School and Work

On 12/31, I ended my 6 month co-op with the Autism Collaborative. However, I promised to stay on working on a few minor details that needed polishing and provide support where I could for the project.

The project was a game project aimed at Autistic children, between the ages of 10 - 14 (if my memory serves me), with symptoms similar to but possibly greater than those with Asperger's Syndrome.

The game followed a structure in which a large scale game, called the Colony Simulation, served as the center for a set of other "mini games" or "missions" to branch off of. The Colony Simulation would allow players to build a colony in deep space, allowing them to mine for ore, build residential (housing, entertainment) and commercial (stores, factories, mining plants) structures, and link them via a series of "tubes", one for each type of structural connection. This was designed this way based on our producer's experience with Autistic children and their fascinations with machines and mechanical structures. Hence, the simulation was to act like one large machine, when connected.

Each of the mini games or missions are accessible within the Colony Simulation. They can either be selected or they are generated for the user to play. The missions encapsulate many typical and interesting Autism tests, which are used within both a lab setting and data collection setting to collect information about the player.

During this period, I participated in the design, development, and currently the maintenance of the Colony Simulation. My roles primarily included task tracking, completing various tasks, and requirements elicitation (getting ideas and feedback from our producer and my co-workers). I became responsible for many of the user interactions, especially those through the GUI, which I ended up designing the framework and specifications for, since C# does not have a natural GUI implementation for XNA.

Overall, I found the experience very rewarding. Not only does it look great on my resume, but it has helped me figure out many "dos and don'ts" when it comes to games. Also, it's nice to know that what you worked on will help people.

Aside, the maintenance side has come at a hefty price, mainly personal patience and frustration. Since December, I have been enrolled back in school, finishing my Software Engineering degree. It has been difficult to perform maintenance functions, as I have been overloading for the past two quarters (20 credit hours), in order not to only finish my degree, but to also take some of the classes I want to before I graduate.

Overall, the passed several months have been hectic. We're finally at a mid alpha-beta release for the full game, which makes me happy. I am finishing testing on part of the game I have been touching up (score screens and in game artwork). I will post something when we have a release, as well as a means on how to download it.