Miracles are made by real people (just before deadline)

So we have the 1st assignment of CS2316 done.

I'm happy. Very happy :)

I cannot think of a more interesting way to start this post. Also because I feel so sleepy now. But I cannot wait till tomorrow since I'm just afraid tomorrow I will forget something.

Let's just start with what did not go well first. Since the thing that is read later tends to stay in the mind of the reader. That's why let me start with:

What did not go well:

• I tend to waterfall: at the beginning when I read the assignment, I really thought I would avoid this. But then I realized I only avoided the big waterfall. I let myself get caught in a series of mini waterfalls.
• Basically, I let myself be absorbed too much in the task at hand. I guess I just enjoy drawing new vector graphics and making animations so much. I would and should have made the main page interface better rather than spending time making the animations (even though again, I enjoyed making them a lot)

        (I fell asleep at this point.Restarted from here the day after)

         Eventually we could not implement the animation, which bring me the next point.

• I lack programming knowledge/ experience: so this is a perennial problem. I did not foresee that since we use JQuery and thus the graphics are implemented by divs in a table, it would not be easy to superimpose a transparent gif on top of the existing graphic. But that's ok. I did learn something here.
• The biggest pitfall for me in this assignment is that I could have helped my friend more. Not in terms of coding but rather emotionally and mentally. It was unfortunate that we only had 3 members in the group, plus me practically could not help in programming, the burden of programming fell upon my two group mates. I guess my job is rather easy. Once I have figured out the idea for the graphic, the rest is rather straight forward. But debugging is really a pain. Problems lie everywhere and the stress just never ceased. I did notice the tension and stress level of my two friends have been rising through out the process. I did try to ease up some of that. But I guess I could have done more since I'm the one with the least amount of stress coming from the job. I would have talked to both of them more and tried to get the communication more active. Will take note of this for my next few projects.

What went well:

• Sometimes craziness is mistaken as bravery: in retrospect, we were really crazy. I was kind of stupid when I thought a game like what we had would be easy lol. Basically I thought anything that does not involve strategy should be rather easy to make. And I was so so wrong. Managing real-time responses was just pure crazy. But in a sense, it was a plus point. I got to try something really difficult and now I think I gained quite some experience from it.

• I got to do lots of graphic design: and it was real fun. I really had to put in a lot of thoughts when designing the character and everything else. It was fun using Illustrator. From knowing nothing about Illustrator, now I feel quite comfortable using it.

• I got to handle myself under stress: this one needs not to be explained further. Just work and work and work and work and work and work and work night in night out. And look out for others. That's more important.
• WE DID IT: and that's important. At least we got a basic game completed :) and we completed the assignment together. TOGETHER. That's the most important.

   Some lessons to learn from:

• I should get a better laptop lol: my groupmates told me that my laptop sounded like an airplane taking off. And it did not help when once the laptop is heated up, Illustrator just kept crashing every 5 minutes. I should find a better way to do design or get/ borrow a better laptop so that I can do the graphic designs together with the group. It's really more conducive when we can have every working together.

         On a more serious note:

• The group should make sure the back-end front-end can be implemented at similar pace: Of course this is easier said than done and is the ideal case that everyone hopes to achieve. But otherwise,  it's really hard to do testing without both parts somehow in place.
• May be to help the previous point, we should try to plan the project such that we can test the app module by module: this, hopefully, can guarantee that we can always have a few stuffs to test together.
• Should manage the objectives better: I should use the SCRUM more seriously. Should make sure that everyone sees the purpose of SCRUM and make sure that everyone actually sticks to that (should have someone to chase after group members I guess)