Author: James Balden

I think the biggest success I had during the capstone was the creation of our grid system. This was a crucial part of the project that allowed the user to create a board that would then become their game board. The grid went through several iterations, the initial implementation proved to be difficult to work with when accessing and changing the data of the tiles that made up the board. I struggled with trying to get the initial grid system to cooperate, and as I kept running into road blocks and problems it became apparent that remodeling the system would be more beneficial than continuing to try workarounds to get it to work. This situation helped me to focus on the importance of making sure the implemented system would be able to be expanded and scaled as the need for new features and functionality grew. The grid grew to be able to create an initial building area around a new board when it was created and allowing tiles to be added to the board. One of the most difficult things was learning to work with Instanced Static Meshes. The reason for using these over a normal static mesh actor is they decrease the amount of times the draw function has to go from the GPU to the CPU. When you have just a few actors it’s not that big of a deal but when you have hundreds it really helps with performance to have Instanced Static Meshes. I’m glad I kept on working with them though because I was able to learn different methods to manipulate their data. I could change their color, location and apply other data and effects to them. Working with them also helped me learn to stick with and solve problems. I learned that sometimes it is good to stop work on a problem and move to a different one to let your ideas reset and hopefully get a win elsewhere so you feel more motivated to finish your original problem.

For my capstone project we are building a game using Unreal Engine. The game we are building is a program that lets you build and play simple board games. I’ve dipped my toe into using unreal engine before but this is the first time I’m helping to build anything substantial. I like unreal engine because it allows a lot of freedom in how you can accomplish things. This can be both a boon and a bane. My team has been surprised at how sometimes a system or method of doing something common in game creation does not seem standardized. The lack of support for common systems leads to often having to implement a system that seemed like it should be easy to have canned in the engine already. The trade off though is that those systems are able to be more customized to your specific game than they would be if they were prepackaged. This also allows for developers to create tools and plugins that can be shared with the unreal community and used by teams that don’t want or necessarily need a completely customized system. I’m excited to continue using unreal engine and hope to be able to build more projects in it even after the capstone is over.

This is the first post in a blog I will be making about my adventures in creating a capstone project for OSU’s Computer Science Capstone Class. I’m excited because this is the last term before I graduate and I’ve been on the journey for awhile now. This is actually the second blog I’ve had to create for a computer science class. If you want a laugh, check out my old blog post from 2020 with my hot takes on artificial intelligence here.

My journey into the world of computer science has been a long and twisting one. My original degree is in history, and I was interested in doing work in museums. I got a job working at a science museum and got involved in running their makerspace. I rediscovered a love for tech and learning new technology that I hadn’t been in tune with since growing up. Looking at my options, and talking with my wife we decided maybe I should go back to school for computer science. I slowly made my way through a CS program at a state university. Eventually life made it important for me to find a program I could do online and that’s when I found the OSU post-bacc ecampus program. It was perfect and would cut time out of my projected graduation date. My program was taking longer than I liked because of the need to take GE classes that the state university would not accept from my original degree. I enrolled at OSU and have been going fulltime as a student since.

I mean, that’s the short version, there’s some other things that happened in there along the way ( I became a CS teacher at a secondary school, more on that later most likely). Anyway the main focus of this blog will be looking at the current part of my journey the Capstone Project.

At this point in the capstone class we’ve entered a survey with which projects we are interested in, and are now waiting to see what project and group we will be with for the term. I’m excited to get started and work on something bigger than past projects I’ve created. I’m going to try posting here weekly to keep you dear reader up to date on the goings on of this epic undertaking in software development. Stay tuned.