Week 6: Honours Project

Week 6

• This week I visited Glasgow Library to find that the SCONUL card doesn't allow borrowing
• I didn't pay Dr John a visit this week as I wanted to get some research done and complete my assignment for animation  - I shall be dropping in next week though.

This week, I will have time to sit and really read (at last) and get an in-depth perspective of what each book contains which I got from Paisley Library about a 2 weeks ago.

My aim is to go back into Glasgow and have another read of some of their books. 

One particularly saddening thing about not having access to the library for borrowing/accessing is that I found papers on Agile on Glasgows database but you need a full membership to get to them - Why is it only PHD students that can borrow/access, why can't the little guys doing their honours year!? 

I'll update what I get done in the next week.

Week 5: Honours Project

MEETING 5 (formal meeting 1)

• The specification form has been signed and handed in
• The formal meeting went well and I know what to do for the next 2 months

The following tasks and issues were discussed and specific actions agreed:

1. Gathering agile papers
2. Gathering software engineering book/reference
3. Discussed agile processes
4. Discussed software engineering's linkage to agile - the history of software development

The following tasks and timlines have been agreed both for the next month and beyond:

For the next month

• Literature review - Get the fundamental papers on agile
• Literature review - Research patterns in development 
• Research Implementation - Think about the game development (coding) ... 
• Research Implementation - Think about the games assessment 

Beyond the next month

• Literature review - Write the literature review
• Methodology - Design the Method

Week 4: Honours Project

Meeting 4

• The literature review should be the focus on the following week
• I have completed my specification form and Dr John has checked it over 
• I should think about assessing the game and what people want to play
• The jobs fair was very interesting and particularly useful

I had a lot of work to do this week for other modules which sort of took precedence during the week. I started my literature review and have constructed my dissertation which I can work on and get some chapters done - hopefully this week! 

I went to the library to get some books from Paisleys library just to see what they had. They had some but nothing more than I expect from what Dr John said about them being not that recent. 

1. Cockburn, Alistair; (2002) “Agile software development”, Addison-Wesley
2. Larman, Craig; (2004) “Agile & Iterative development: A manager’s guide”, Addison-Wesley
3. Highsmith, Jim; (2004) “Agile project management”; Addison-Wesley
4. Ambler, Scott W.; (2002) “Agile modelling: Effective practises for extreme programming and the unified process; John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York
5. Coplien O. James Et al; (2005) “Organizational Patterns of agile software development”; Pearson Prentice Hall

Alistair Cockburn and Jim Highsmith were part of the construction of the manifesto way back when it was written in 2001. 

I am hoping that I will have time this week (if not at the weekend) to visit Cale/Starthyclyde/Glasgow as I got my library card with the weird name .. Sconul! so I should be able to get more authors and materials for the coming weeks.

I plan also to start on the actual game element soon (Nb. The gant chart is just a guide: not part of the development - a mere graphical diary to let me know if I think i'm not doing enough or I'm on track for personal deadlines) I have drafted a few screens of the introduction to the game below. Images shall chance

Week 3: Honours Project

Meeting 3

• The formal meeting and specification form shall be completed next week
• I got my moderator - Dr Mark Stansfield in room E211
• I was advised by Dr John to seek the libraries outside of Paisley campus for a wider and more appropriate select of books on the area of AGILE 
• The Phd Student sitting in with us at the meeting gave advice on taking the research to the next step for a 1st class Honours (I could create my own pattern/method of dev in agile)
• Dr John said to email him chapters of the literature review and he gave advice on the subject.

I now have my dissertation title, broken down to a basic question of intent: 

 "What are issues of Agile software development when creating a HTML5 game for Ipad2"

Now, from where I left off last time, last Tuesday I still had problems with the menu acting strangely with the physics. I found my fist bug in the game engine and had to collaborate with the creator - Brandon from the modulus team - to help resolve it. He was very helpful and provided me with a solution to my problem. What was happening was when the engine game loop performed an update for the game, the physics attributes applied to my menu sprite. Although I disabled the physics globally, the engine ignored this and I was unable to make manual adjustments to the sprites position as they will always be overridden by the physics classes. Thus the physics properties assigned to my sprite actually reacted via the physics and set it back to it's original position over and over again hence why I couldn't amend it's x coordinate. How I got around this was to disable the physics on the sprite locally.

My lead game tester Jof helped with confirming that all the coding worked again and it sure did. He was kind enough to send on screen dumps. (see below)

I had a review of my progress so far on the 04/10/12 and referred to my gant chart. I seen that I was almost on track with the analysis stage of software development: I knew my dissertation question, I thought about a backup plan for my project it things fail to work out using risk management, I have priorities my tasks and plan well in advance. The project was also deemed feasible by my supervisor. I done a bit of reading on Agile software development by Alistair Cockburn and got some quotes from his book and noted them in a document i'm storing with potential citations. On the 05/10/12 as I already stated above, I emailed the game engine creators modulous team to inquire about an issue I was haivng with the physics (he works in USA, Ohio which is 5 hours behind the UK which is a factor I should take note of just incase I may require some advice latter on in the games build.

