Spring 2017 I was doing demo games of Taoex at Craving for a Game at Central Surrey Mall. One of the players, a clown by the name of Gizmo, suggested that I turn the game into a computer game. A good idea but a costly one I replied. It was at this point in our conversation that he told me about the Industry Sponsored Student Projects run by the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Intrigued, I looked into the program upon returning home.
Navigating the site, I found the appropriate section and learned that for $500 plus tax, businesses could propose projects for the students to work on as part of their studies. For this fee you could get a team of 4 students working on your project, for a total of 400 hours of work during a semester. For this particular program students work on the following project areas and types;
- Database design and development
- Technical programming
- Data communication and inter-networking
- Client/server computing
- Systems integration
- Wireless and mobile applications
- Network security and administration
- Computer game design
- Web-based, object-oriented applications
- Website design and management
- Relational database
design
Having learned that I had just missed the deadline for spring submissions I had the summer to figure out just what to submit and how to frame my proposals for the fall semester. My research had shown me that the competition for the student’s work was high, so I did my research to increase the odds of having my projects selected.
Turns out that the research was well worth it as my 2 projects were selected out of the 26 available slots and there were over 50 projects submitted. If you are going to try to submit projects, you want to research the types of projects the students like to work on and how to present them. Fortunately, the BCIT site does offer some information on what to do to increase your chances.
The first project submitted was for the creation of the Taoex Club. This membership system created by project lead Jack Yang, Rain Ye and Alisa Dai, to allow players to sign up and form teams that could participate in league play. The club administrators would officiate league play through tournaments that members and teams would compete.
Although this team lost a member, dropping them down to the three listed above, early in the semester, the team did quite well and completed most of their objectives. Had they a complete team I am confident that this project would have been completed within the allotted time. To complete this project, I chose to resubmit it for another round of development. With some luck it will get selected by another team in January.
For the second project I submitted my board game Taoex. I was hoping that this challenging development would appeal to the students and would get selected. It was, and I got another good team of students to work on my ISSP. The lead on this project changed a few times but eventually landed to Davis Pham and rounded out with Anthony Wong, Tian Kirkpatrick and Eric Lin.
This team out did themselves as they created a 3D environment in which to play Taoex. They also added some form of AI or artificial intelligence, so that the 2 computer opponents know the value of the game components and act accordingly. Hell, somewhere along the way the computer opponents set traps and wait to spring them. Bravo gentlemen, bravo.
Once again, 1 semester wasn’t enough time to program this entire game in all its complexity but, this team did well, and they are hoping to continue the work next spring. In the meantime, I have resubmitted this project to the BCIT ISSP for another round of development this winter.
Anyway, I recommend the BCIT ISSP program if you are a business looking to have a little custom computer programming done. Also, if you are a charitable organization, if you qualify as such, the $500 fee can be waived. Check them out.
