Milestone - last week before Expo

Everyone should be aware that there is an expo next week. We need to work hard and get everything ready for the FIRST LEVEL ONLY. Any other work you are doing on Space Agents should be postponed, and help out everyone else to get it done. It would be awesome to see everyone turn up Wednesday (early) and work the full day to prepare for Thursday.

Here's the sprites I've done for the item drop. The enemy spit these out when they get hit, every 5 seconds (if hit) based on a 10% chance for each item. They enemy might not drop every hit.

• The coins are used in the vend-o-matic and shown in the HUD as you collect them.
  
• The score is instantly added to you score.
• The health is instantly added to boost your health (20 hit points per token).
• The weapon toggles your character to have a gun, if not already equipped.

Space Moscow & BIT

I was tossing around ideas of making Space Moscow an "arena" level rather than something linear, basically a big open floating platform surrounded by the towers not unlike those seen in Moscow. I'm going to create a 3D concept that I'll have posted up in the next few days hopefully.

Also, for those of you that are interested in working on finishing BIT and making an iPhone and PC release of it, I've got a blog up here. If you want access to post your own entries on it, send me an e-mail (mattdyet at iinet dot net dot au) and I'll send you an invite for access. Scott and I have both been working on stuff for it.

EDIT: Concept for the Space Moscow arena.



Thoughts?

Output Library Error

Go to Project in the solution browser, properties, change to EpicGame (not GameLibrary)

Week 14 work

Andrew / James - collisions then zones

Mat / Tahaa - character animations, splash for portal door

Llew - to buddy with Mat or Andrew

Adam - Space pirate final animation, then cavern level sprites (handover concepts for cave to Kieran to model)

Mark - concepts for level props

James S - Working on more concept art at the moment for kieran

Curtis - C# code that I wrote that connects to a MYSQL database incase any of the programmers want to look into it, making the database.

Matt and Scott - This week I'll probably be working with Scott on the Space Moscow level and its layout. UV mapping and texturing for Space level

Ben M - will finish the model this week and start the UV's. i can also make the vendo matic

Week 12 - Project Begins

We have:

XBox demo.
- basic collision
- gravity
- player
- score
- level end detect
- rotate camera
- splash screen / outro
- hud works - weapon change / score / timer

Bugs
- collisions ( Andrew has a solution )
- right click on window - closes the app - force fullscreen on pc version
- explosive velocity of enemy
- fogging
- resize sky box
- zone detection
- character animation - code to support some sort of action matching system
- (art) space agency texture revision

Features
- Level 1 (space agency) need to function as a hub - need design and then code
- Need to finalise level (pirate level Mark and James) - level data itself (polys / coll boxes / fbx)
- Pirate done ( simple version ) Ben and Scott to finalise Ninja chick by next week.
- Ben to to vendo-matic (concept by monday, then finalise over next week)
- Matt D to put in vendo-matic placeholders
- Prepare a list of asset for Kieran to make. Matt D to UV. Curtis is asset manager.
- Bugs and worms for level 3 (Adam) continual concepting of level 3 (liase with coders to see what's possible)
- Andrew/ Curtis - Merge collisions
- Peter/James - explosive velocities/fogging
- Tahaa / Mat - zones and character animations

Meetings
- Agenda #1 (next week) discuss the design / finalise it
- Agenda #2 haxing mode? Got time?

Week 13 - Meeting

- Scott - please go ahead and work with Matt on Moscow please
- Mark - please generate an asset list and concept as required
some sound work with James S also
- Kieran with a a few objects to work on today please?
- Adam - was finishing his sprites... i think they're done, and he was starting his level
- Mat to check pirate level bounds etc.

Space Agency
1) ai's wandering around to make it look busy
2) a vendo-matic for weapons / upgrades
3) a majik door with splash screen to select level

Super weapons (nice to have)
1) we collect a super weapon
2) it is always found in the vendo-matic
3) you cant use this weapon on locked rooms - you have to win those the normal way
[12:15] Mark [Pirate]: okay so maybe evertime you finish alevel
[12:15] AndyH: 4) you can go back to an unlocked room using a super weapon and it has a time limit and lots more bad buys
[12:15] Mark [Pirate]: so the weapon will be a reward in the vendo-matic
[12:15] AndyH: so no more art, a little bit more coding and just spawn more bad guys per spawn point
[12:16] AndyH: yep Mark
[12:16] Scott: thats a good idea... you earn the supoer weapon by redoing a lvl and acheiving it

Sprites, Double Sized.

- Walk Cycle

- Attack

- Jump/kick

- Damage.

these are the current sprites that have been collected, they are double size.

