When I thought that the cost of hubris from my own overly-ambitious eagerness to code more video games would be only my only detriment, that definitely changed the moment when I had to work in a group setting.
My final project for my ICS 111 class was to collaborate with a group of two other students and work together to plan out a video game that all of us would be working on together. Right off the bat, my mind was firing on all cylinders. There were not many limitations to this project and we were limited to our own creativity and our ability to translate that creativity into code. However, when working in a group setting, I soon learned that communication was also a key component to both creating the coding project and to get it done on time.
It became obvious to me when my idea for a selection menu to choose between three different games that each of us create was pitched out due to the sheer scale that needs to be done to make it before the deadline. We were tasked with creating a game, but I thought with more people, the easier it’ll be. However, when the two students I had worked with mentioned that they have job obligations to attend to as well as other personal reasons, I realized that I needed to ground myself to be on the same page as those that I am working with.
We decided to take my idea on a smaller scale, with one game but with selectable characters that the player can choose. This way, it still implemented my ambitions on a reasonable scale to allow us to be able to properly work together to code the game and have it ready by the deadline at the end of the month. We decided to base our project off of a turtle swimming through the ocean, and it must collect jellyfish while dodging the trash. The use of arrays, random number generators, and inheritance classes as well as other Java code to make it happen. Now with a reachable goal in mind, we were able to start climbing to reach the deadline on time.
It is also around the same time that I realized that conflicting time schedules is a major problem in a group collaboration, second to communication. As the other two began to be more occupied with either their job or other classes, it was left to me to pick up the slack and double my workload to finish the project on time. My biggest takeaway from my first ever collaboration project was that communication was everything, from how big the scale of the project should be, to knowing everyone’s availability to be able to work on the project, and just understanding how much each person can offer.
Our project was turned in on time and you can view it here.