The Three Thing Game 24hour session starts tomorrow morning, and I’m working on some map generation stuff at the moment, forests are nice if I can get the trees to order correctly.  Things are going pretty well, for myself at least – I can’t get hold of any other members of the team so I’m on my own for now, which is annoying because I really wanted to work on the agents behaviour today which was Mikes speciality.

I’ve tidied up last years UStream channel a bit ready for the weekend, now all we need to do is go live! I’ll post up an embeded player of the stream tomorrow morning before things kick off so keep an eye out for it!

Other teams will be streaming their development session too, so keep an eye out for those (I assume they’ll be on twitter #threethinggame)

A few days ago I wrote about Three Thing Game and the Kinect Tower Defence game we intended on making, since then, we’ve got the ball rolling a bit and some code which does things (but nothing interesting). We’ve also had the Thing Auction, where every team was given 530 credits to bid on words they wanted (or if nobody wanted to bid, your team would be stuck with that word, this happened to us twice..).

Our team got assigned the words “Fruitcake” and “Word-Processor”, we also spent all of our credits so we could use a wildcard, so we can have whatever word we want, a wise choice it turns out. These words initially were a pain, but we’ve came up with an idea which ties in really quite nicely with the Tower Defence aspect of it all, but I don’t want to give away any more spoilers just yet!

Other teams are working hard (I assume) with their games at the moment, #threethinggame is being used on twitter, and I’ve also noticed Lindsay Cox and his team are blogging about their game a lot. The Codeplex site for the project hasn’t be active recently due to other commitments, but from now until Sunday expect updates often.

So all the way back then, when I was active on my blog, I wrote about my project for the year, which is about Wireless Game Controllers on PCs and how I would be using Bluetooth Input since then, my posts have been… well pretty much non existent, I got hooked on a game called 8Realms for a bit, which was a pretty cool game so I made a toolkit for it, I have no idea if it is still useful because I lost interest in the game once I hopped on a plane and went to America for 3 months, where I blogged about it for the first week, and since then haven’t done anything. For the record, it was awesome, saw some awesome sites, I will upload the photos to a flickr account or something one day. Anyway, before I ramble off too much I may as well get to the point, I’ve done some work on my project about Wireless game controllers!

So far I’ve submitted the first report for grading and am hoping to get feedback on it tomorrow afternoon which will be nice, I’ve also done a significant amount of research and found direction for the project. During my research I discovered a similar project called GlovePie which is pretty cool, however I also decided way before discovering GlovePie that I want my project to be exactly like GlovePie… Annoying, but its good to see something out there does exist so I know my project is now possible!

Upon initial research I noted a few things which will result in weeks of staring at a screen of code with no progress. After about 30 seconds of reading, I immediately ruled out the use of the Xbox 360 controller which uses radio frequencies, and not Bluetooth, this is especially annoying given the only console I own is a 360, and the only controller I own is a 360.  Sort of annoyed that I’d have to by controllers for consoles I have no intention of owning, so I asked around and I managed to borrow a WiiMote and a PS3 Controller from a friend, and everything was back on track… except no.

I had a meeting with my supervisor for my project next year last Thursday, and I took a lot away from the meeting. I was told that the project is open ended, I can take any idea, and as long as it is tied in with Wireless Game Controllers for PC Input I can do it. So I am totally going to make World Of Warcraft using the WiiMote. Actually, massive lie, I hate that game. Well, thinking about it, not really a massive lie.

I’ve decided that I wish to replace the mouse and have the ability to “map” parts of the keyboard to different controllers, primarily: Xbox360 controller, PS3 controller, and the WiiMote, theoretically this will allow the user of the project to play World of Warcraft with their WiiMote (if they wish), or any other game for that matter. I also think it would pretty cool to have different devices attached at the same time, have one “Master” controller which has the ability to control the mouse, and then up to 6 other controllers which have the ability to control other keys (some may even control the same). I was originally thinking of having 8 controllers simultaneously, but after briefly skimming the bluetooth abilities it isn’t possible to have 8 active devices (up to 7 I believe was the exact amount, with 248 other “dormant” devices – though this is something I will have to check later).

