My name is Ignacio Aldana. I am a senior at Frisco High School. After I graduate, I plan to attend community college, then transfer to UTA for a computer science degree.

During my time working on Project Kaos, I worked on adding enemies that patrol in adjustable pathing, through the use of  “Path Points,” as well as logic as to how they patrol, that being in a circle, or backtracking from point a to point b over and over. Once they see or hear the player, they then stop patrolling and move to the AOI, either from where they see the player or hear them. If the player is no linger within sight or hearing, they will look around the area they last noticed you for a few moments before going back to their pathing

On top of the patrolling AI, I was also responsible for making the Final boss do a shield bash attack. It involves making the boss move to the center of the arena, and then freeze in place as he rotates in place to face the player for about 2 seconds before finally charging!  Both the Patrol AI and the Boss’s AI use behavior trees, which has been the NPC branch’s main area of focus when coding the adversaries. 

I’ve been more proficient with behavior trees in the majorities of the sprints, and using the logic based on what the behavior trees do. It’s been interesting to see my skill slowly develop as I learn more and more on what I can do to improve my code, and further develop my task for the sprint

My name is Tyler Batt. I am currently 18 years old and a Senior at Frisco High School, meaning I will be graduating this coming May. My current plans for College, which are still subject to change of course, are to go to Collin College for 2 years to get my Associate’s Degree and then to transfer to UT Dallas through their TransferU program. My aim is to major in Computer Science as it’s a little more broadly applicable when it comes to finding a job. However, I’ve yet to really determine what career I specifically want to go into. Ideally, I think it’d be quite a lot of fun to enter the gaming industry, but that’s only if I can find a job that pays well and is at a studio with a good working environment. Outside of school, ironically I actually listen to music far more often than I play video games, though I still certainly play my fair share.

Delving into my contributions to Project Kaos, my major focus has ended up being the animating of the player character. This certainly wasn’t the initial plan as I’m part of the Player Mechanics team and moreso planned on specific combat gameplay, but the player needed to be animated and none of us had any expertise on the matter. Animating the player has been quite a lot of fun and has proven very effective as a learning experience in solving unexpected problems. Due to my lack of knowledge on how to effectively animate the character conventionally and a constrained time frame, I instead opted to use motion capture using an XBox One Kinect camera with Viktor as our motion actor. From here came a long journey of various exporting problems, skeletal mapping problems, and general software inefficiencies that took a lot of time and effort to resolve, but have led to the outcome in our game today. Overall, this experience has left me now far more capable at fundamental problem solving, a skill that is sure to prove beneficial going forward in both college and beyond.

My name is Sean Bislig. I'm a 17 year old student who attends heritage high school. When I'm not busy with work or school, I spend my time playing video games, listening to music or just hanging out with friends. My first experience in coding was robotics in middle school. It was more or less block coding for a lego robot, but it was so much fun and I feel this class is what really sparked my interest in Computer science. Mixing my interest in programming and video games, I hope to have a career in Video game design. I plan on going to Collin community college for two years as I am undecided as to which college I want to go to (Plus it's cheaper). Last year I was able to take video gaming programming 1 where I learned a lot about the formal process of game design. On top of this, I was able to design my own game in XNA with a group of friends and although it wasn’t the best game, I definitely learned a lot from the experience. And given the chance, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. As of this year, I'm lucky enough to have Video game programming 2 to satisfy my desire to design something. I'm really glad I took this class because of the people in it, the experience I gained, and the work I got to contribute to this big group project called Project Kaos.

My contribution to Project Kaos was towards the Player Mechanics portion of the game. The focus of the player mechanics team was player combat, movement and other aspects of the general gameplay for the player themselves. For me specifically this meant working on the shield, melee combat, and a few more contributions. 

