Space war Clone Jam With Melissa Gill

Upon walking into Networking class last Tuesday (9/24) I found what I would normally not expect instead of the normal present homework and listen to a lecture about bit packing or packet loss, we were split up into teams of two and ordered to create a 2-4 player version of an old 1984 game called Spacewars fully networked of course.  I teamed up with my lovely girlfriend Melissa Gill and we started on our assignment.  We initially only had until the end of class (3 hour) to complete this task but anything we did not finish in the allotted time we could finish at home during the week.

Our first major decision was to decided whose code base to start with,  after a "short" and heated debate both of us trying to find whole in the other code we settled with using Melissa because she had a more "fun" menu system.  Working in a largely different code base from my own took a little bit to get used to and  looking back I wish I spent less time arguing on which code base to use and more time learning the code and coding we wasted a good 30-45 mins of class working on this part. However once we were settled the game started to come together.  Melissa the more math oriented one worked on gravity and acceleration movement and the such.  Meanwhile I worked on our projectiles and ready system.

One of the largest road blocks Melissa and I ran into was over packing our packets.  We filled them way past capacity and was giving us reading errors on the other side.  We of course did not know this for a very long time and it took a while to hunt down the error.

Our biggest accomplishment although I did not actually assist in this part much would be our menu system/ color selection.  Players in the lobby fly into a color selection lane and unless there is only one player in a lane and game will not start.  Once the game is started they inherit the color they were standing on.

Below are links two my lovely partners blog as well as my professors who came up with this great experiece and a nice break from normal everyday class.

@ John Pile I don't have fraps so ill try to add a video later

http://prof.johnpile.com
http://mlssagll.blogspot.com/2013/09/networking-for-games-game-jam-space-jam.html