GDW- Game Developement blog 3

Nov 13-20, 2012

This week, most of our team got down to crunch time, and got to complete majority of their tasks, with a few exceptions due to problems  

Our 2D artist 

Temporary HUD

• got our sprites and HUD have been properly implemented, and are now usable. The HUD has been moved around so that the Health bar works, and in a nice spot. Another major advancement finished was the basic main menu system, which only has a simple selection system for now.   

For next week 

• we need is fonts working, so we can properly display values, such as the player’s score. Also he may need to work on some of the GDP art stuff, such as the poster.

Our audio engineer/Producer (PAE)

•  has done not meet his work quota, due to the fact he cannot solve his SVN update issue. He has tried many resources to solve his, from the internet, to a powerful programming friend. However he still has not used our GDW TA, yet due the fact he wasn’t here on Thrusday and Friday. Despite these complications, he has gotten the Audio from Fmod working, and got some basic sounds.  

For next week, 

• he has to finish this class soon, so I can implement it into the game, while adding more sounds and possibly a theme for the game.

Our 3D artist

• just finished his Bach of models, and gave them to me on Friday. Majority of the models loaded in fine, and I asked him to try to create a special texture for the main player using Maya’s MUD box. However MUD box has been giving him issues, such as improper UV maps, to wrong textures, so hes going to look for some help with this issue. 

 For next week

•   the 3D artist should finalize all the models, and possibly get some nice textures to apply on these models.

Our Level Designer

•  has done a fair amount of coding this week. He has worked on level transitions, between enemy waves, as well as some of the architecture report this week. Also he has tried to work on textures, however his computer seems to give him the same problem with SF image Loadfromfile function. In the end, despite his best efforts we couldn’t get it working and I(the Lead Programmer) had to implement this task, and textures now work!

For next week 

•  he has to work on finally creating the scrolling background, and possibly some form of cut scene.

For me (the lead programmer) 

Spawning into the scene

• has been a week of good advancements, with the enemies. I have modified the enemy class, so it can be compatible with the newly created enemy vector class. With this new class we can easily add, update and destroy each enemy type, as well as create bullets, from this. With this I have 4 classes of enemies, 2 of which run perfectly right now, however 2 which are bugged and need to be fixed. One of which uses Bezier to create bullets which follow a Bezier path to the player, however that is causing some breaking points. However the other 2 enemy types use a form of LERP for movement, which generally run without an issue. Also I’ve added a function which lets the ships decelerate into the sceen when they spawn, like how a spider would rappel down. Finally I began to implement a sort algorithm and decision tree 

For next week

•  I have to implement some form of project tile which is like a power up of some sort, and finish up 3-4 more enemy/ enemy types. Also I have to finish implementing a decision tree and sort algorithm, or decide if another coder should do it. Finally I have to decide if I should implement morphing with vertices, and start working on the reports

GDW- Game Developement Blog 2

Week Of Nov 6-13, 2012

After an intense week of coding, for the team, and crazy coding projects, we are a step closer to finishing our game. The 3d Modeler has done quite a deal of models, though generic, can be good templates. Bullets, and bombs were done but it was done by me, when another coder was suppose to  do it. However due to some technical issues with our subversion, and other inconvenient events I had to finish this.

• With the bullets, 3D collision detection was finished at the same time, done after a great deal of researching. With this a temporary bounding box was created, made correctly while having an object rotating in the center. This bounding box was created with the collision detection which used the min and max of the object’s x,y,z .

• With our game one of the coders had some major issues with loading textures, it came when applying a simple texture to test plane. We narrowed down this problem to the Loadfromfile function, and looked at all possible errors, but nothing could fix this breaking point error. We asked the TA for GDW, Albert and our Intro to graphics teacher, however none could give us a proper answer to fix this error.

• 2D textures still giving us trouble in the sprite/HUD department with one of the coders. He has asked the GDW TA for help, however he still has yet to fix the error. He has requested to meet up with Houge, however Houge is at MIGS for this week. However once both are properly implemented, I believe it is best if he finishes a menu of some sort for the main menu.

• We just noticed hougue’s requirements, and plans to add ease in and ease out which could be done by acceleration. I thought of many different ways we could do this, from the player accelerating, to the enemies “easing in” to the scene. However one definite system which has been implemented is the “ease in, ease out” missile system. This launches a missile which will decelerate from its launch, like a rock being catapulted. Then its “thruster systems” will kick in, and it will start to accelerate, easing in at an acceleration rate of 10X².

• Finally one of our coders has some issue with the SVN, as he can update, but not commit. This is a troubling issue which we have little knowledge about, however it has some issue with the directories. That answer was found through research on the internet; however it would have been more efficient if we had just asked for help from the GDW TA. This problem is delaying the implementation of the sounds within the game, which is quite annoying.

GDW-Game developement blog 1

Week Of Oct 30-Nov 6, 2012

Just finished the last mid term, and 1 week ago, I just fully implemented our OBJ loader. Now its time to get down and working, on making an actual game.

Over the next few days I’ll start to work on the basic locomotion system, moving the player. Also I want to give the players a proper feeling of the object strafing left and right. To do this I’ll have to rotate the object left and right, when moving left and right, but reset the orientation when the player stops moving. I’ll have to find some form of key release function in order to do this.

Also I need to redistribute the programming work load, to do this, I am planning on separate the current items bellow.

• Bullet class
• Collision detection
• Level spawner
• Enemy class
• Menu/HUD

One issue is that the HUD and Menu cannot be done until our sprite class is properly implemented, which is giving one of our coders trouble.

Hopefully this will be done soon, and we can start to make good progress on the game.