Game Studio
Feb. 25, 2004
Since I knew I'd be taking the qual this semester, I looked for a class that I perceived to have very little workload, especially at the beginning of the semester. Thus, I'm taking a class for the sole purpose of creating something fun, exciting, and new for the grand opening of our new Computer Science building. We were given a set of motion tracking sensors from the fine folks at Ubisense, and turned loose with the task of "creating a game."
After several revisions of the game design, we've settled on something with a strange archeology theme. Apparently, far in the future, after all of humankind has left the Earth, our successor races will be excavating the ruins of humanity, including the Siebel Center for Computer Science. Because our building contains a super-intelligent computer, it decides to toy with these newcomers and moves the artifacts around in the building.
I've been put in charge of "Infrastructure" for this project, which basically means I do a lot of administrative work and make sure all the different software components work fine together. My team so far seems capable, I've already learned some things about managing and working on large projects that I didn't pick up in my time at Press Ganey since my project team there was quite small. Of course, since I'm pursuing a life of academia, I'll probably never get a chance to apply those skills.