Category: CS461

1/3 of the Capstone Down…

This blog post marks the last assignment of CS461 for me, and it’s amazing how fast this term has gone by. It was only a few months ago that I had no grasp on what project I wanted to pursue, and I had to carefully consider the many options as I would be dedicating a full academic year to it. At the time, the pressure seemed tremendous, but sticking to my gut has made me excited for the upcoming terms.

I want to give so much credit to my teammates, as I’m immensely proud of the amount of work we’ve been able to accomplish in about 9 weeks. We went from a vague idea of an escape room game to committing fully to an intriguing concept with our own unique additions.

Given the limited amount of time we’ve all had, considering external responsibilities and other courses, we have put together a solid foundation for our game. The dozens of hours spent on research and building blueprint documents will pay off when the bulk of the work truly starts.

I want to congratulate Anthony, Mackenzie, and Skyler for being fantastic to work with and making it through this term. I wholeheartedly look forward to getting to see all of our work and perspectives combine into one amazing game.

…2/3 to Go!

Thinking about the upcoming terms has me thinking about how far I’ve come since starting at OSU. I transferred here in Winter of 2022, and I never could’ve imagined learning about all sorts of things. Although I programmed prior to OSU, I was nowhere near as proficient as I am now, and I never would’ve learned about the fundamentals.

CS271 (Computer Architecture and Assembly Language) is a course I still think about 2 years later. To me, there is such a deep impact of getting a glimpse into how technology works at the lowest level. While I primarily use Python now, I always find myself thinking about how it trickles down into something a machine can process. It blows my mind how a language so close to English is quickly turned into a program a machine that only understands 1s and 0s uses.

Moving from that to our project, it further puts things into perspective realizing that we’re able to create real-time simulations of so many things. Having played video games all of my life, learning CS has given me a better appreciation of the amount of thought and work that’s gone into making them a reality. Further than that, we’ve now reached a point where anyone is able to create their own games with software that doesn’t hold them back.

Open-source has paved the way for people to pursue their ideas and fully own them. While there are obvious benefits to paid products, the most important thing is that people have choices. Our team choosing to use tools like Godot and Blender means that we won’t ever have to struggle with licensing or payments. We simply own whatever we make, end of story. I love that the open-source community enables others to pursue their own ideas, and I can’t wait to give back one day by contributing myself.

As for now, though, I will focus on finishing out strong. There are 2/3 left in the capstone project, and I have six courses aside from that. I’m sad to say that I anticipate it will go by faster than I can blink. Writing this now will feel distant before I know it, but that will be because of how much I’m enjoying everything. I plan to follow this advice myself, but take a step back every once in awhile and appreciate where you are now. The future is always one step away.

Conclusion

I’m happy to be done with the Fall term, sad to know that this is my last Fall term, and excited to start Winter. Mixed emotions is definitely the best description I have right now, but I am optimistic that my last two terms will be fantastic. In only a few months, our game will be complete. Seeing how this term has gone, and knowing my teammates better now, I know we’ll make it something special.

The Big Reveal

It’s been over a month since my initial blog post, and that feels so long ago now. When I introduced myself here, I still had no idea what project I was going to be working on for the next 9 months. Picking my top 5 projects out of countless choices was incredibly daunting for a final result that represented the culmination of my time at OSU. Despite that, I was able to come up with a final list:

1. Escape Room Challenge
2. A-Life Challenge
3. Website Security Research Project
4. Malware Analysis
5. Create and Play Board Games

When I chose these projects, I’ll admit that I was skeptical about how I ordered them. My first versions of this list always placed the two Cybersecurity projects at the top, and it was a shuffle of the bottom three. It just seemed logical and like the “safe” thing to do as I had planned to go into Cybersecurity as a career.

