Corleone Diaries 31/10/2009

Ai colleghi ricopre.
Hello michael e ashley potete auitarmi. VPN lavovare, ma come posso ottenere il visual modello?

To my fellow Dons.
Hello michael and ashley can you help me.VPN working, but how do I get to the visual paradigm?

Team Leader Changes

It has been decided that for stage 3, Wayne will be team leader, and i will be team leader for stage 4. This is because I am the most experiened in C# and enjoy doing programing. I will also be able to help the other members in the team as I have a greater knowledge of the language and game programming, as i have been developing a prototype, which has helped me a lot in finding out how difficult certain features are to implement.

This has helped us to define some new features (which mike has already described) as we can discuss features we want in the game at college, then i can go and see how easy/hard they are to implement and, depending on the difficulty, add them to the list of features which will hopefully make our game unique.

New game features to be agreed

Start Game: When the game loads the player will be presented with a main menu. You will have the option of one or two player, Options, Instructions and exit. Under the options sub menu will have, sound effects on or off, music selection or music off, and game difficulty. The player will have to select one or two player to start the game.

Move Aliens: The aliens will move left and right and slowly descend at either side of the screen. Each alien is animated and will randomly drop bombs on the spaceship, one bomb at a time.

Move spaceship: The player can move the spaceship along the bottom of the screen, left and right only. The spaceship can fire a maximum of three bullets at a time unless they have collected a power up which allows them to fire more.

Kill Aliens: To kill the aliens the player must shoot them using the gun of the spaceship. The player can only fire a maximum of three bullets at a time upwards at the aliens. One bullet will kill one alien.

Win Game: The player must kill all the aliens by shooting them before they reach earth. The player has three lives to kill all the aliens unless they collect more lives from the power ups, once all the lives are gone the game is over.

Levels: The player will advance to the next level when you have killed all the aliens on that level. The speed of the alien decent will increase every level and the number of aliens will also increase every 3 levels. The game pauses at the end of the level, where the player presses a key to start the next level.

Music: Background music will play when the game loads and the main menu is showing. Music will also play while the game is being played unless it is turned off. The player can select different music from a list found in the options sub menu. The player can also chose to have music off.

Sound Effects: Sound effects will play when the spaceship fires, when the spaceship moves across the screen and when the aliens drop the bomb. The sound effects can be turned on or off before starting the game found in the options sub menu.

Score: Keeps a score to let the player know how well they are doing, aliens are worth 100 points, mother ships are worth 250 points.

High Score: The high score keeps track of the highest score achieved during the game. The highest score will be saved and displayed on the screen. For two player the highest score of each player will be recorded.

Instructions: The player will find a list of instructions on the main menu which will describe the purpose of the game and also how to play the game including controls.

Two players: The player can select one or two players, another player will be needed for two player. They will work together to kill the aliens but have separate scores. If one player loses all their lives they are out the game, if both players lose all their lives the game is over. Each player will have different controls on the same keyboard to move and fire.

Power ups: The player can collect 'power ups' which will be randomly dropped. These will be one of the following; extra lives, temporary extra bullets and a temporary shield. The player can collect a maximum three power ups at a time.

Second review

Last week we had our second review which unfortunately didn't go very well, we had a few minor changes to make to all three personal skills pages which hadn't shown up in design view. we also had a few missing links and spelling mistakes. All the changes have now been corrected and we passed the review with a merit. I have written a list of jobs for the team to complete over the break. Once they are complete we should have stages one and two complete.

We have also written and expanded the terms of reference features which Wayne has yet to read. (I will post new changes) We decided to expand our game, adding new more technical features to make it completely unique to anyone Else's. Because of the position we are in and how well the team functions we believe we will finish all the features on time and have a great finished game!

We are managing to stick to the project plan exactly! Let me know what you think of the new features please Wayne.

Jobs to be completed by next week please

Evaluation of stage one/two

Assigning team roles including choice of project lead and planning lead.
I was very happy with how the project was set up, I was glad to be working with Wayne and Ashley because I knew we would agree on how to go about tasks. We managed to write a list of characteristics a team leader should have and we decided I should be the team leader. We also decided Ashley should be Webmaster as he has the most experience and Wayne would record all the decisions made in the project.


