Bernico's Week 9 Report

what were your concrete goals for the week?

My goals were to export and implement the gameplay UIs (HUDs) into the game, and also start working on the main menu UIs (and ideally also already implement them in the game as well).

what goals were you able to accomplish?

I was able to export and put the HUD UIs into the game, it took some time because the application that I used wouldn't let me export individual layers, but I managed to do it by using another application and it worked. I also implemented them into the game, which took a long time because a lot of the designs required precise gapping and sizing. Furthermore, the server's infrastructure wasn't already there to trigger what to display, meaning I also worked on that this week to make sure the server is sending the needed information to the client so it can display them in the HUDs correctly. Zoe ended up being the one working on the health / fuel bars and the team tracker though. Also, I managed to design and finish the vector art of the main menu UIs, though they haven't been put into the game.

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.

The week went very differently in two ways: the fact that the meeting with the Professor is on Thursday instead of Monday, and the fact I had no time at all during the long weekend to work on the project. Initially it looked like I was going to also be unable to design the main menu UIs, but the fact that the meeting is on Thursday means this could be done before the meeting. The busyness I had with my other class's essay, though, really hampered my ability to work on this project during the long weekend. This, along with the exporting process taking much longer than expected, definitely contributed to me being unable to finish my ideal goal of exporting the main menu UI despite the extended week.

what are your specific goals for the next week?

I want to export the main menu UIs into the game and make sure it's functional next week. I also would like to further help with the 3D models, especially with the virus and the space thief, which is still unmodeled. Other than that, if there's more time, I'd like to just help my teammates with whatever is still left without polishing before the demonstration.

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

I relearned a bit about sending over structs and strings over the network from server to client; I didn't expect this because I thought it'd be the exact same as array, but thankfully a lot of the previous codes my teammate used are already there so I just had to adapt them. Lastly, I also learned about drawing curves in vector arts, which took some time as I thought a curve in one line wasn't going to affect the previous line, but after figuring out how to do that, it was very smooth in the end.

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