My name is Timothy Cole, I currently attend Heritage High School and I'm a Senior. I'm interested in video games, listening to music, and coding different projects. I know python, C#, java, C++, and Swift, and am still working on learning more languages when I can. I have been working on creating a custom scripting language to use for a new survival rpg (role-playing game) I've been working on, and I have also created a RTS (real-time strategy) game in the past with unique puzzle mechanics. In addition, I've also created some other miscellaneous applications like a calculator which will take word problems, and previously built a small website which I built using a combination of Javascript, CSS, and HTML, which was a hub to all the projects I had worked on/am working on. I am currently in the Audio team for our game "Project Kaos", and have been in charge of implementing sound effects, getting voice lines done for characters, and implementing and composing music for the game. As the only member of the team, my responsibility is to make sure the game really connects with its users, through the use of music and audio.

My name is Victor Bellato de Souza and I am eighteen years old. I am a Reedy High School student and will graduate in the spring. I am excited to start my life as a computer science major starting this fall at the University of Texas at Dallas. I am grateful to have almost two years of experience developing video games thanks to the video game programming classes here in Frisco ISD and all the work I have put in on my personal project at home; it has always been my dream to create video games for a living and I do my best to take strides towards making that a reality every single day. When I am not at school or working at home, I enjoy spending time with friends and family by mostly playing soccer, volleyball, basketball, and more. Also, I find it important to state that I place a high value on focusing on my mental health by ensuring I sleep well, eat properly, and exercise daily. This is because I am quite a hard worker, a perfectionist, and a strong leader. Therefore, I often find myself putting in a lot of extra time working on things for others or myself that happen to put a lot of unnecessary stress on my shoulders. On top of that, I usually put others before myself and know how vital it is for a team to be able to work together, chemistry has always been a focus of mine in and out of the classroom.

I have taken the responsibility of ensuring our team works together well, contributes equally and efficiently (I am always having to keep people on task), and all find themselves encouraged to participate in discussions. I have become very passionate about this project ever since the first day of class. I have enjoyed being able to let my creativity run loose and work together with this very talented team of students. I am thankful for the opportunities this class has brought me, especially the gift of being able to fail without costing our boss any money.

My name is Pradeep Ganesan, a motivated and aspiring student pursuing a career in Computer Science, currently a senior at Liberty High School and will be graduating in May of 2023.

I first got interested in programming when I experimented with Scratch. I then went on to learn to program with robotics, which further intrigued my interest in programming. And once I entered High School, I started to learn programming languages. And over the past few years, I have gained a strong understanding of Java and C# and have started to learn C++ and Python.  And when I am not programming, I like to play video games or play music. My dream is to become a Game Developer or Software Developer, and I am going to be attending the University of Texas at Dallas to get my bachelor's in Computer Science.

I also have a lot of experience working in a team environment. I like to help resolve group issues and tend to help my coworkers when issues arise. For example, when working on Project Kaos, I would discuss with my team members and create a framework that we could all use as a base to expand on. Which greatly increased our team productivity.

Currently, I am working on the NPC team. I started this year working on Friendly NPCs to get an understanding of behavior trees and NPC movement. And throughout the year I have improved my understanding of the artificial intelligence of NPCs. At the moment I am working on building a boss enemy. I have expanded my knowledge of behavior trees and have been using tasks, services, decorators, and the blackboard more effectively. My next goal is to gain a better understanding of animations and how to incorporate animations within a behavior tree.

Hi, I am Abhiram Gunna. I am a 16 years old junior in Independence High School. I will be graduating High School in May 2024. I plan to major in Computer Science (so I can possibly work for Activision), but I don't have a preferred college yet. Usually when I am free I spend my time watching some pro football and basketball games, playing basketball with my friends, or destroying people in Call of Duty.