How well tasks have been assigned to individual team members
It has been my responsibility to assign the tasks to each team member, I gave Ashley most of the major changes to our project website and Wayne some of the minor changes and I have shown him to how to do the basics such as changing an image. Wayne has been learning the basics of dream weaver and html code on Wednesday morning with Colin which he is really enjoying and has found very useful for this project. I think he feels more confident doing the tasks on his own now. However he still needs reminding to synchronising the site before and after working.


How well the project web site is helping or hindering the development of the game
I feel that having a project website that we can all access at the same time has really helped. It was very helpful having a template to work off as well as being about to syncronise so we all have the latest copy of every page.

Ash's Evaluation

Assigning team roles including choice of project lead and planning lead
When we had to choose our team leader and team roles at the beginning of the project, our was completed quickly and easily. We decided that mike should be the team leader, as he has experience in websites and programming (although this doesn't include C#), and he has better communication skills which will be useful in helping others and assigning them their jobs.

How well tasks have been assigned to individual team members

Mike has been doing a good job of assigning tasks to individual team members. If there is a new page to be created, or the page layout needs changing, the work will be spread between me and mike, as we have the most experience in this area. Wayne, as he has at the moment knows little HTML or how to use dreamweaver, has been able to edit the pages text, as this is easy to do. However, Wayne has been enjoying doing Web Development with Colin, so me and Mike are helping Wayne out when he wants to know how to edit a page, or explain to him what certain code does.

Although Wayne has not been able to do too much in the first two stages, he will be a big help in the next stage as we will be doing UML diagrams, and as he has already stated he enjoys creating UML diagrams and using Visual Paradigm, he has already been assigned this task.

How are you finding working in teams as opposed to individual work?
I am finding working in teams a lot better for this sort of project, as there are different skills needed that 1 person on there own can't do. For example, i am good at programming and web development, however, when it comes to design (such as web layout, or art and user interface for the game) I am not good at, which is something that can be done by another member of the team who is good at it.

Corleone Diaries 13/10/2009

Last week my team Corleone's and I, had our project assessment passed after correcting the minor defects that had been found and then having it scrutinised and given the all clear by luke our SQA.
From my own point of view I think we have a fantastic team with us all contributing greatly to the project in our own ways. I myself am learning so much from my two team members as my base knowledge of coding is nowhere near as good as Ashley or Michaels, but both of these persons are teaching me a great deal about coding, using web pages and html documents, all of which will really be of use to me in my job as an I.T. Co-Ordinator as I would like to become more of a technician. At this point I would also like to add that the morning course with colin, learning basic html coding over the last three weeks has improved tremendously my understanding of coding and I think in the future this should be incorporated in the first year at the beginning of the HNC/HND course as it really does help in understanding basic coding. This thought is also the thought of Tracey Johnson who is also on the same course and who like me had never done coding.
The idea of the project being done in teams has appealed to me and I believe it is working as their is good motivation and competion to see who can do the best, with good banter and teasing during assessment marking etc between all groups (real good atmosphere amongst us all, with us all being able to have agood laugh and joke as well as getting on with the serious side of things). In our team we have divided the tasks up amongst ourselves and given tasks to who we think best to do a particular task and this has worked really well, but as I become more competent at coding I will be looking to be given a coding task as this is something I want to learn to do well.

Corleone Diaries 04/10/2009 Project Assessment

On the 30th September we the Corleone team (Wayne, Ashley and Michael) had our first stage (User Requirements) assessed at a project meeting. The assessment team consisted of Derek Peacock (Overall Head), John (Software Assurance Manager) Luke (Software Quality Assurance) and members of other teams as peer assessors. The assessment itself consisted on grading our deliverable requirement user tasks from poor through to very good. From the resulting assesssment, if there were too many deliverable failures the team would have to go through a second project assessmnet meeting, if however there were only minor or cosmetic changes needed, then it would be passed on the team showing that the said changes had been made. The result of our project meeting was that we had our project passed pending us putting several minor cosmetic faults right and resubmitting the project, this we did as a team and the following day we resubmitted our project and had it passed, we are now moving on to stage 2.

Looking back and reflecting on the Project Assessment Meeting, which I thought was really good, as it gave positive and constructive feedback in what I also felt would be the scenario in a proper games producing company. It also made me think on how we could cut down on the amount of minor and cosmetic errors we had made (could have been major) and I believe in future before a Project Assessment, we should as a team go through each task systematically with a critical but constructive eye, with the two non task persons quizzing and checking the person who has done a particular task and his work. This I believe would cut dramatically the amount of minor errors and pick up any major errors, all of which cost time and money in a real situation further down the line.