Conclusion

T: Thabo Beeler A: Andreas Hauri M: Mario Deuss

1. What was the biggest technical difficulty during the project?

T:The Level of Detail of the terrain as well as the correct draw order of the objects to achieve transparency of solids, water and billboards

A:Making the network run, in such a way that it is possible to find bugs and to be able to extend the network commands. Creating a particle system with over 20000 particles in such a way that all its physics is computed on the GPU.

M:Modelling, rigging, texturing and animating the character. And find a way to bring it from the 3d-studio to a xna programm.

2. What would you do differently in your next game project?

T:Invest a lot more resource into the gameplay. Do a bit less.

A:take less other classes:-)

M:Outsourcing as much as possible of the design and artwork, such that the core team can focus on programming.

3. What was your greatest success during the project?

T:The terraforming, especially the water effects, which are to my knowledge novel.

A:Making a good looking fire particle system. And being able to create a good structure in such a way that we didn't need to change it.

M:Creating a reasonably well animated character for a game and integrating it.

4. Are you happy with the final result of your project?

T:Yes and No. Yes because the terraforming works very nicely and no, because it is not a finalized game.

A:Yes Im happy with what we achived. I never expected the game to be a game that is final. We managed to include all features we wanted.

M:Yes because the gametesting showed that people have fun with the game and played the game as we planed it.

5. Do you consider the project a success?

T:Yes, 100%

A:I can only support that

M:For sure.

6. To what extend did you meet your project plan and milestones (not at all, partly, mostly, always)?

T: Almost Always. We dropped some stuff, because the playscheme changed, but we also implemented a lot from the extra target

A: I think we meet all our targets! Its a game that is playable and makes fun. And has a lot of nice visuals that had arnt easy to create. especially the terraforming is way beyond what I expected it to be.

M: We only dropped features from the project because of changes in the gameplay. The rest of it we met all.

7. What improvements would you suggest for the course organization? (perhaps in D1 evaluation)?

T: Make it last 2 semesters. First semester theory, second one hands on. Maybe even bigger groups - or a shared class together with the arts school... I believe, that within one semester, a game could be created, which could be presented to the game industry.

A: Also dont try to cover all topics shallow, but rather some in depth. Especially the more technical ones were usually just slides from another course. And in the "soft skill" classes we were told stuff which is common sense. Drop them and introduce some in depth xna classes.

less classes more programming. I think the theorie didnt help me much for the game.

M:Try to make it an interdisciplinary project together with arts school ( game design, 3d artists, musiscians ) out of the course. For the lectures about softskills, try to get teachers which have a deeper knowledge on the topic or drop the lectures. Instaed of the lectures, I think a team could profit more from a weekly teamwise discussion about there gameplay, technical and algorithmical issues.

8. Did you like the XNA framework?

T: I never wanted to code c# and I'm not using Microsoft products, especially not windows. For this class I had to install windows and start to code in c#. It was worth it! I have to admit, that the language as well as the XNA framework are great. Also the IDE is very comfortable, it tells you everything. For someone like me, who is used to code c++, its like being babysitted wink I'm afraid that I'm spoiled now and that I will have to work hard to get comfortable with c++ again.

A: Since I love c# It was quite easy to get the hang of XNA, I was just struggeling with the cameras matrices, vectors at the beginning since I never did 3d programming. But it turned out to be very easy and fast.

M: Yes. Especially the pipelines are very comfortable and support a lot of formats, and are even extensible.

-- ThaboBeeler - 19 May 2008

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2024-03-29
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