My contribution for Project Kaos was making incredible AIs for the game. I mainly focused on the enemy AIs (the AIs the player will be fighting against): normal enemies that attack the player and a portion of the Final Boss. I programmed the normal enemy AIs to be able to randomly roam around in a certain area, while looking for the player. Once it sees the player, it will immediately start running or shooting towards the player. On the other hand, our AI team decided that the Final Boss was going to have three distinct phases: shooting, shield dashing, and sword attacking. I worked on the sword attacking portion of the Final Boss. I basically made the Final boss do a jump attack from a set amount of distance towards the player, so it can trigger its second attack. The second attack is basically where the Final Boss tries to get super close to the player inorder to perform its close range sword attack. The process then loops depending on where the player is respective to the Final Boss.

My name is William Jones, currently a senior from Centennial High School. Like most everyone else in the group, I’m 17 years old and will graduate this May. When I’m not doing Calculus work, I’m playing a video game (often Halo), listening to music, throwing together old tech, or coding something. I first learned Python five years ago and have worked on various side projects ever since. I’ve made a music player, put programs on Microsoft’s ill-fated Zune, and more recently (as in still in progress) an idle/clicker game backed by a custom scripting language. My dream is to be a video game developer or a software engineer, and to achieve that I hope to attend the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington.

My role in Project Kaos has been on our Player Mechanics team. So far I’ve been in charge of implementing shooting mechanics, weapon swapping, sprinting, and implementing saving/loading functions. As with all of the people on the PM team, I’ve been heavily involved in the design and counter-balance of the game’s weapons and combat flow.

My name is Iniyan Joseph, and I am a senior at Independence High School, and I am planning to attend UTD or Purdue majoring in Computer Science concentrating on Visualization and Human-Computer Interaction with a minor in music. After college, I hope to pursue a career in Game Programming. Outside of school, I am the president and founder of Game Development Club and assume a Scrum Master role there as well since 10th grade. I also participate in programming for rocketry through the American Rocketry Challenge. 

I have been doing programming since 7th grade, and doing Game Development since 9th using the Godot Game engine. At the moment, I am working on two projects, outside the class: an infinite runner about gravity manipulation for Game Development Club, and a metroidvania where you fight through a decaying city, which I work on in my own time. I am also a classical pianist, and I am preparing for my senior recital, though I also participate in Band and in Theatre as a collaborative pianist.

 In this game with VGP 2, I am one of the Scrum Masters for Project Kaos and program with the UI Development Team, and also had the opportunity to be team lead for my VGP 1 Project, Custody. I also conducted the merging and project organization throughout the process. This experience with AGILE methodology has helped guide me towards being prepared for a career in Game Development, and I plan to pursue similar opportunities as I go through my career. 

I’m currently a senior at Liberty High School, and part of the environment team of Project Kaos. I’ve been passionate about computer science my whole life, and have taken steps to further my interests by starting a chapter of the Technology Student Association at my school and competing at the state-level in numerous computer-science based events.

I plan on attending Grinnell College with a major in Computer Science, and I plan on joining labs and taking advantage of research opportunities to further the field of computer graphics and image processing.

In Project Kaos, I laid the groundwork for levels and designed the basic structure of areas, such as the underground and upper lab areas, and helped develop the thematic imagery for both the Kaos and Tech side.

My name is Paul Lee, and I’m a senior at Liberty High School. I’m 19 years old and will graduate in May. My interests include anything technology related, whether it be working with computer hardware, repairing and restoring computers and mobile devices, exploring various pieces of technology, and most importantly - programming. My love for programming began alongside Minecraft in 2013, when I started recreating popular games using command blocks. Ever since then, I’ve branched out and worked on various projects, such as implementing and creating my own smart home gadgets, programming a 2D game inspired by Minecraft and Terraria, and developing/operating a Java Minecraft server, aiming to break the boundaries of traditional Minecraft, for 7 years with a small team - still ongoing today! I am planning to attend Texas A&M University in College Station or the University of Texas at Dallas, and I hope to become a video game developer or a software engineer.

My role in Project Kaos was being part of the Player Mechanics team. I was responsible for implementing various mechanics such as base player controls, weapon recoil, properties of projectiles, tracing-based damage/critical damage mechanics, and implementing the backend systems of skills. As for my general role in Player Mechanics, I have implemented mechanics that are fundamental to the core of our game. Throughout this journey, I have learned the importance of transparency and voice with your peers during development, and I am very glad that I was able to partake in this experience.

