Well it’s back to group work again, and this time we’ve got two trimesters to create a 3D game/game-engine. Having two terms will give us the chance to really take our time in the early stages and ensure that our actual software design phase works. We have already agreed that unlike previous projects we aren’t going to rush in and start hacking away at code rather we are going to design our solution before we start to implement it. Our team consists of:
Me( Keith Grant)
It’s still early days (we only started this module yesterday) but we have already made a number of important decisions. We have agreed that Kieran should be project manager, Neil’s going to work on the graphics, Anthony will work on the the UI and I will work on the basic engine design.
We have also decided that instead of what we suspect the majority of students have done over the years, we are going to design an engine aimed at making Real-Time Strategy(RTS) games. We all agreed that this would provide us with a new set of challenges that we hadn’t really faced before, and would allow us to do some interesting work with AI.
The first thing we have to do though is create a 5 page project plan for submission next Friday. There is still some confusion over what exactly has to be provided within this plan, but as far as I can tell it is to be a basic outline of our goals over the next few months. It should include a rough guide to the major deadlines and milestones within the project. I think it will also include information on which third-party library’s we want to use along with a good justification for each one. Obviously we are supposed to be programmers and so we should be creating as much of the code as we can, but certain third-party library’s such as the BASS audio library (or similar) will be almost essential as it would be a whole project in itself to create our own versions from scratch.
On the whole I am looking forward to the project, and we have a good team. Every member is motivated and hard working and I feel that by the end of the academic year we will have produced something we can really be proud off.