Mars Lander

Earlier this year, I began one of my last assessments for the accreditation of my Bachelors of Science Degree in Computer Science. The report that was created can be read here

Feedback from Project Supervisors

Upon completion of my project, my work was marked and graded, with feedback being provided alongside the grade.

Primary Supervisor

The following are comments and feedback I received from my primary supervisor Laurence Tyler. Laurence supervised my work continually through the process, and we would have weekly meetings where I would exhibit my progress for that week.

Problem Analysis

A very thorough problem analysis, with research covering aspects of physics and education/outreach as well as the technical tools and frameworks needed.

Technical Work

A very good implementation, including all the major requirements of the project brief. Good compromises made between complexity of physics and need for enjoyable gameplay. The drag effects, though simplified, certainly feel plausible while playing.

If more time were available, improvements could be made to the graphic elements, possibly including some background texture / cloud layers during descent to give more of a positional clue. The presentation of the tutorial/wiki material is a bit bare, and could benefit from font and layout changes.

Some error messages were logged on the console while playing, though this did not seem to affect the game.

Particularly good to have done some user testing (albeit only 3) which informed your further development.

Evaluation

Thoughtful evaluation, with sensible suggestions for further improvements.

Presentation

Report is well-structured and well-presented, which made it easy to read, and the material is presented logically.

Good number of relevant references, and properly hyperlinked (which also makes reading easier).

It was good to see evidence that you had followed your stated development process, which seems to have worked well for you. You also have quite an extensive testing table, which was used at several critical points during development.

One small comment about some of the screendumps: It’s quite difficult to read code that is in a smaller font and also on a dark background.

Demonstration

You were able to show the game in use, and talk about its various features as well as the physics involved and the compromises made in the code. Possibly could have done with a minute’s introduction/preamble to the project before launching into the details.

Initiative

You’ve been proactive and well-organised throughout the project, regularly attending meetings and always with something to show your progress.

Summary

A very nice implementation of a Mars Lander educational game, with plausible physics and scope for improvement and future expansion.

Secondary Supervisor

The secondary supervisor is someone who is assigned half way through the project, and they will conduct a 1-to-1 meeting and grade you based on your current progress at that stage.

Problem Analysis

You cover a wide base in the research stage, and it’s good to see that you consider games, edu-games, and gamification alongside technical considerations of the engine and language, and of the physics involved in EDL. The Analysis section which follows your background research provides and excellent summary of your findings and how you decide to proceed, leading to a sensible set of tasks.

Technical Work

Your report presents a good picture of your development process, what you learned about Godot, and good explanations of each of the parts you worked on. You present each section well, and it’s good to see how you developed the physics into code. Good use of use-case/design/FSM diagrams to inform your design and to explain the design to the reader. For the play test results it could have been useful to include a table in the report as I found myself reading that section several times to parse it and make sense of the data.

Evaluation

You provide an honest evaluation of the project, but I think you are sometimes a little over-critical of what you achieved!

Presentation

Very good writing style - easy to read and succinct. The content is divided into sensible sections, and use of figures throughout adds to this. A minor thing - the screenshots of code are harder to read than the listings, and it wasn’t clear to me why some were in each style. Good set of references from a variety of sources.

Demonstration

You gave us a really good demonstration, explaining the background of the project and showing us the working software with talking us through each part. It was really good to see all of the work you have put into features such as the encyclopedia, as well and some really nice indicators of progress during the game like the heat shield changing colour and the sounds of the air as you enter the atmosphere.

Summary

Your own interest and motivation in the project is very clear - you’ve produced a really neat game, and have managed to achieve a lot while also learning how to use Godot, great work!