CS467 Capstone Project

This week our team has been doing a lot of research on how we should/can implement the graphics library for Space Invaders. We chose SDL and none of us have actually built a GUI in C, we all decided that we would learn as much as we can about properly implementing it then get back together on the weekend to see what can be divided into smaller subtasks.

Personally, this project so far has seemed more difficult because its hard to divide up the tasks effectively. I do think that our lack of experience is the major contributor to this, I’m sure if we did we’d be able to compartmentalize things easier. That lack of experience also leads to many more things changing down the road.

Even though I feel that way, I also feel comfortable with getting SDL integrated for our project. In my head, it looks like we just need to initialize SDL and plug it in to the input/output ports that are defined for the 8080. I do forsee having to refactor some of our existing code for it to work properly but it shouldn’t be too difficult to troubleshoot since we have a way of seeing the memory state of our code as it executes. In summary, this week was a week where we worked on bugs/debugging and refactored the existing code before we move into the final stretch of the project.

This far into the project I can see that we’ve made a lot of progress in terms of getting the skeleton well defined. At this point, we’ve created all of the necessary functions for our individual team members to branch out and start taking on individual tasks. My primary concerns so far have been setting up a lot of the helper functions that allow for us to do that. However, I definitely want to recognize my teammates as they have helped flesh out, test, implement static analysis into our Project.

I have used Github, but never in a professional environment and definitely not in a group of this size. I’m not super familiar with fixing merge conflicts because usually I’m the only one making changes in the repos/files to begin with. This has been a bit of a learning curve for me but I’ve been glad to pick it up. Our team has been consistently pulling the repos to be up to date and usually send an advance notice when they’re planning on pushing/merging their code. This gives us time to review and add comments that help us resolve/understand the changes and the code that was added. We haven’t really had any outstanding issues that don’t get resolved within a few days. The only thing of note, we decided was a low priority. The checks that we run don’t accept magic numbers so we have to add //NOLINT whenever using a number that hasn’t been defined as a variable elsewhere. Overall, we’re on track to complete the project and don’t foresee anything that will stall us.

Our primary form of communication has been Discord, this app has always been a blessing even back when I played video games with friends. I think its easy to get started with it because most people are familiar with Discord. While there are definitely other apps like Teams or Slack, everyone from our group had an account for Discord already created. It’s been easy to schedule meetings and have a Voice Chat which helps us come to a decision a lot quicker. This tool has been priceless so far; Github of course is the biggest start as it allows us to all work on the same codebase at the same time.

Hello Everyone,

This is my first ever post so I’ll start by introducing myself. My name is Austin, I’m 25 and raised in San Diego. I also went to SDSU for my Bachelor’s in Kinesiology, I graduated during the pandemic and that’s when I found my passion for Computer Science. It started with building my own Gaming PC, then a bunch of questions about why things work. Ultimately, I decided to go all in and pursue it and get a BS in Computer Science. I’m still not 100% sure about what type of job i’m looking to get out of it but right now I feel more interested in Cybersecurity, Backend Development, or Devops.

The project I chose and hoped to get was the Space Invaders Emulator. I chose this project because I remember loving the Assembly course, but I didn’t do as well as I would’ve liked in the Operating Systems course. I’m hoping that this will balance out and let me feel challenged but not overwhelmed.

My end goal for this course and project is to become more familiar with low level languages and reaffirm what I may have missed in my Operating System course the first time. Another goal is to see a project through to completion, completing a project start to finish with not as much guidance seems very intimidating and would be a big accomplishment in my opinion. Especially when you consider the fact that many of the people in this program work full time and take courses. This makes collaboration more difficult but reflects well on the students when they still find a way to make it work. Overall, my goal is to refine my skills, be as helpful as I can to my team members, and to return a complete project!