Having gotten further into the Cybersecurity program, it’s become clearer that my interest lies much more with video games and simulations. It’s not out of a lack of interest in Cybersecurity, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed learning about all types of exploits and defenses in classes like CS373. When I was looking over my list, I just had a gut feeling that I wouldn’t be happy skipping out on the opportunity to make a game. It may not be something that shines on a resume if I do end up pursuing Cybersecurity, but it’s so much more “me.”

If there’s ever a takeaway I could offer to any students yet to take the capstone, it’s that you should always go for projects that you would love to work on outside of college. Your academic career has been full of countless classes to fill certain mandatory criteria. You have already worked on numerous projects that you could put on your resume to exhibit certain skills. The capstone is the time to fulfill your passions while receiving the benefit of a structured environment and receiving academic credit for it.

There won’t be as great of an opportunity, outside of a dream job, to work on something you love for something beyond your own motivations. I know what it’s like to have passion for a project, and I know what it’s like to be unable to continue due to a lack of time and money. This is your chance to see something from start to finish and still care about it after graduation.

All that to say, I’m pleased to have been picked for the Escape Room Challenge project.

The Escape Room Challenge

I remember first seeing which project I was chosen for, and my first reaction is best described as “amazement.” Although I had chosen this project as my top pick, I had little expectations that it would come to fruition. Surely there wouldn’t be enough people to work on something as niche as a 3D puzzle game compared to the many web apps that I felt people would flock to. To my surprise, I was placed into a group for this project with three other people:

• Skyler Bass
• Anthony Kim
• Mackenzie Paradeis

After the expected period of uncertainty as we got to know each other, I have to say that I am extremely excited to see this project through with them. Our team is just the right size to where I don’t feel like we’re going to struggle, and I feel like we’ll each be able to contribute something meaningful. At this point, we have gotten many essential documents completed. Outlining the project requirements turned out to be the simplest part of it all, we’ve really turned this into something special through creativity and passion.

While I’d love to give every detail about what we’ve got planned, there are so many unknowns and things left to determine. It’s inevitable that many of our ideas will never see the light of day due to the nature of unforeseen difficulties or changes in scope. That’s just how development works out sometimes. Aside from that, I also want to keep things relatively mysterious. As is the nature of puzzle games, there is no fun in being told the solution, the fun is in the pieces. I will leave an early diagram from our design document as something to look back on when more is revealed…

Credit: Mackenzie Paradeis

Conclusion

This term is really before the start of the true bulk of the capstone. Planning is crucial, and I’m sure I’ll appreciate that we had a whole term to figure things out. However, I have a feeling that the upcoming terms will put our team to the test. It’s one thing to put down all of these details on paper, and it’s a whole different story to enact them into reality. Despite my apprehensions, I know I’ll be looking back at the end of the capstone on a game I’m truly proud of.

About Me

I’m Ash, a senior CS major who’s been attending OSU since late 2021. I live in the state of Georgia just outside of Atlanta, and was born and raised here! While I haven’t traveled outside of the U.S. yet, I have been across the continental U.S. multiple times. I have family located in many different states, so I’ve had frequent opportunities to go on roadtrips.

Although I originally transferred to OSU via Ecampus due to the ongoing pandemic, I’ve come to immensely appreciate education in an online format. Prior to being a part of the CS program, my programming knowledge was entirely self-taught through any online tutorials I could find to help me achieve my goals.

While I didn’t start my programming journey at a young age like many others I’ve known, I have been obsessed with technology for essentially my entire life. It was only when I was older did I realize the amount of control I could gain by learning to use the languages that powered my favorite things.

At the age of 13, I opened a Minecraft server that was originally for a few friends I had. I chose to make it public only a few days after as I thought it would be nice to have a place for anyone to join that shared similar interests. To my surprise, that server would turn into a thriving community of thousands of unique players. Although I decided to close the server in 2023 after 9 years of uptime, it is what ultimately drove me into the career path of a programmer.