What I have worked on: I have been responsible for creating 3d models for the game environment. This includes items used by the player, such as a sword and shield, decorative items for the central area of the game’s city, including light poles, benches, garbage bins, and a fountain. Additionally, I have been working on modeling building exteriors for one half of the city, following a theme of giving them all hexagonal attributes in their design. I created the models for collectibles, an airship, and mechanical elements such as levers, buttons, and cogs.

Future Plans: I plan to attend Texas A&M to pursue a master’s degree in computer science. I will also participate in several internships along the way to gain real world experience in the field of software engineering. After graduation, I want to become a software engineer at Amazon or a similar company while creating my own video games on the side.

Strong Suits: I am skilled in creating low poly 3d models that are simplistic in design while having enough detail to be recognizable. I can also create algorithms for procedurally generating levels in games, especially 2D games. Additionally, I like designing 3D environments for games I create.

My name is Nolan Wilkins, an 18-year-old currently in my senior year at Lonestar High School and set to graduate in May of 2023. My interest in coding began a while ago, and my primary hobbies are gaming and programming.

My first experience with coding involved creating simplistic games in Scratch, participating in various summer camps, and attempting to make Minecraft mods. I also had the opportunity to participate in Robotics during Middle School, where I programmed a robot using LEGO Mindstorms hardware and software.

However, my passion for coding didn't fully develop until I reached High School. I have taken all the available Computer Science, Mobile Application, and Video Game Programming classes, learning programming languages such as Java, C#, and Swift. I am planning on learning C++ soon to further my programming expertise.

Around a year ago, I came across the game ROUNDS and instantly fell in love with it. I purchased the game and soon after I started working on a mod to enhance the gameplay experience of myself and others. At the time of writing, my mod has garnered over 44,000 downloads.

In the fall of 2023, I plan on attending The University of North Texas for at least the first year. If I enjoy my time there, I will pursue at minimum a bachelor's degree in Computer Science there. However, if I find that school isn't the right fit for me, I will transfer to The University of Texas at Dallas and continue my studies there.

My role in Project Kaos has been on our UI/Interactions team. My main contributions was the majority of the Skill Tree System. Some of the things I was responsible for was designing the method of creating skills, connecting the skills in the Skill Tree, and managing the acquisition and unacquisition of skills.My other main contribution was the Dialogue System.

I am a senior at Wakeland High School and am also one of two SCRUM Masters for our game, Project Kaos. Since 7th grade, I have been studying computer science and plan to continue my studies at Texas A&M University starting Fall 2023. For the past few years I have been testing out game development as a possible career path. Luckily, this interest led to me taking VGP 1, where I was introduced to the Agile Development Methodology as well as the workings of SCRUM. Here my interest was sparked in project management and I quickly took on the role of team lead for both my project last year, The Eternal Labyrinth, and of course this year, Project Kaos.

For our game I worked on the environment team, creating and designing levels throughout the game. Through this role, I consistently worked hand-in-hand with our modeling team to create an original and exciting world. To achieve this I also spent much of my time researching level design and the aspects of good environment creation. My civil engineering studies background also helped me with creating an immersive city for the player to live in. Despite seeming easy at first, the role of environment creation is a very detail oriented job, often working with others to fit the needs of other teams. I do believe that this is a job that I could very well see myself working in and I am willing to learn the necessary skills to succeed in this role.

Much of my work with our game was not with development, but instead project management. As one of two SCRUM Masters, I was responsible for keeping track of productivity as well as involvement from our team. To document this process, I personally created a spreadsheet detailing these metrics. One thing me and my partner did was create mandatory journals for all team members, ensuring that each person correctly documented their work. Project management is definitely the route I would like to go in my career and I can see myself fitting nicely into this position.