CS Capstone presentation

After the summer, Jinghui was unable to help on the game anymore. He had his own school work and master's thesis game, and was just too busy to help out. I really appreciate the work he was able to put in, working on side projects is always difficult, and I'm grateful for the work he did.

What that meant, however, was that I was still without an engineer or technical artist for my game. I had taken a stab at learning Unity, and felt that it was something I could definitely learn, but in the little time I had with work, classes, and other repsonsibilities, as well as being the artist and designer for the game, I knew that I wouldn't be able to learn what I needed to fast enough to make the game. So I started the fall 2014 semester without any programmers or technical artists.

I was registered for the rapid prototyping class, and was hoping to use that class to make prototypes of my game. The format of the class was that we would divide into teams of 6 - 10 people and make 4 prototypes throughout the semester. The teams consisted of engineers, artists, technical artists, and producers. I was hoping Bob and Roger would let me use my game as one of the prototypes, and just rotate the teams through to help with the prototype. A pretty selfish proposition, but with the limitations I was working under, I was desperate to find someway to make it work. After all, I needed to finish the game to graduate.

Dr. H. James de St. Germain

Not surprising, Bob and Roger declined to let me use my game as one of the prototypes, but they did refer me to a Dr. H. James de St. Germain. Dr. St. Germain runs the senior capstone class for the undergraduate computer science students at the University of Utah. I contacted Dr. St. Germain and he allowed me to come present Flux to his class on Sept. 10.

I presented the game, and as far as presentations go, I think it hit smack dab in the middle of mediocrity. (Presenting is not my strong point)

The format was that 3 of us presented, (Josh Maag was one of them. I would later go on to meet Josh Maag during my time in the Foundry.) and the students were allowed to choose if they wanted to use any of the 3 ideas for their senior capstone project.

The response to the pitch was pretty tepid, as I was leaving the class a student grabbed me and said he might want to work on the project with his team, we exchanged contact info and I left.

This turned out to be Michael Banks. After a couple weeks he contacted me and said that he and his team wanted to meet to see if we could work on the project together. 

A week or so later we met, and we all agreed it was a project we could work on together. So finally after a couple years of trying, I had a team of 4 engineers from the computer science program. From left to right, me, David Onken, Skyler Chase, Andrew Clark, and Michael Banks. Forgive the blurry picture.