mdiongla-se475

[mdiongla-se475]

Were pretty much done with Tetris

There are a few things I want changed in tetris to make it as close as it can be to the freetetris game but I dont want to force people. I told the team leads to check the issues that need to be addressed on Taiga but so far, my team (Team C) has made more features and fixed more bugs. 

We try to communicate through SLACK, one group chat with all of us and another private group chat with team leads for Team A and B. I talk to my TeamC group in Whatsapp. My team, Team C, is pretty responsive so i am thankful for that. Team A and team B are barely responsive unfortunately. 

The issues I wanted to be addressed was:

(1) the pieces still dont slide under other pieces

(2) the speed of the falling piece in the first level is not the same speed as the first level in freetetris

(3) the edges of some pieces fall through the edge of another piece sometimes

In the beginning of this project, it didnt go too well during the beginning of designing the project because barely the people in the other team was responsive, from Team A and Team B. My team was the only one responding. During the implementation phase, teamwork was at its highest. During the last phase for PA3, not a lot of response, but I think its because it looks like its working pretty well now, but honestly, I think there can still be improvement. Overall, it was like a roller coaster, good points and bad points. 

[mdiongla-se475]

Im really proud of my team

They did their work and on time. Im very happy to have such a great team that works together. When one is having trouble, other help as much as they can and I love that. 

We pretty much finished our tetris game but there are very minor details we have to fix. 

But overally Im glad. Im also glad that the one teammate that was slacking a bit in my team is actually stepping up and doing the work he needs to do. 

I know I wont be as lucky with other teams but Im glad to have experienced it. 

I dont know what the prof is going to say. He may be very picky and say out game is bad. but I dont regret the team work that happened =D

[mdiongla-se475]

implementation of tetris

So far my teams have been doing their parts!

So originally, I wanted the Team A to finish the first phase of tetris but they said they got carried away and did more than they were given. Team B was left with only the task of making sure the pieces are stacked correctly. Team B didnt get phase 1 parts until thursday night which kind of pushes the schedule back. 

They finished friday. I tried it out today, Saturday, and there are a few bugs in the stacking i noticed.

Whenever I communicate with the whole team, I always communicate it towards the team leads so that they can direct their teams out of respect. Plus it might get hectic a bit if we all talk all at once and not decide really. 

So far so good. My team will finish the last parts of the project by sunday morning. And then we can debug and try to perfect the code. 

For the part I did, I was having a hard time approaching one of the tasks, which is displaying a piece in the preview box and then after each piece is placed in the board, that piece from the preview box is now generated in the top of the bin and a newly random piece shows up in the preview. 

It was a bit tricky but I got the hang of it. It took me a while because I was thinking about a lot of stuff but I wasn’t approaching it properly. I have to first approach it simply to see if what Im trying to do works and then get more complex. I have to breath and approach the problem calmly and look at the big picture. 

Im not really trying to win, I just want us to all work together and complete this project. 

[mdiongla-se475]

hoping my team is working on their parts 🙏🙏🙏 praying lol

trying to work on the sound part. im asking my teams if i they want to give me more tasks. but theyre not saying anything so im assuming theyre fine with it? 🤔

[mdiongla-se475]

barely a response

ive been trying to communicate a lot to the tram leads and the groups as a whole about what we can do for the design phase. I provided tasks and assigned them to the other groups. Im not frustrated because there not debate or discussion about it. Im frustrated because no one from the other team is saying anything! team leads, on a blue moon, will ask something but there really is not confirmation if they agree with my plan!

The only people responding to me are my teammates mahmmoud and Andrew, which I am thankful to have them.

