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Welcome Page

Table of Contents

1. Project Management

A. Team working agreement

B. Individual responsibility agreement

C. Project schedule

D. Meeting notes

2. Business Plan

A. User identification and interviews

B. Electronic/Print advertisement

C. Pitch video with demonstration

3. Software Documentation

A. Introduction

B. User manual

C. Program description for developers

D. Final flowchart

E. Final program with comments

F. Discussion

G. Conclusions and recommendations

H. References

 

Executive Summary

The goal of the SDP project was to give the members of the group a solid understanding of teamwork as well as creating a foundation of program design. It was also to help students understand the creation of promotional materials for their products. The project is designed to introduce students to the field of computer science where engineers use the skills practiced in this project to innovate and improve technology.

The first step was to decide an idea for the game. We conducted an interview and determined that fast-paced games that were quick to play were popular. We picked the T-Rex game because it’s a game that we were familiar with, but also presented a challenge. We planned the logic of the game, by deciding things how hits would be detected, how the game would be controlled, and what content would appear in the game and created flow charts to guide us. The next step was to begin programming the basics of the game. First, the sprites were loaded in sequence, making the run animation. Next, key detection was added so that the user could control the T-rex. Afterward, animations for jumping and crouching were added along with night mode and the easter egg. Then, hit detection and obstacle creation were the last parts to be programmed. The features were tested as the code was assembled incrementally, then finally tested rigorously all together, to work out all the bugs that arose. Throughout all of these phases, the documentation was added as appropriate and discussions were held to ensure the process progressed as planned.

The game design helped the members of the group learn to work together and make sure we documented our work so the other members could work on it. It also made sure that the members were familiar with creating, testing, and then promoting a program. The difficulties we faced with the framerates in Matlab lead us to conclude, that Matlab was not the ideal programming language for our game and that further development would be better suited in an alternative language. The project taught our group many valuable lessons and provided a way for us to further understand what it means to be an engineer.