Milestone 2 - 18/11/08

Exactly what milestone 2 is and when it will take place have yet to be finalised. However it is known that the final presentation at the end of the semester is to be Milestone 3 and that a rough plan exists to use the two weeks before Milestone 3 as preparation time for the presentation. As such Milestone 2 should be expected sometime around the Eighteenth of November, 7 weeks into second term (assuming the presentation will take place on the Ninth of December in the second last week of semester; second last because the last week is usually reserved for catch up).
28 hours of class time minus 8 hours for planning, discussion, and other miscellaneous tasks leaves little time to achieve our goals. Before the term break the programming team assigned prioritised tasks, with estimated work time, to each member. Below is the working task list:

Jordan

1. Implement multiplayer - 1 hour
   
2. Light Tank Model - 6 hours
   
3. Light Tank Code - 3 hours

• Total: 10 hours

Brett

1. Base Code 3 hours
2. Power-up Code 6 hours
3. Power-up Model 3 hours
4. Upgrade Power-up Models 12 hours
5. Refine Power-up System 12 hours

• Total: 36 hours

Dhiren

1. Implement Multilayer 1 hour
2. HUD Graphics 6 hours
3. HUD code 6 hours

• Total: 13 hours

Matt

1. Base spawning code 12 hours
2. Scoring 12 hours

• Total: 24 hours

As seen above the time for assigned work is not completely balanced, however it is important to note that the estimations for the time required for most tasks was made optimistically and it there was an unspoken agreement to not place too much on the schedules of all members so as to allow those members to be able to deal with unexpected issues that may arise. Already since this plan was created a previously overlooked task has arisen; this task being the loading and saving of player data from an external database. Alternately it is notable that some of the above tasks are complete or nearing completion.

At the commencement of the new term it would be advisable to have a meeting involving the entire class in order to restate our goals, refine the tasks required to reach them, and give members a better understanding of what others are doing and how that may relate to their own work.

Milestone One Slides

Milestone One Presentation

Milestone One Presentation

Well we reached Milestone One, so a great big pat on the back for all those involved!

MiniTanks was well received and the team would like to thank those who have already provided very constructive feedback and welcome any form of input (however large or small) that people may have.

Now for an update on the all important!

Have spent the better part of Tuesday afternoon wrestling with a Slideshow hosting website. I am 80% sure that it is working now so should have the PowerPoint from the presentation up and running shortly for you viewing pleasure.

Tanks are coming along nicely, the light tank is now ready for export and most of the scripting is finished.
This brings us to a grand total of 3 tanks -and yes I still count my floating box as a tank. From what I have seen so far the Light will be a much easier beast to tame than the Heavy; those animated tracks are an absolute nightmare that make elm street looks like sesame street!


All going well (but when does that happen?) we will have a rather sizable chunk taken out of Milestone Two by the end of next week.


-J

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.

cs 1.6 under vmware

Cluster Information

Just a quick link to information on how the cluster operates, the procedures to plan it and the hardware required. I'm sure this info will be helpful to everyone including the programmers who might wanna get a bit familiarized on how it works. This will also help the guys doing the documentation aswell as the rest who are trying to get the cluster to work now physically as virtually it seems impossible.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc805802.aspx

mongoose + vmware + games =

as you guys might have heard, the network team had problems in getting the game server running because it woundnt work with out some sort of 3d Acceleration.

but dont worry, i have manage to run CS 1.6 in vmware and it works really well, and its playable and i managed to make in to a dedicated server and it works well

so after that i thought i would test a slightly better game
so tried Q3A but wasn't successful in getting the single player to work, so i tried setting it to be a dedicated server, and it works.

ill chat Calvin and Mark about it later on this week

cheerz