Re: Blizzard Lab Improvement Donation...

[Max Robert Chung]

Hey guys, I was talking a bit with Joseph today about what we were thinking of buying with the Blizzard check. He's written up a spreadsheet prior and shared it to a few of us and Magda about it, but I think it'll definitely be a good idea to share it among us to see if we have any of our own priorities to add or any items on the list we'd like to discuss. I remember we talked over a couple things that could help us on our week 9 officer meeting. A few things I/we brought up: a projector, iOS developer account for the club, FL Studio, a server, private WiFi.

Max

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joseph Than <th...@uci.edu>
Date: Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 6:48 PM
Subject: Re: Blizzard Lab Improvement Donation...
To: El-Zarki Magda <elz...@uci.edu>

Updated! Went over $12000, by roughly $80.

Changes:

• Re-added the PS4 dev kit.
• Added 1 iPad 2 and 2 Nexus 7s to help support our mobile game development background.
• Removed reserve accounts and transfer schedule.

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Joseph Than <th...@uci.edu> wrote:

Hi Magda,

I'll work on an alternative plan and send that to you around later tonight, most likely around 7 pm. I can likely push up the costs with tablets and adding back the PS4 dev kit.

If you could ask about saving, that would be awesome. And thank you very much for update about the systems in 3231! Those will be very useful! Especially since we do Art/Animation workshops up there and people sometimes can't bring their computers.

Thanks again,

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 1:09 PM, El-Zarki Magda <elz...@uci.edu> wrote:

Hi 

I am not sure Blizzard will allow us to save $2500. They want to help us now. My gut feel is spend it all. I can ask and see what their reaction is to that idea.

BTW, I bought three systems for 3231. one is a 3D modeling station and two are basic stations, similar to what you have in your initial request for Blizzard. They are being installed as we speak They are connected to the COGS lab.

Magda

*******************************************

Prof. Magda El Zarki

Director of the Research Inst. in Virtual Environments and Computer Games

Prof. of CS

DB School of ICS

UC Irvine

elz...@uci.edu

*******************************************

On Jan 13, 2014, at 12:50 PM, Joseph Than <th...@uci.edu> wrote:

Hi Magda,

Apologies for the late send.

As a note about the budget, I've made some drastic changes due to consideration for long term sustainability.

I've substantially reduced lab costs to $8823.96. I completely agree with ensuring we think about the future and my conclusion was that we cannot predict trends within this short amount of time, which is why I allocated $2500 to reserve for an annual transfer for 4 years. Future officers will have to decide at their own discretion what to spend that money on, whether it is repairs, upgrades, or club events.

Major Changes:

• I've put in 2500 dollars onto reserve for future years. We'll set up an 3rd party account for VGDC that will do an annual transfer of $625 to the VGDC club account for 4 years.
• Reduced the amount of Unity licenses from two to one and added on additional dev licenses onto that singular account. This one Unity license will be used as a daily build computer for whichever projects need it. This increases our Unity cost by about $2000, but with the VGDC current direction, the Unity engine is likely to have a high usage frequency for the next 3 years.
• Updated 3231 requests to be 1412 requests for a few computers. Updated computer costs based on current listings and also removed CD Drives and Cases because we can swap cases within the lab computers. Removed monitors due to the high amount of monitors already in the labs. If extra is needed, we can decide that later.

Please let me know if any changes are needed.

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 12:54 AM, El-Zarki Magda <elz...@uci.edu> wrote:

Good!

*******************************************

Prof. Magda El Zarki

Director of the Research Inst. in Virtual Environments and Computer Games

Prof. of CS

DB School of ICS

UC Irvine

elz...@uci.edu

*******************************************

On Jan 12, 2014, at 11:37 PM, Joseph Than <th...@uci.edu> wrote:

Working on this now and will hopefully have an update by morning.

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 1:41 PM, El-Zarki Magda <elz...@uci.edu> wrote:

Hi There:

Blizzard is getting the contract ready. They are going to give us $12K. They want you to look at the list you sent them, and re-check prices and try to make it a close as possible to $12K. IF you are a little over that is OK, not we are at $13.4K.

Please note that these systems will be installed and maintained by the VGDC, ICS support has nothing to do with anything in 1412. So please make your systems choices based on that you as students having to maintain them. Also note, that it will be several years before we will upgrade again, so please think longterm, and plan on what will take off and become mainstream in next 12months and what will be “fading out". My two cents worth. 

ICS support only maintain COGS and 3231 too as the systems in there will be connected to the COGS servers and new workstations are coming in that will be under the umbrella of COGS. 

BTW, we are installing a key pad on 3231 too in next 2-3 weeks. will make it easier to control access and give more people the ability to get in, e.g., the senior design students.

I attach what you gave me before the break. Please update and send to me by Monday if possible. I am hoping to get the check by mid Feb. Things move slowly with large corporations! :)

Magda

*******************************************

Prof. Magda El Zarki

Director of the Research Inst. in Virtual Environments and Computer Games

Prof. of CS

DB School of ICS

UC Irvine

elz...@uci.edu

*******************************************

--
Joseph Than

University of California, Irvine

Business Economics, International Specialization

Management, Information and Computer Science Minors

th...@uci.edu | 1.425.306.1356

--
Joseph Than

University of California, Irvine

Business Economics, International Specialization

Management, Information and Computer Science Minors

th...@uci.edu | 1.425.306.1356

<Blizzard_Lab_Improvements.xlsx>

--
Joseph Than

University of California, Irvine

Business Economics, International Specialization

Management, Information and Computer Science Minors

th...@uci.edu | 1.425.306.1356

--
Joseph Than

University of California, Irvine

Business Economics, International Specialization

Management, Information and Computer Science Minors

th...@uci.edu | 1.425.306.1356

--
Joseph Than

University of California, Irvine

Business Economics, International Specialization

Management, Information and Computer Science Minors

th...@uci.edu | 1.425.306.1356

[Kenneth Chong]

I'd definitely be up to trying to do dev work on a PS4, but how would we have the club share that? Also, I haven't been paying too much attention to the ID@Xbox program; do we know if we could start developing using an Xbone anytime soon? Other than that, everything else looks like worthwhile investments.

[Max Robert Chung]

I as well; I'm definitely a bit hesitant on the PS4 and XBox One development kits seeing how little time we've put into the PS2/PSP/XBox's around the lab.

Max

[Kenneth Chong]

The Xboxes got a decent amount of use when XNA was still alive, but the other things we never had the documentation or authorized accounts for, so nobody knew how to use them. Thus, nobody used them. At the very least, we would be able to keep better track of documentation for the PS4, and having experience developing for it would be beneficial for members of the club, provided that we don't lose the documentation and required account access like what happened last time.

[Sean Creveling]

All documentation for Playstation systems are online now so we can't lose them. We could actually set up the PSP kit, but it's a bit late at this point.

--

Sean Creveling

Vice President 

Video Game Development Club, UCI

[Khai Ba Nguyen]

Where the ZBrush licenses at? And at the moment, you can't actually use Xbones as a devkit at the moment; that'll happen a bit later down the line so for now we should probably lower its priority.