A few years after the server was opened, I recalled my prior experience making mods for Minecraft. However, I realized that I was going to have to learn a LOT more to be able to make what I wanted to for a public server with so many people. At 16 years old, I started learning all of the Java I could alongside the APIs used for modifying Minecraft servers.

Since my programming journey started 7 years ago, I have learned more than I ever could’ve imagined. Beginning with a self-taught approach to Java proved to be one of my best decisions as I quickly found the strong passion I had for programming. From there, I focused on improving my Java knowledge as much as possible. I eventually would find myself pursuing a CS degree and branching out into more languages and technologies than I knew existed!

The Capstone

Here I am at the last year of my degree. It’s amazing how fast time has gone by, and I would love to say these last 3 terms aren’t going to pass me by too. Since my first term at OSU, I’ve known there would one big project to mark the end of my CS degree. Little did I know that I would already be here looking through all of the projects to find one that resonates strongly enough with me to commit 9 months to it.

I’m excited to get started, but at the same time there is definitely a sense of nervous anticipation finding out what project and team I’m going to be a part of. Working as a team for nearly a year compared to the single-term team projects I’ve had in the past is quite a leap.

That’s not to say I don’t feel ready for it. I’m very confident that I’ll be able to adapt to whatever is needed and hopefully make some great connections! Having no professional experience in the software industry, I see this as my first taste of what it would be like to be in that world.

My Project Picks

While there is still time to change my mind on my project picks (as of writing this post), I’ve been eyeing a few projects since before the term started.

My top 5 projects in order of least desired to most desired:

5. Create and Play Board Games

Although this is at the bottom of my top 5, it’s important to remember that these projects were chosen out of dozens of options. What stood out to me with this project is that I love the creativity behind creating a board game creator. Rather than just making a game that players must abide by the rules of, this allows for anyone to come up with their own rules and share a game with others. I grew up with board games as a major part of how I spent my time with my family. I can see the potential for a custom board game tool giving people a nice way to connect during times of boredom!

4. Malware Analysis

Due to my major focus being in Cybersecurity, I know there is immense value in a project dedicated to understanding malware. While I love the idea of growing my skillset as a security engineer, I find that my motivation lies more within programming and the process of creation as opposed to pure research. I wouldn’t be unhappy being a part of this project, but I have my hopes set on other things.

3. Website Security Research Project

Unlike the Malware Analysis, this project allows for programming to come into play in order to make a purposefully vulnerable web app! Having already played around with the Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA), I’m already excited at the prospect of getting to be on the side that creates the problems for others to exploit. Although Cybersecurity is my focus, there were a few projects that stood out to me as more interesting still.

2. A-Life Challenge

This was nearly my top choice due to the concept of working on my very own simulator for something as complex as life itself. The multitude of possibilities that a life simulator would allow for is such a fascinating prospect for me. I could easily see myself become captivated by watching the program run, and thinking about what other unique traits could be thrown into the gene pool. It’s no coincidence that this project resonated so strongly with me due to Spore being one of my favorite games from my childhood!

1. Escape Room Challenge

Despite my immense interest in the A-Life Challenge, I felt that the Escape Room Challenge would be the project best suited for me. The Portal franchise is likely my all-time favorite video game franchise. That naturally comes with me having a deep love for puzzle games, especially ones that are able to make the player feel genuinely rewarded for solving said puzzles.

It’s an extremely delicate balance to create puzzles that feel hard enough to where the player can’t randomly stumble into the solution, yet easy enough to where the player isn’t sitting there wondering whether the game was even playtested. I believe participating in this project would give me the best opportunity to not only hone in on skills associated with making 3D games, but also allow me to contribute my creativity to the genre of puzzle games.

There is immense potential in creating a game that relies on the player’s reasoning skills rather than their mechanical skills.

Conclusion

I thank you for reading this post (or even skimming it) as blogging is something I never thought I’d be doing! Alongside whatever project I’m a part of, I hope that this blog is able to serve as a reminder of how far I’ve come and as a way for others to glimpse into the last bit of my long college journey.