Project Managed

For Game Development Technique this week I managed a 22 person project to recreate "The Hive from the first resident evil film. To manage the team I split them into 5 groups and assigned a group leader for each group. In a meeting at the start of the project we then split The Hive into 5 main sections and then those sections were to be split up and distributed between the group members. We had several meetings over the week and a wiki was created so we could share ideas and resources. To get the final deliverable me and a few of the more hardcore members of the team spent a day in labs making sure everyone's levels worked and fit together.

I presented the final project to John Sear, course leader, this morning with the team looking on. It was a exciting moment because very few members of the team had seen the map all put together.

The project was a success and John seemed to have nothing but praise for the people who put the most work in.

In my time as project manager I learnt a huge amount. The first thing I found out is that lectures are right to not add their students on Facebook. It is fairly discouraging when you set a meeting for 9am and you see people on Facebook saying things like "I'm not going into uni on may day off at 9am!". I feel like I have also gained a grasp of who on the module will succeed and who will fail based on their attitude to work. While most people on the team pulled their weight and offered to help me in any way they could (including going to buy me lunch when I was hungry and busy working) others I had to constantly chase up and pester to get anything out of them at all.

While the week was hard work I do feel enriched by the activity and I am very proud of the team.

Here are some of my favourite parts of the level.

Week Two

Week two of the year has come and gone, but what have I gained from it?

In Introduction to 3D graphics programming we had a mini test on vectors to make sure we were up to date and then we programmed our own vector class. We tested this class a large amount because it is fundamental to our final task to make 3D model renderer.

Next week we will be doing the same only for a matrix class. I have been reading up on matrices and am fairly confident that I will be able to program this class with few problems.

For console development I have been revising my number systems (Hex, Octal, Binary), I have also been reading up on machine code and having a read of some.

Games Development Technique has featured highly in my week. This week we had a lecture about games engines and middleware. The most interesting bit for me was the story of Renderware.

The work we got set was a team exercise as a class. We would have to build a unreal level as a class. The choice of what we were making was up to us. After a sizable talk I ended up backing the idea of "The Hive" from the Resident Evil film. As the main backer of this idea I was make Project Manager for the class. 10% of the modules mark is on this project so it is a fairly scary concept that I am in charge of it. More info about that project can be found on its wiki.

I still have a lot of work to do for all modules so I better get cracking.