After having a rough idea of what I sort of want to do for my project, I decided it’d be a good idea to go out and see what hardware I’d like to use, obviously I would need an Xbox360 controller, which I already own, a PS3 and a WiiMote, which I currently do not own, but thanks to a friend of mine called Rory(go read his blog), I should have access to them throughout most of the year, so we should be good on that front. I also learned that my laptop doesn’t have Bluetooth capabilities, so I had to go and buy a dongle – I bought something called a “nano dongle” – I hope it will do for the project, it was only £3 from Ebay so I hope so. If not I have a dongle to use for other things if nothing else.

First off, let me start by saying I am still in full time education, and I do take exams on a regular basis, in fact I just finished an exam about an hour and a half ago. As a Computer Science student our exams seem to take a unique structure compared to other degrees which require essay-style answers, but nonetheless some points can apply to all types of exam papers, note I refer to exam papers, not things like driving examination (though theory tests in the UK are a joke, I got 100% and read the highway code on the car journey to the test centre). I would also like to point out that I tend to do quite well in exams for my degree so it isn’t because I’m a complete moron and I’m using this rant as an excuse.

So my main issue with exams, especially as a computer science student, is it isn’t a test of your knowledge of a subject, coursework does that quite adequately, its a test of your memory. Sure, if you do something day in day out you’re going to remember it off the top of your head, and you will understand it better, but if you do it maybe once over a 3 month period and then quizzed on every minor detail of it what are the chances of you realistically remembering all the information taught to you once over a 3 month period? I’m guessing pretty slim and your answer will be quoted from memory of a text book you’ve read during the build up to the exam which is covered up as “revision” – if you need to “revise” for your job in the real world you’re going to be terrible at your job, simple. You get good at things by doing them, not by memorising answers to sample questions.

One thing our department tries to do to counter this is by making multiple choice exams, you’re given pieces of code to look at and have to answer what the expected output will be, what errors are present, what code is more efficient and what not – this offers a much better approach as you show that you understand something by answering correctly, albeit some people may get lucky with their answers, but that is then weighed down by the quality of coursework (provided that person didn’t cheat on their coursework, but if they did they really aren’t competition in the job industry anyway so who honestly cares?).

I find myself mass revising just two days before an exam, reading as much as I can, as quick as I can, hoping it all sinks into my brain ready for Wednesday afternoon. At least this is how I should be if I wasn’t too relaxed about the whole thing. I never seem to get worried about exams or coursework until the deadline comes really close – sure I find things difficult, but most of the time this doesn’t worry me, it motivates me. The only time I would really be worried is an hour before something is due in and I haven’t done anything for it.

Some people might say it is a bit arrogant that I’m not worried, but those people clearly don’t know me.  My state of mind is simple, why worry about something that is inevitably going to happen? The more you worry the less you focus on the problem and get it done. I am an incredibly laid back person – I’m not denying that. I often leave things late (I’m going to the United States for about 3 months in June, I still don’t have a flight and my visa has only just got back to me). Similarly I’ve just started revision for my exam on Wednesday, and I haven’t even done any revision for my exam on Thursday!

Now this is my secret of why I am laid back, and why I feel comfortable leaving revision to the last minute: Facebook. You might be wondering what the hell I mean by this, so let me elaborate a little. Facebook has the option to talk to your friends whenever you want to, and that conversation can be made public to share with other friends, it is good for organising social events, like nights out, formal meals and day trips to a theme park. It is also good for sharing knowledge.

I’ve decided to copy my friend Rory and write about the project I will be completing next year. I don’t really know much about the requirements for my project yet, I have a meeting with my supervisor next week after my last exam, so hopefully will find out more then. I did have an initial meeting about a month ago to discuss whether or not I’d be a suitable candidate for the project, so I managed to find out a little about what my supervisor expects then.

I was told straight-up that my supervisor has absolutely no idea how to do this project, which makes the project that little bit harder, I kind of like the idea of being left to it though, I mean he will obviously be able to help me on specific details if I get really stuck on how to do something – but I think I’m going to be left on working out what actually needs to be done before I can even worry about how the hell I’m supposed to implement this, which I like the thought of.

I was also told that the project description was very loose and can be taken anywhere provided it meets basic functionality, which is simply: “8 connected devices operating together, calibration tool so one device isn’t overly sensitive compared to the others”. It doesn’t specify what devices are required and what I can use, so this means I can implement smart-phone support, PS3 controller support, Xbox 360 controller support, Wiimote support (which I’m particularly looking forward to), and I guess if I *really* wanted to, I could give the kinect ago, but I sort of want my project to work so I’ll probably leave that out.