Meet Roma and Vlad, our young trainees, who for the third year in a row have been coming to our company during the summer holidays to learn programming skills. Last year, the guys developed their first game, the “Labyrinth of Spheres”! The main object of the game was a ball. By controlling its movement on the playing field, users must overcome all obstacles and reach their destination in a limited time. The game had 9 difficulty levels and 20 types of balls that could be purchased in the store.
This year, our young trainees came back to continue their project, bringing with them a lot of new ideas. Once again, the boys showed incredible enthusiasm and dedication working on the project, earning our recognition and respect. And today we are pleased to share with you the achievements of Roma and Vlad and the difficulties they encountered during their work.
When Roma and Vlad joined this round of practice, they already had a clear goal: to refine and enhance the “Labyrinth of Spheres” game. The duo came prepared, with a full list of new ideas for further development of their game.
The brothers continued their work according to the methodology already familiar to them – Scrum. On the very first day, they created the project backlog, which, after a few minor adjustments, was approved by their manager. Thus, the new phase of their project began, during which Roma and Vlad were tasked with the following assignments:
- Creating a joystick and adapting the game for Android.
- Adapting the game for the MAC platform.
- Designing a unique logo for the game.
- Developing a level editor with a user-friendly interface and the ability to save created levels to a file.
- Creating a new type of level called “Survival,” at which the ball is pursued by hostile NPCs seeking to destroy it.
- Completing additional challenge.*
* During their practice, the boys also received a special task with additional complexity. They were to design various camera modes for the game, including an overhead perspective, an overhead perspective with ball tracking, and a third-person perspective. They also needed to create a menu for switching between these modes.
This summer, the brothers not only showed us that they grew as developers but also demonstrated a remarkable sense of responsibility and attention to detail. They were now in a more collaborative relationship with the practice manager:
- Before starting each task, the trainees estimated the time required for its completion. They proactively informed the manager in advance if they foresaw a risk of exceeding their estimate.
- They shared their responsibility with the manager in other cases too, alerting him about all potential difficulties and risks.
- When they escalated a problem to their manager, they immersed him in the context and provided a clear description of the problem.
In addition to their assigned work on the game, the twins also tried their hand at testing it for the first time. Here are the impressions of one of the brothers (Vlad) on this matter: “Before, I didn’t fully understand how important and complex the testing process is! I had to create many different test scenarios and situations to make sure that our game’s functionality works as it should in all of them.”
Even though the creation of technical documentation was not among their main tasks, Roma and Vlad also decided to develop installation guides for their game on different platforms, thus demonstrating their skills in technical writing too. They discovered that creating documentation is not just the act of conveying technical information, but the art of presenting it in a simple and comprehensible language for any user. The brothers successfully accomplished this task, demonstrating their attention to detail and desire to make the gaming experience as comfortable and user-friendly as possible.
Usually, our summer practice lasts for two weeks, but this year it was extended to 2.5 weeks. Roma and Vlad were so committed to completing their work that they decided to devote more time to it. They really wanted to stabilize the game, fix all bugs and, of course, complete the last part of the special task – to implement the correct programming of the ball’s behavior in a third-person perspective! At the end of the practice, the team openly admitted that despite all their efforts, they were unable to solve that problem. “We need to gain more knowledge of mathematics and algorithms to finish this challenge”, Roma said. Nevertheless, the brothers promised to make the necessary adjustments after the practice. They also planned to provide us with an updated version of the game for testing.
Roma and Vlad’s work on the “Labyrinth of Spheres” game demonstrates their perseverance, dedication, diligence, and commitment to excellence. We eagerly await the day when they solve this challenging task too.
In conclusion, we invite you to have a look at the results that the boys achieved during this round of practice:
New game menu contains buttons for interacting with the new game features, such as:
- users can now practice at any level without restrictions by activating “Training Mode”;
- users can now change the camera mode in the “Settings” menu;
- they can also create new levels directly in the game from the “Redactor” menu.
