On Jan 17^th Mike and Kelvin met at Kelvin’s office, here is the record of the conversation:

 

1. CSS290: the new games course
   1. Text book. This is firmed.

                                                    i.     Required Text: The book on problem solving

                                                   ii.     Recommended Reference Text: two such texts, one on GameMaker, and one on C#.

2. Assignments:

                                                    i.     Final project for this course will be a 2D exploration (somewhat pack-man like game), where under the user control the hero will wonder around the world picking up points and avoiding enemies. We will build the assignments toward this final project.

                                                   ii.     Assignment 1: due 2 weeks (on working with IDE and conditional statements)

1.      GameMaker: a hero moving, if encounter enemy, stop

2.      XNA: implement the same thing:

a.      Required concepts/skills: conditional statement

                                                  iii.     Assignment 2: two weeks later (on working with arrays and loops)

1.      GameMaker: including wall units limiting the world

2.      XNA: the same

                                                  iv.     Assignment 3: probably introduce the idea of concepts

                                                   v.     Assignment 4: introduce enemy

                                                  vi.     Final project

3. To do by Jan 31:

                                                    i.     Delivery Assignment 1 in both XNA and GameMaker, implementation only [Kelvin]

                                                   ii.     Test/Trace cases for student, one example is testing for world bound. [Kelvin]

 

2. XNA Game-Themed Assignments (XGA):
   1. 700: we need unit tests for XNA. For now, the idea is to delay this work till early Spring quarter.
   2. 300/600: two deadlines, by this weekend ready for release, by next weekend complete QA so we can release to Ruth and Scott:

                                                    i.     By this weekend: Kelvin and Mike will each complete their work. We will have a mini-release to ourselves so we can perform QA on the release (test everything).

                                                   ii.     By next weekend: release.

3. After the release of 300 and 600, for now, our develop job for XGA will come to a conclusion at least for now (there is still 700 in Spring quarter).

 

3. Up-coming conferences: we talked about the XBOX workshop for SIGCSE and GDCSE. Mike is considering if he wants to present the paper at GDCSE. Kelvin will present the paper at SIGCSE.

 

4. We further reflect on our experience from last Fall and compare that to this quarter
   1. Important: make clear what students must do front and center, especially for things like survey where students are not used to do in other classes. What we are doing right: survey, pre-test, post-test are featured front and center in the assignment announcements. Students are sternly warned that they will lost points if they fail to do these.
   2. Students’ perspective: it is interesting that many of the students came to class hearing they will work with XNA. It seems like words get around, and students start to seek out the class. Of course, they are very disappointed when they learned they are working with console only. We should pay attention next quarter on how well students’ response to XNA assignments.