Month: October 2020

It is always interesting how knowledge from other courses can be applied to game design, sometimes courses that would be least expected. Computer Graphics is not one of those courses. Computer Graphics is obviously going to be related to making video games, there is no surprise there. This week in Computer Graphics we have been learning about lighting and shaders, so the whole time I have been thinking about how I can use that knowledge and apply it to the VR Rhythm Game project.

Shaders are able to do some amazing things, and much more efficiently than other methods because of the hardware support of the graphics cards. As the person in charge of the User Interface, I feel that shaders will be especially useful to me. They can be used to make visual effects, warp objects and apply texturing. Best of all, Unity has built in support for the shaders, so creating shaders should be a simple process. I look forward to digging into shaders and learning how to get the most out of them.

Before this project I hadn’t realized just how all inclusive Unity is. The tools available out of the box make putting together a game much easier, if you take the time to learn the tools. And that, I believe will be the biggest difficulty for this project, learning the tools. I have every confidence in the team’s ability to write the code and get everything functioning, but for two of us Unity is completely new.

Despite the oncoming learning curve, Unity is definitely the right choice for this project. The all-in-one system will make it easier to manage the project, and the plethora of free assets means we don’t need to keep reinventing the wheel.

Never underestimate the benefit of good teamwork, but you should also never underestimate the encumbrance of bad teamwork. During this term I am taking four teamwork intense classes, and the difference between the teams I am on is stark. Let’s begin by examining the bad.

A team I am in was required to prepare a presentation, and present in front of the class. The presentation was prepared on Google slides. An interesting thing about Google slides, is that it records every change made by every person, so it is possible to see exactly how much different people contributed. I felt that I was doing a bit more than my fair share, so after the presentation, I checked the records to see how much each person contributed. There were two people who’s only contribution was literally adding their names to the slide deck. There were also two people who without notice did not show up to present. It only takes one guess to figure out which members those were. On top of that, the group is unorganized, and will not respond to communications in a reasonable time, if at all.

On the complete opposite end, you have the group that I am working with for the capstone project. They respond quickly. They actively engage to help. They have, in a short time, earned my trust. I know if they say they will get something done, it will be done. They contribute, a lot! When we are putting together the group papers, they do an amazing job of merging our ideas together, like putting puzzle pieces together to makes something greater than the sum of it’s parts.

This vast difference in group dynamic drastically changes how I feel about the course. The first class, I am now dreading. I can’t wait to be done with this term so I don’t have to work with them anymore. But when it comes to this capstone project, I can’t wait to be done with this term to so I work even more closely with my two partners. Here is to you, Zach and Xinpeng. I have hope that we will succeed in this project, because of the both of you.