Seeing as no one is really responding, im going to assume they are following my plan.

idk if these people are taking this project seriously :/

[mdiongla-se475]

Confusion with team leads

I suggested that the team leads and I will talk about how to divide the work. Then amongst our own teams, we can divide the tasks.

i suggested this:

i was thinking three parts: 

 (1) the foundation, single block goes down and stops at the bottom and it can stack on itself, it cant get passed the border but will still go down. left and right works. also have different colored single bocks to represent the 4 pieces(L, square, the l, and z) 

 (2) start building on those 4 pieces, actually making it the shape we want, and make sure it rotates when you press the up arrow, making sure it doesnt go passed the borders 

 (3) creating the line, having a complete line from the blocks disappear and add points to the score, if it reaches the top, its game over, and saving the scores

Kind of following what the professor suggested, which is more of an iterative approach. 

Team lead 2 wanted to talk through voice chat about this. I didnt understand the need to talk in voice chat when we can just write questions. I was ready to answer them instantly. I asked if he looked over the approach i suggested and he said he’ll give me an answer when he hears a summary through voice chat. I assumed he ignored my approach haha

In voice chat, team lead 2 mentioned that the professor suggested how to divide the work among the 3 groups but he couldn’t remember what three parts. He kept saying “for sure motion and collision, and maybe sound?” I dont remember the professor mentioning dividing it that way. The voice chat was basically me trying to search for those exact words in the 3 hour lecture ={ which was useless and I just told them thats just going to take long. We ended the chat with them saying to watch the lecture and find it.... idk but that meeting was useless. Because he could’ve asked about it by typing it....

ANYWAY.....

I look in lecture and I suddenly remember the professor mentioning collision sections....but actually it was the professor actually suggesting NOT to separated parts like collision group, motion group, etc. The professor suggesting that the program works end to end and we just enhance it from time to time...which my approach was trying to accomplish! 

i think team lead 2 was so focused on what the professor said that he didnt even acknowledge my plan...just went straight to what he may have heard in class and that was it.

sigh 

I already gave them the time stamp of when the professor talked about it and I havent gotten an answer yet. I want my team to start designing our part but i dont want them to start until its confirmed that the team leads are going along with my plan. 

yeah....this is going to be a frustrating project lol but this is the point of what the professor is teaching - communication. 

[mdiongla-se475]

I forgot about PERFORCE!

Before I did the shotgun surgery on this project, I shouldve used the branch off feature so I could test out and debug as much as I want, while not affecting other peoples code! ={ so sad. I forgot all about this. I said sorry to my team of course. I feel so bad. 

They haven’t woken up yet cuz I’ve been debugging from 12am to 5am @.@ im tired and sleepy. but I got a lot of other projects to do! and work! lmaoooooo 

my gosh haha

[mdiongla-se475]

I now understand the subordinate role...

Being given a design, implementing the design, finding design defects, talking to the design team about these defects and asking permission for the change, confused on the whole purpose of certain methods and such....its really hard!

I was debugging a method for more than 5 hours straight! The reason why I found it was because I was creating unit tests - which btw I feel a little more comfortable with. I was walking through the code, following the references and errors and the more I walked in the code, the more problems I saw in other methods! I started doing shotgun surgery on this project, which I know I shouldnt. After implementing their design, I could see more flaws in their design and how it wasn’t thought through too well. An example is setting a Node head to private and not creating a method in Node class to get access to the head. 

Also another thing, One teammate of mine is not contributing his fair share to the project. 

Just really stressed but yeah, implementing people’s design is hard - especially when explaining though messages. Delayed responses and miscommunications. 

Also I think if there are projects where we work with people remotely oversea, I think the deadline for the project should be slightly extended. I think people should be mindful that the time difference of more than 12 hours is difficult. 

At the start of class, I was in Korea at the time for a week and a half and I was stressed all the time. If the deadlines was Oct 25th at 5pm US time, in korea it would be ahead a day so I would already freak out when its Oct 25th in korea time cuz it feels like I should have it done by then. My teammates were all talking together remotely while I was sleeping. 

[mdiongla-se475]

a little problem

We’re implementing Team B’s design but they are responding very slowly. Also based on their design, there are methods that are trying to do the impossible. In ItemdoublyLinkedList, it tries to traverse through bucketdoublylinkedlist but it’s impossible. Were trying to talk to Team B but responses are slow and time is ticking

The best we can do for now is try to make the code work at least and start working on the unit testing. 

