Monday, October 28, 2013

Tetris Design


I was focusing on my own game project and missed the kick-off meeting on Sunday, which was bad!!!

Our team leader attended it, and they decided most of the design part, looks nice.
It looks like they have became a "design team", and rest of us are the implement team.

For the design part, I notice there is no task for creating 2D textures. I don't think the graphics by ED is enough for this project. Now I am communicating with them for this problems.

Also I want to emphasize that we got 3teams x 4 members = 12 person in this project, and we got 3 weeks. It's a large team + enough time for a small Tetris Game. In the real world, we won't have so many people and so many times for such small project. The communication cost for such big team might be higher, so I won't spent 12 people to do such project in real world. But its a good practice for the class.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Implementation Phase

   For the implementation phase, we are very lucky that what we should do is probably the easiest one, the Spin.
   The design team also has a pretty simple design, so this assignment turn out to be very easy.
   Our team leader assign the work to every body. What I should do is only create the project and finish the node class, which is quite a simple job.
    After that, our team write the unit test and finish the whole project almost without me, that's quit a simple task.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Subordinate Assignment

For this time, our team had a lot of discussion on Piazza.
We document the discussion to wiki, and it become a quite useful plan.
I think anyone can understand it well. It's quit a nice design, I think.

For me, this assignment is quite a good practice.

I'm leading a indie game team that almost all members are from internet that I never met before. We are in different time zone and different area. We use some instance message software for communication, but I found that is easy to lose our discussion record. Sometimes good idea just lost, because document the message history of the instance message software is painful.

Now I'm planning to use wiki, or other similar things, like a forum. People intended to post formally by using those.

A thing I hate about is that google site is blocked by Chinese government, my team members from China can't use that, I have to found a better way.

A thing in the global software development that easy to be underestimated is the communication cost. I always found myself spending a lot of time talking and writing to the team, and they sometimes still not understand me very well. Finally, I have to do those things myself.

I hope this issue will be solved, or at least be better, after I start using wiki and forum just like what we did in class.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Design the Bucket.

We begin designing our Bucket.
We found that actually the Bucket problem is a 2 dimensional problem.
So Adi draw the UML for the whole structure, which is very helpful.

We are using linked list at first, but I found that the user is using string for searching. we have to compare the String every time we add or remove the node.

I write down the process for some important method to ensure that our plan will work fine, and it seems also be very useful for the implement team. I actually found some problems by doing this.

The linked list might be to slow for the whole process. So we decided to change it to Tree. Adi did a great job that he draw the new UML very fast.
The program might be a little complex than using linked list, but I believe the speed will be much faster.

I'm still asking the team if we should use Binary Search Tree, I think we can use "strcmp" to decide the node goes left or right.  But I'm not that sure. I never tried to use string as the ID in the tree structure.

We still need to write down the schedule and fill the API page tonight. Good luck.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

4 Unit Test Done!

I start writing the unit test yesterday, and got a lot of trouble at first. I didn't know how to start.
Then, I studied my teammates' code and learnt a lot from their code, and was able to finished 1 unit test after that.
There wasn't much time left, so I wrote a post to ask for help, my teammates were really nice and gave me some good advices.
I found Adi's code is quite similar with mine, I learnt a lot from him. I figure out that I have to pass the full path of the directory, and that's why I always got a false. I finished 3 unit test very quickly after that.
The 4th unit test is a private method and returns void, that is too tightly coupled with the class internal state, and was almost impossible to write the unit test for it. So I have to change a different method.
Finally, I finished all unit tests, but I'm still not very sure about my work. I asked AJ to take a look for me.
Thanks everyone, next time I should start earlier.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Back to work, a little bit late.

   I'm managing a game project now later. All the team member in the project are from different country and time zone. As the leader of that project, I have to write a lot of plan, and I also have to tell everyone in the team what to do. That occupied my whole weekend. That spent much more time than I thought.
   Managing that project is quite similar with what we did now in this course. Actually, I got a lot of experience from that project.

   Now back to work!
   I start doing my part of unit test a little bit late. AJ and Omar have finished their job, I hope I wont bother them for being late.
   It's Tuesday midnight now, we need to finish the whole project tomorrow, and we may still need some time to put everything together, so I decide to stay up late today. I don't want bother my team mate.
   Also, I learnt a lot from AJ and Omar's code.
   Again, sorry about late, you guys did good jobs, my teammates.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

We have assigned our tasks

For team project this week, we should decide everyone's job and make a plan.
I think our team leader is doing his job quite nice, every thing on website looks nice and in order.

I'm kind of too busy this quarter, so I can't spent too much time focusing on my homework, our team leader makes it much easier for me. Thanks him again! 

Next week, we are going to start writing the code, good luck!