Zoe's Week 3 Report

what were your concrete goals for the week?

My concrete goals for the week were to develop a strong understanding of our project, how we plan to implement it, and the overall architecture involved in building a video game. Since I had not worked on a game project before, I wanted to build a solid foundation early in the quarter so I could contribute effectively moving forward and make at least one meaningful contribution to our GitHub repository.

what goals were you able to accomplish?

I was able to accomplish these goals. Through team meetings and collaboration, I learned a great deal from teammates with prior game development experience. I now have a clear understanding of how our game is intended to function, our implementation plan, how the codebase is structured, and where I can contribute in future weeks. I also contributed in several ways, including working on functionality to support multiple clients connecting to the server, helping fix a compatibility issue affecting different machines, and assisting with testing and debugging on my own system. We ultimately decided to postpone merging the multi-client feature until more core systems were complete.

if the week went differently than you had planned, what were the reasons? note that this happens regularly...I would prefer you to be aggressive in what you want to try accomplish rather than limit yourself to goals you know you'll easily achieve. so answering this question is more of a reflection on the development process and the surprises you encounter, it's not at all an evaluation.

I would have liked to contribute more code this week, but much of my time was spent getting up to speed with the project structure, understanding our client-server architecture, and learning what each teammate was working on. Since I had never worked on a project like this before, I wanted to make sure I had a strong foundation first. I also spent time helping a teammate troubleshoot cross-IP multiplayer functionality. We ran into several unexpected issues, including possible firewall restrictions and networking configuration problems. Although the multi-client feature was not merged yet, it was still useful progress toward future multiplayer support.

what are your specific goals for the next week?

My goals for next week are to continue helping implement support for connecting clients and servers across different IP addresses and get that functionality working reliably. I also want to begin contributing directly to gameplay systems and help implement some of the core game mechanics.

what did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it)?

I learned a great deal this week. The week involved a steep learning curve, and I learned about client-server loops, multiplayer architecture, handling multiple clients, troubleshooting cross-device issues, graphics-loading problems, and collaborative workflows for a larger codebase. I expected to learn a lot going into the week, but I learned even more than I anticipated because of how many systems interact in a game development project.

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