Game Playing Combat State Modeler

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Game Playing Combat State Modeler

• J. Michael German

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Agenda

• Introduction to who is involved
• Background and problem description
• Basic practicum description
• Brief practicum status
• Issues, problems and concerns I am having
• Conclusion

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Who is involved

• CMU Mentor
• Mel Rosso-Llopart
• Associate Director
• Tech Advisor
• Robert John McCall
• Developer
• MAYA Viz

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Background

• Industry
• Table top role playing games
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Over 30 years old
• Problem
• Combat representation

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Combat representation Problem

• To large
• To many tools
• Space taken up
• Transportation
• To inaccurate
• Hand drawn
• Created real time
• Not enough tools for representations

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Combat representation Problem

• Inability to do math
• Character movement
• Distances
• Modifiers to both
• Inability to store information
• Current state for next game
• Pre generation of maps

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Practicum description

• Prototype of a solution software
• Working but not supporting all features
• Only features narrow enough for my scope
• Graphic User Interface
• Displayed on Television or Projector
• Database
• Simple but needed for storage
• Research
• New topic
• Tools to use
• What the public wants

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Status

• Practicum start February
• Statement of Work
• First draft February 1st
• Under consideration
• SPMP
• Draft version not released yet
• SRS
• Draft version not released yet
• Background Research
• Significant work done
• Prototype
• Development has not started yet

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Issues with starting

• What am I building
• What does the public want in this tool
• What is the best way to go about learning that
• What tools do I use
• Java
• Swing
• Learning curve
• New topic

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Problems encountered

• What goes into which document
• SOW verse SPMP and SRS
• SRS verse Design document
• Scenarios
• Tailoring information
• Requirements and quality attributes into a
  measurable form
• Risk management not started early enough
• Loss of data when computer died\
• Ed Walter

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Problems encountered

• Poor time management at mid semester
• Regular meetings
• Deadlines
• Informal interactions with technical advisor
• Is this actually a problem?

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Future issues

• Creating an architecture
• What do I really want here?
• Usability is most important
• Modifiability
• Performance
• Process to follow
• Test plan
• What is the best idea?
• How do I go about generating that best idea?

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Conclusion

• Problem
• The need for a better combat model
• Solution
• Software modeler
• GUI
• prototype
• Issues
• Tailoring documents, requirements and quality
  attributes
• Architecture

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Questions?