:: Finally UP :: TeamWork :: Friends

OMG, my group's app: Codename Gentoo's finally up, though it's a hardly functionable game but it's finally up:) After the scraping of the first design, we've finally decided on the current one. After sleepness nights (literally) and many hard work, the design's finally up on my part and the code up on my friend's part. We've worked rentlessly. I realised that I've hardly had dinner back in my hall, in fact, I can't recall when was the last time I did or spent much time with them, I was always in school working but I have to really thank my hall mates!! they were very understanding and helpful, always helping me da bao dinner so i can eat when i went back and though i hardly did go back for dinner, they still informed me on when they're having it or their activities >.< I'm really touched, that though I've not really spent much time with them, they were still there helping me, informing me of their activities and for that, I'm happy that I've made such wonderful friends >.<

Back to working. I think when my team was formd, our roles were rather defined, Im the designer, Laurence's like the team manager and overall lead like that, coming up with game ideas and what not with our God (that me and laurence pray to for things to materialized) programmers, Patrick and Eldwin.

During the lesson on Monday, where we learn how to break down our projects to smaller modules and how to assign the different workload to people who do them best and also how to coordinate and make the things work. While the case study were large, rather "long-term" projects, much longer then us anyway, it might not really apply well if we do it case by case. This is especially so since we aren't working on this full time and it's rather hard to coordinate and really put down all the details of what we do, when do we have to complete it and how it is interdependent with things other's do. However, the key idea was there. I guess everyone knows in their heart how to work in a group and things just naturally progressed from there. Breaking down the assignment, assigning jobs to people who are good in them, communicate on what each other require from the other as well as setting deadlines and updating each other. It is afterall, a groupwork, we have to work together. While we know this and how to work in a group, the model presented to us on Monday was rather interesting and gave me a new insight on how things work with huge groups. Things were more organised, dynamic and there were a lot more planning within it. Dispatching work and working in a close knit group is very important if you want to get a good work done.

However, in the world around us, i can see a lot of people that don't bother to really think and look at what they are good at. They hardly pursue what they're interested in while those that do enjoy themselves and more often than not succeed. It's rather sad when you see a lot of adults out there complaining about their jobs, hating them and what not since they aren't really doing something they like or is good at. They drag themselves to work everyday and I dunno, just see to plough through their very dull day. I wonder, we have limited time on earth, why not spent time enjoying ourselves. For me, though I've been working non-stop and literally didn't slp to come up with the second version of the design, I'm still happy and willing to do so since I'm excited about what we do and really want to do it well. I hope that this can continue on and in the future I'd be working like I am now, happy :) No, i shan't hope, I WILL get such a job. When I know how it feels like working for what you like, the excitement, the sense of accomplishment when you've finished, I won't want to settle for something I don't like and have to drag myself through:)

That brings me to another point i've observed. People are multi-talented. No matter where you go, there're people with different talents around and in a group you need tha variety in talent there. Like prof said, the programmers and non-programmers, though they do not have the same set of skills, they are invaluable to the team, to make things work. I believe, in order for things to work, in this case a project, people really need to start doing what they do best at. If you get a group of super good programmers, if they can't design, the app will not look as appealing while on the other hand, if you don't have a good programmer, no matter how good looking your app is, there isn't really much substance :) Another thing is that people learn VERY fast. Be it the programmers or designers like myself who are new to all these things, i must say we're doing and coping pretty well. This proves one thing to me, if there's a will, there's a way, there's no such thing as too hard or no time, if you really want to learn, you can fork out the time.

Talking about learning, I better start going through my other modules. It was such a busy few weeks that I hardly read through any notes and now I'm behind the notes for some modules.. okay, weekend shall be dedicated to that!! let's just hope I can wake up tomolo and absorb things XD until then >.<