Project Management

Yesterday during Mark's class we discussed the difficulties the networking had at the first milestone talk and how to avoid such problems in the future. The talk became quite heated and there was some finger pointing going on but in the end there emerged a re-newed focus and enthusiasm.
It was generally agreed that there had been problems with the teamwork within the group, with members working without a clear understanding of what other members of the team were doing and how it related to their own work. In order to make better use of the time remaining it was proposed that a greater focus be placed on the management of the project.

This proposal revealed the core problem the networking group had; a lack of understanding about the true purpose of the class. I believe that this class is about Project Management and as such the focus should be on working efficiently as a group and creating documentation; rather than producing results. Naturally I assume that by placing greater emphasis on management the work produced will be of a higher quality and more in line with the goals of the project.

First Milestone: Complete!

With today's presentation we have achieved our first milestone. The primary goals set by our programming group were all achieved and all but one of secondary goals were also reached. Multi-player implementation was the only goal we did not manage to realise.
Now that we have a firm base on which to build we will begin working on gameplay and server communication issues. Pending tasks will include the following:

• Creating models for the different types of tanks
• Writing code for the different types of tanks
  
• Creating models for power-ups
• Writing code for the power-ups
• Creating models for bases
• Writing code for bases
• Writing code so a game can be won
  
• Setting up different game types
  
• Multi-player implementation
• Assisting the networkers with issues for communication between the server, website, server game, and client game
• Finalisation of menus and load screens
• Implementation of a HUD
• Creation of mission files for each planned level (e.g. textures, objects, spawn points, weather conditions)
  
• Writing any necessary code for each level (e.g. traction physics, terrain generation settings)

That's all I can think of for the moment, but I'm sure there's some stuff I'm forgetting and that new issues will arise in future.

A final note regarding the networkers presentation:
From what I remember of the goals they set, all were achieved (even if their presentation of their achievements was somewhat lacking).

Terrain, The First Milestone and Game Structure

Terrain
We have random terrain being generated at the start of a mission, although it only uses the simplest methods of the Terraformer since there appears to be no information on how to format the variable information when using multiple terraforming methods. This isn't really a problem though as there is very little noticable difference when the extra methods are used to terraform the terrain.
Placing objects on the map such as bases, foliage, rocks, etc. is my next task. Placing non-interactive objects should be easily assomplished using the shape replicator and using a suggestion from Jordan bases and other interactive objects will be placed at markers scattered around the map.

The First Milestone
The generation of random terrain at mission start has been my primary goal for the first milestone. Since this has been achieved I can focus on attempting to place objects on the and to texture the terrain appropriately. I will approach the remaining tasks for the random generation of maps by firstly dealing with texturing the terrain, then placing static shapes, and finally placing interactive shapes.

Game Structure
We've decided that levels will be run on the server and at mission start a new terrain with objects will be created. This means that several copies of Torque will have to run on the server as the multiplayer host for each level we are running. These copies should be suitably customised for there purpose so as to not waste resources on the server.