Jacob Maskiewicz - Week 4 Report

What were your concrete goals for the week?

We planned to integrate all the parts. We wanted to get the renderer hooked into the engine, and the engine plugged into the network so that we can get models on screen communicating with a server in order to get updates.

What goals were you able to accomplish?

We definitely got the renderer hooked in, and added several features into the renderer, including textures, shader selection, and basic blinn-phong lighting. However, we’re not quite there with the full engine-network communication. The parts are all together, but some event glue is still needed to get it all working, and Zach and I plan to tackle that this evening.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

The network code was much lower level then I thought. I spend a lot of time on the renderer this week, and I’m not exactly sure what the exact speedbumps were, but we’ve gotten ahead of plan on the renderer, which is good news.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

I intend to finish up the Alpha deadline, and then start writing gameplay code. My immediate next goal is to setup the engine in such a way that it is easy to rapidly prototype (we can run updates locally, and plug into server code at a later time). Once that is up, I’ll be able to add game features very quickly and easily, and our game will grow fast.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

I’m feeling good. A bit frustrated that no one told me we were behind schedule on the engine integration until this weekend, but that’s what I get for not asking. I’ll be paying much closer attention to development that’s not mine in the following weeks.