Lab D: Status Blog #3

Tasks accomplished this week:

- Teams submitted their design proposal report for grading.

- Stephen Dixon invited and organized a visit by a Mustard Seed client, Tim Barber, who talked to the lab about his life, the Mustard Seed, and homelessness.
- Some members participated in tour of downtown Mustard Seed facilities.
- Begun design stage:
- Developed pseudocode for computer game components.
- Developed & refined game structure for hands-on components.
- Begun preliminary construction of game boards for hands-on components.
- Encountered testing error: Virtual Machine at Labs does not have the video card necessary to test GameMaker 8.0 files. Consequently, teams are advised to use laptops or make the game outside of class.
- Assigned responsibilities and roles for writing the lab manual. Each group is responsible for submitting technical specifications of their component, which is to submitted no later than Sunday, April 11. In addition, Matt Schroeder is responsible for writing the introduction. Yang Zhang was appointed as the editor of the document; it is her responsibility to ensure that all necessary information is included in the report, and to have the first draft completed by class-time on Wednesday, April 14. At this point, teams will have the opportunity to look at the report and check for technical accuracy. The lab manual will be submitted on the Open House day.
- Stephen Dixon and Matt Schroeder will represent the lab at Open House.
- Prototype evaluation will be done on April 16th, after the Open House.


Plans for Next Week:

Computer Game Groups must:
- continue construction of game coding and testing as they go.
- finish game design by April 9th. Afterwards, teams will be expected to debug and enhance the software until Open House day on April 16th.


Hands-on Groups must:
- Continue construction of activities
- Design fun, interactive, and aesthetically pleasing games that can be played by multiple players.

Lab:
- Begin work on instruction manual and technical support sections, to be submitted by April 11th to Yang Zhang.
- Continue to ensure integration with all surrounding table groups.

Monitoring and Control



- Teams continue to submit inadequate information regarding how their accomplishments relate to their schedule. For all teams except Andrew Paul's, information relevant to this section still takes the form of "on schedule" but fails to clarify what schedule means, even after warning.
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Additional Information
- Clarified project theme by narrowing "adventure" to "travel adventure". Each team was assigned a unique continent which must be integrated into their prototype. In addition, we interpreted "travel adventure" to be about conquering the world, continent by continent.
-Motto changed from Building Self-Confidence Through the Building of Knowledge”...
to “Building Confidence through Learning”
-Lab Progress check on April 14th. All prototypes must be completed to be examined in public; this will help the lab control and monitor progress in preparation for the open house.