I coincidentally found my moderator whilst taking off on a journey to find his room and ran into him. He offered to have a meeting with me and we talked over my project proposal. I showed him my hard copy documentation and he advised me to 'firm-up' the details of the project. This shall be done during this week via email and verified, signed and stamped next week at the formal meeting. 

Week 3 was a certain success in my opinion regarding what I set out to achieve and I am a lot happier about the development. My next plans are to type and get creating, reading and also document my results.

Onwards and upwards...

#10 "Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.", The bible according to AGILE

Week 2: Honours Project

Meeting 2

• Dr John helped refine my dissertation question (Focus on AGILE)
• Tasks were issued for the next week - ie. Work on with the project
• Dr John suggested that we send him blog updates of the work
• The documentation that Mark wants done shall be in the coming weeks  

What a day it's been! A lot more has been accomplished during week 2 than I thought was possible at the beginning of it ...

For one the Ipad screen scaling issue was rectified on Monday.

I have been making progress with the ipad screen scaling - thanks to Jof; Jonathan Traynor - lending me his Ipad for testing during Mondays lunch(and testing my files at his home when back from work - Thanks Mate!).

The tests of all 9 test files failed to fix a problem I had of not fitting the ipad screen dimensions. A lot of research and trying to understand the css/javascript and their usefulness later, I eventually thought of something which would enable the screen to set a max and min scale property. Urika! On Monday when Jof loaded it up it worked: It had scaled the HTML5 canvas to the ipad screen!

See it below in all it's glory...

On Sunday  I tried to get the physics module working within the game (it was doing horrible wacky nonsense with the menu and twirling it around despite it having no physics code assigned to it).

Nevertheless I was able to disable it and can now work on getting the screens to display correctly as having done this to the code, it's somehow not displaying the background properly - a hopefully minor repercussion of the fix

So yeah, that seems to be it for week 1 and the 28% of my second week! I plan to get the game screen back to it's original functionality and work onto get a small platform game framework accessible via the menu. Meanwhile I want to start some more research and quoting for the dissertation - I've already got some points from papers but as John said today, I should have plenty on Agile software development and lots of research to do on the subject. 

I shall be keeping a record of daily procedures, abiding to the agile manifesto for my project, on my dropbox and shall account for what I have done since in my next blog posting .. 

My dissertation question now reads for the moment as -

---

"What are issues of Agile software development when creating a HTML5 game that is hosted online: The case of Ipad2 & the Pulse game engine"

Week 1: Honours Project

Meeting 1 The meetings shall take place on Tuesdays (unless unavailable) Dr Johns office is E260 Project proposal in talk to be accepted in coming weeks (must be completed before Oct 19th) Let 24 weeks of development begin . . .

On Tuesday, 25/09/2012 I went to my supervisor - Dr John - to review my progress and check if I was proper use of my time thus far.

During the meeting it raised many important questions that I had considered, but perhaps needed a re-think and other ideas which I had not thought of.

I have now got a dissertation topic question which has been refined to this: 

"What are the issues involved in creating a well-designed HTML5 game in
Titanium SDK and hosted online: The case of Ipad2 & the Pulse game engine"

So that's one thing. The next aspect of the development had us discuss factors of the availability of papers - this is something I will need to look deeper into since HTML5 is a recent technology, there are limited (next to none) research carried out: this is why professors and lectures wait until it has been around for a bit to analysis it.

I also brought up the question that was building for the Ipad requires an apple license so what I asked was to develop purely as a browser based game but which would be solely for the ipad2 to play. This was fine. It's certainly put my mind at ease on the matter as obtaining an apple license wasn't necessarily my plan for the project - apples hideous website alone is enough to put anyone off their products in my opinion: the company which is great at design aye right! 

Nonetheless, a further piece of advice was offered when Dr John said that it is vital that the project must have some basis to judge how well the specification has been met. Since there have been little research in this area it's going to be tough. I offered my thought on play test evaluation and this was enough of a measure. 

I developed a menu for the game but it does not fit the ipad2 screen yet which requires scaling.



So, to summarize, the project shall be a platform game build for the ipad2 in HTML5/pulse engine to be hosted online which utilizes good practice design and is evaluated via gamer play-tests (option to look into creating forms to collect the data). 

The gant chart shall be reviewed on week 7 - and a new segment of the chart shall be cut and pasted in order to view the details better.


This is the full version of the chart below..

Let the fun begin.