Cluster 13 was up bright and early, ready for the first day of class! After a long and arduous mile up the hills, we finally made it to Jacob’s School of Engineering. We started the day strong With an icEbreaker bingo and a lecTure by Greg Miranda abOut Finite State Machines (FSM) and creating worlds with 3D objects. This lecture helped Us Code our three labs for the day: Ant Simulator, Guard Simulation, and Puzzle Solver! Each lab introduced tHe process of creating 3D objects, codinG scripts, and using tRiggers. After lunch, fierce typing enSued throughout the room while we coded and debugged our labS. For most people, Unity was an unfamiliar interface, but with the help of the cluster assistants and instructors, we managed to successfully replicate the labs by the end of the day!

Although gamers usually don’t touch grass, we certainly did! New friendships were made, labs were finished, and we became excited to start day 2! #wetouchgrass!

At night, members of the first floor Europe hall started a game of four square using some chalk from one of the evening programs, and it quickly took off. Within a few hours, more and more people joined in, turning it into a lively and busy event. The game’s simple, fun, and (for many) nostalgic nature made it a hit, drawing a crowd for the next couple of days. The chalk court became a center for socializing bringing together many new faces and adding a little spark 🤩to their daily routine.

Tuesday was a bit different: we were treated to a Zoom lecture about ethics! The lector proposed an ethical question for us: should self-driving cars protect the pedestrian or the driver? (we… may or may not have suggested that the car simply self destructs 🤷). This introduced us to the two types of ethical decision making: Utilitarian vs. Deontology. This information would help us craft our upcoming ethics video project, in which we would present on an ethical topic related to video games (i.e. microtransactions 🤑). As for class itself, we continued to develop our Guard Simulation from yesterday, adding a combat system and a graphical user interface (GUI) menu system.

We think it’s safe to say that we’re getting better at this whole game dev thing - and we’re only just getting started!

The big highlight of Tuesday’s activities was the Target run - unfortunately, only ~60 people could go, and people quickly fought for a spot (and by people, we mean “two-thirds of the entire COSMOS population” 😂 oops). Maybe next time…

What better way to research than to experience it yourself! We started class by simulating the project we’re going to make this week: a tower defense game. One half of the cluster were “towers” with Nerf guns, while the other half were the defenseless attackers. From this, we learned how important testing games from a player perspective is in the world of game development. 

After that, we dived into creating our own tower defense games, which is currently posing a bit of a challenge. Luckily, our TAs (teacher assistants) are always there to help us figure out what's wrong and write fun questions to answer on whiteboards when we take breaks. 

At night, we gathered around for karaoke! Lots of great (and questionable) singing ensued! Earlier in the day, we worked hard on our skit for Friday's Cosmolympics...

Today each group gave their ethics presentation, dissecting questions like “is it moral for video game companies to maximize profits at the expense of consumers?”. After that we continued to work on our game project, and we’re making steady progress. We may be able to show you some of our work next week, so stay tuned!