Well its finally here, CS467. The end of the line and where I start freaking out about changing careers. After spending 5 years as a mechanical engineer for the Navy and deciding it might not be what I want for the next 30, I decided to start this program with the hope of giving myself more options.
Now that I’m here and after reading all the options we have for our Capstone projects I find that I’m drawn to making a game. My top 3 choices are all drastically different styles of games:
My first choice is the firefighter simulator, not only is my house regularly engulfed in smoke due to forest fires but my dad is a firefighter so this topic has significance to me. The idea of using a strategy game to help spread awareness of the cost these fires take sounds not only like a good cause but also a fun game.
The second project that caught my eye was the multiplayer space shooter. I took CS372 as my first elective and enjoyed it thoroughly (in particular the traceroute project). Expanding on that class by creating simple (maybe not if time permits) multiplayer 2D space shooter sounds like fun way to build my portfolio.
And my third choice was the machine learning breakout game. I feel like machine learning is a bit of a buzz word people throw out there to sound smarter so why not learn a bit more about it by using it to make a game.
With all three of these options I see potential to make exciting projects id be proud to show friends/family/future employers. The biggest downside I’m seeing right now is that all three of these are different enough that using this first week to prepare for any of them doesn’t have a ton of overlap so I feel like I’m stuck until I see what I get assigned.
In the end, whatever project or team I get assigned to; I’m just excited to get started.
