  This means that the goal was not just being able to program a game, but why it would be programmed in that way.  I really liked this concept, and thought that it really helped me to open my eyes to what needs to happen to creating a good game design.

     This course was very fast-paced like other courses that I have taken so far.  I think that the majority of it is the sheer amount of material that one has to read and watch every week  felt like too much at times.  Week three had like 10 chapters out of just one book, and that was not all that was required to go through the for the week.

     I will be using most of what I have learned this past month in my future work.    Even if I had any hang ups with the material amount, the material was still very viable for the subject matter.  I will still be using that text to help better design my games in the future.  

     There are also some resources like Twinery that I have introduced to my school where I teach as that is a great resource for getting kids to write while introducing them to very basic computer programming.  The English teachers that I have should Twinery to really like the idea, and wanted to incorporate it into their classes.

[thehalo41-blog]

Reflection of Computer Science for Engineers

     There are a lot of things going on about this course.  The best description that I could give for this course for me was like drinking from a firing hose.  

     I have a background in Mathematics, and very little in programming.  I was originally under the impression that the ramping up of content would not have been so fast.  I personally feel, that I had a hard time with working with Android as I didn’t know what methods, calls, and functions work or don’t.  I spent the majority of my time fiddling with and researching how to do something in Android when it was not working how I wanted it to.  In terms of time management, I felt that I rocked it as I spent almost all of my free time on research and programming.  The rest was spent on prepping for the next day’s classes that I teach.  

     In terms of material learned, there would be no comparison with trying to tackle this on my own as the pacing would not be as extreme and the learning would be much slower.  The deadlines really did help me to focus on learning as much as I can as fast as I can.  This has had a direct result on the computer programming classes that I teach in high school as I can provide lessons learned, and can give a much more thorough explanation of concepts as the students are learning them. 

     I can use a lot of the information that I have learned in this class to improve my programming skills as I progress forward.  I find that when I am writing a new program, I am referring back to previous projects to study what I did and how it worked.  I also found myself on the last project, using methods like toast to track the data and how it flowed in my program this way I was able to better debug my program.

    For the capstone project, I will definitely be using everything that I have learned up to this point.  I have a lot of ideas, but I lack the knowledge on how to implement them.  I learned from the treasure hunter project how to parse files and how to do simple collision detection.  I learned what not to do in the A*Star Father project as I had a lot of issues.  However, that project helped me fix my tictactoe project and I was able to understand and grasp the minimax function and how to create different child surface views.  The type of game that I want to create for my captstone project is a 2d side scrolling action adventure.  I know that I will be using a lot of the pieces that I have learned up to this point and will only keep adding to my toolbox as I progress.     

[thehalo41-blog]

Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.

Earl Nightingale

I really like this quote, because it helps me to remember that I always need to be pushing forward since I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Nightingale, E. (n.d.). Values.com. Retrieved August 27, 2017, from https://www.values.com/inspirational-quotes/6559-never-give-up-on-a-dream-just-because-of-the