Team B didnt provide a unit test guide and just told us in piazza to just put random inputs in the user interface/ main program and just test the project from there. 

My team, team C, will try to create some unit tests with the professors unit test framework from last project. 

I hope everything works out. 

[mdiongla-se475]

Starting on Part 2 of PA2

Implementation phase:

Today, my team and I reviewed Team B’s design. 

Since I didnt have work today, I had the whole day to work on the implementation of Team B’s design. We pretty much finished the implementation. We just need to debug and test the code. 

And today is only Tuesday. VERY productive day today. 

Going to keep debugging and refactoring to improve the code and its performance. 

[mdiongla-se475]

Our member appeared

My team and i have been waiting for the 4th person in our team to respond. They finally respond 10pm the day before the design project is due...They said theyve been looking at the old piazza but they replied before for the new one piazza. weird

he just contacted me and gave me his number to add him in whatsapp.

Its a little frustrating cuz he hasnt done anything and we have just been doing it.

I guess thats the hard part about only communicating remotely, theres a chance the other person will not answer at all and youre left with just waiting or complaining to the person and maybe the manager.

[mdiongla-se475]

Design Phase

Still working on the design project with my group.

One of our members is not responding so we are left with just us three to finish the project. 

We’re almost complete with our design project. Details of the design were left to our decision based on the clients goals. Also, I realized I was trying to over complicate the project. I was just reassured by my group members whether what I’m doing is correct. 

I was overwhelmed with the design phase because it was very new to me. But my teammates helped me understand. They were very patient and kind. 

I think we all did our fair share of work in the design project. 

It’s a little hard maneuvering around Taiga. It’s hard for me to create tables all sorts of tricks that you can do

But my team member Andrew says he uses it often so I was able to learn through him. 

A little nervous with the implementation phase because we have to communicate with two teams, the team that gave their design to us and the team we gave our design to. 

It’ll be challenging but hopefully it’ll workout in the end. 

[mdiongla-se475]

Proj 2 Set up

We have our new team set up. Im team C doing Search. Right now we’re setting up ways to communicate with each other. I’m liking my new team as we’re all responding pretty well. 

Still need finished 1/4 of the lecture for 475 but will finish it morning of tomorrow. 

We got kind of a play/layout of how were going to make the design. 

Also, I need to get used to using taiga a bit so I can start posting diagrams for the design of the project. 

[mdiongla-se475]

Unit testing is a bit overwhelming

When reading other authors code, it can be a bit overwhelming at first but taking my time in understanding parts of the code has helped me. Coding is hard but I’m willing to keep working on it to become better. I also want to be better in communicating with people across the sea. 

[mdiongla-se475]

I finished adding my updated unit tests for my methods

Still waiting on the reply from my professor about whether more than 4 methods are acceptable because my group members pretty much took all the high CC values. 

While making the unit test, I kept getting stuck because of bugs like typos and semicolons. Finally finished it and hoping to receive a reply before its too late ={

While I wait, I am going to finish my Q&A. 

[mdiongla-se475]

A little communication problem

A team member of mine was dropping the class. And i see in the wiki that 2/4 of his methods was claimed. On discord group message, I asked my team member if I can have the other two methods to make unit tests of. My team member said yes - and I proceeded to write my name next to his last two methods to claim it. A few hours later, another team member says, and i quote “I stole ToByteArray, and SubMatrix already“. 

It was frustrating because there was no communication on his part. 

[mdiongla-se475]

The transition

There has been some changes - specifically with the unit tests. Originally I was using the visual studios framework. Now after watching the lecture, I understand what I need to change to make the unit tests work with my group. I have to use inheritance with Baseunittest and then use the methods within that inherited class. I also need to use check() instead of assert. I used assert because I was following the instructions on how to make a unit test with visual studios. I’m still finishing up lecture but I hope I can figure this out before the weekend.