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Entries for tag "hack3city", ordered from most recent. Entry count: 3.
# Simple 2-digit Method of Task Management
Mon
19
May 2014
Managing some list of tasks to do (or "TODO list") is very important skill that helps in both work and everyday life. I usually use GTD (Getting Things Done) method. But sometimes, like on the recent Hack3city competition, a simpler method is more suitable.
A lot could be said about this subject (maybe some day I write an article or prepare a presentation about it). Generally, tasks to do can be organized based on different criteria, like:
Even after "filtering" only tasks that you can do and you should as soon as possible, they can be sorted in three different "dimensions":
It's obvious that not all the tasks will be done. During a 2-day programmers' competition, just like in everyday life, writing down ideas for doing things is good, but there is never enough time to complete them all. That's why there is a need for some method of deciding what to do next. During Hack3city, I came up with a simple, ad hoc method, which I want to describe here. The goal of developing it was to make the bookkeeping of the list as quick and easy as possible.
During a hackathon like Hack3city, where we created most of our game in just 2 days, the 3rd dimension is not important. Sure sometimes something must be coded quickly because artist or level designer is waiting for it to be able to continue his work. Then I do this first. But otherwise all tasks are equally urgent - they should be done in the short amount of time, during the event. So what I did was I opened the system Notepad and started writing down tasks and all ideas that should be/could be added to our game, one line each. But instead of starting a line with "-" for just a bullet, I started it with two digits, meaning:
Normally I just delete lines with tasks I finished, but since some time during the event, I started to move them to "DONE" section instead to show them later in this post. So here is partial task list from our game:
23 smoke effect when player falls onto the ground
22 flashlight rotates when player dies
23 flashlight rotates following player walking animation
31 spear, shooting from a wall when player pushes a button
12 delay appearance of "game over" text
22 push button
12 door that can be opened
13 red eye of zombie should pulse and blink
13 graphics in the menu instead of text
31 sound effects
33 fix ladder climbing animation
31 fix double-jump bug
22 walking sound effects should be played randomly
12 parallax for moving background
21 bug: player death animation doesn't work
11 playsoft logo
12 music
12 zombie: add hysteresis to the decision weather approach the player
21 death from the spikes
12 turning flashlight on and off
22 there are some bugs/spiders walking on the floor
33 a spiked ball on a chain, hanging and swinging from the ceiling
Of course the list of tasks was constantly changing as artist, level designer and me came up with new ideas or decided that something is more or less important, found new bugs during testing etc. But I tried to concentrate on finishing one thing at time. When finished, I picked up next task to do according to following rule: I reviewed whole list to find a task with the smallest sum of its numbers. So the order in which I was doing the tasks was:
This way we managed to accomplish most of the tasks we planned so we were quite satisfied with our game as it looked and worked pretty much as we planned. That's why I believe this simple 2-digit method of managing task list is good for hectic, time-constraint and constantly changing work environment.
Comments | #events #competitions #productivity #hack3city Share
# Hack3city 2014 - Review
Wed
14
May 2014
5-11 May 2014 there was first edition of Hack3city - a hackathon in Gdańsk, Poland. It was interesting and unusual in many ways. First of all, there were 4 different tracks, so each developer could choose what is interesting to him.
Teams could have up to 3 people. Of course I was in the Playsoft track. We made a game together with Arek Duchnowski and Marcin Szymczak, who work in aideMMedia.
On Monday evening there was an official beginning (and free beer :) That's when themes of each track were announced. During the week we could work on our projects from home. On Saturday and Sunday (including the night) we were invited to work all together in an open space in Starter.
Also on Saturday organizers announced additional "diversifiers" (like on Global Game Jam). Fulfilling them was additional plus. For games, they were like "graphics is black and white", "game is controlled with one button" or... "game includes Playsoft logo". You could imagine how such logo might be used in a game themed "fear of the dark" :)
On Saturday and Sunday we have 3 meals - all for free (and free beer at the end :) There were mentors representing the sponsoring companies available in place so we could ask them for help.
There were totally 19 teams participating in all tracks. Most of them were in the gamedev track. Projects were evaluated by a jury based on a 5-minute presentation and there were winners selected in each track. Some teams just presented their applications, while others focused on delivering a PowerPoint presentation. Finally we took 3rd place. See also more about Our game from Hack3city 2014.
Among teams that were creating a game, Unity was the most popular technology. That's also what we have used. But there were different technologies present too, like C++ with Marmalade (which was officially recommended and the prize for 1st place was a license for this library), JavaScript and... Lisp (or Scheme, to be more specific). During work, many interesting stuff could be learn and overheard, like what do artist say when they want to insult programmers: "lerpuj kwaterniona", which means: "go lerp quaternion" :)
But the event was not only about programming. Maybe because it was organized by and in the Starter, it had a "startup feeling". For me it looked like many people, while being programmers, were more focused on money and business than technology. Maybe the culmination of it was presentation of an application that helps with first aid - shows information about how to help injured person, helps measuring rate of artifical respiration etc. Someone from the audience asked a question: "Do you have business model?" Someone else from the audience answered jokingly: "If you want to save someone's life, please first watch this ad".
Overall I think the event was well organized. Rules and general feeling was somehow similar to Global Game Jam, still quite unique and different in many details. I don't know if it's a good idea to announce the theme on Monday and allow working during whole week. Developers with lots of free time have advantage over these who study, have family or a full-time job. I also didn't like the idea of presenting each project 3 times instead of only at the end. It took lots of precious time that we could spend on coding and also made the final presentation less of a suprise. Everything else was great (did I mention free beer?), so I recommend attending this event when it will be organized next time!
Comments | #events #competitions #hack3city Share
# Hack3city 2014 - Our Game
Sun
11
May 2014
I just came back from Hack3city - a programming competition. Participants had to develop their applications over this week - Monday to Friday working from home, while Saturday and Sunday working in Starter, Gdańsk. There were 4 tracks. We participated in track organized by Playsoft, where we had to create a game. The theme of this competition was "fear of the dark". We took 3rd place.
As I promised to some of you, I publish playable version of our game today. The game is created in Unity and can be run in web browser if you have Unity Player installed.
Controls:
Our game is called "Jason McBrady Dark Adventure". It's a 2D platform game. It's about an adventure seeker exploring ancient tombs full of dangers like zombies, who want to kill you, but run away from from the light. It's quite difficult :)
We called our team NOQA. Credits are:
In the next post, I will write more about Hack3city. See: Hack3city 2014 - Review
Comments | #competitions #hack3city #unity #productions Share