Todays Class

I'm not going to be able to make it in. I've still got to finish the trailer for the game that will be shown at GO3, so what I'm going to do is work on it from home today and then drive up to Northbridge to deliver it rather than sending it by mail. It's hard to come up with 3 minutes worth of footage of the level we currently have in the alpha.

What we need to get done today really is putting together Ben's Space Debris level, my Space Agency level, and James/Marks Space Pirates vs Space Ninjas level, throwing bad guys into them and actually having some playable levels ready for Go3.

Final Push

Monday is the last day we have to get this game in some sort of form to send off to the judges at GO3 if we still want to enter that competition. We'll need to have it packaged by Monday Afternoon if I'm going to get a video made of it, post it off and have it arrive in North Perth before Wednesday.

On an unrelated matter, great job on the website, Curtis.

Also, I have a box full of awesome t-shirts I'll be bringing in on Monday.

Finishing Up

Just continuing from my Blog post, I've been thinking a lot about our schedule and what we should be really trying to achieve from here on out.

We've got five days left. Four days if you make the whole Monday of the 21st for packaging our game so far and ironing out the issues with it. So to make sure we're all on the same page I propose a (very quick) leads/design meeting tomorrow going over two points.

WHAT CAN WE GET DONE?

and

WHAT DO WE NEED FOR A PLAYABLE GAME?

I don't know what you guys feel you can do in 4 days worth of work (more if you include weekends if people are up to it). But I think that we should at least have a bare minimum to consider the game playable.

Programming:

• AI/Enemy Movement
  
• Fighting/Attacks
• Camera Angle Changes

Art:

• Completed Levels
• Walking/Punching/Dying Sprites
  

I have a few ideas as to how we might be able to make combat fun and interesting using that knockback we currently have in the game and making it an actual attack for the player, replacing the "kill all characters" on screen attack with a short cooldown on it to knock away groups of enemies in melee range.

If people feel there are more things we need for the game or more we can achieve than what I currently have listed, I'll append this list during the meeting tommorow.

Competitions

Okay. I still haven't been contacted by anybody at GO3 regarding the games competition so I registered again and searched around for details regarding rules and the like. This is what I've found out:

We need to submit our demo for judging by the 23rd of September. Which is a Wednesday - the last Wednesday we have to work on the game. I suspect that day will largely be spent wrapping everything up and ironing out code for the actual event, so we should send out a build on the Monday.

With it they want a 3 minute video of gameplay. I'll tie this into our trailer and whip something up really quickly.

We have to submit it on DVD or CD, so we can't just drop it off on the Wednesday afternoon unfortunately.

Everything else is largely detail - you need a game summary, instructions, details of team members and how to contact them, etc.

So lets really push out as much as we can next week, we've not got much longer left to go.

3D Modelling Stuff

So I worked on the Space Agents Space Ship this weekend and got it all finished up (as you can see above), but there's one thing I see being a blocking issue and one thing I see being interesting.

1) I really like how the model looks without any sort of texture filtering. It blurs the model too much. the pixelated look is really quite cool and suits our art direction. I'm not sure if there's any sort of filtering in our engine and will have to investigate that.

2) Any models we create as "objects" to appear in scenes are going to have to be placed by the programmers, since when I've tried to do it, UV maps have gone absolutely crazy. This is something we're going to have to discuss with programmers, because I'm seriously concerned about how UV maps are going to work on levels like the one Ben is working on.

Walk Cycle Update.

I know i've been working of this walk cycle forever... but i'm making some progress with it and its likely to be completed by the end of sprint 3.
so just to show how its looking and the progress thats been made in the last week and a half, ive compiled 3 gifs of each stage of production.

Stage 1; blocking out:
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j200/scott_higg/WalkTest.gif

Stage 2; Details:
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j200/scott_higg/Walktest2.gif

Stage 3; Waist Correction:
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j200/scott_higg/WaistCorrection.gif


its still not finished.. must clean and add feet.
~Scott

Art Vision Pt2

I worked on the textures for the Space Agency level a bit more from home tonight, since I want to try and get an art direction down for the levels. Right now this is all just low level design and conception. What I hope to eventually do is throw a light in the scene and bake some high contrast shadows onto the textures to end out with a result not unlike TF2's style, but this is the simple, minimalistic direction I thought would be good to take based on Scott's idea.

Rolling with the whole Perfect Dark theme, too. The two things I'm not happy with is the way the cafeteria walls blend with the other walls, and that the support beams look a little bit too rustic.

Art Vision

I've been having some trouble imagining how the vector enviroments and pixel art characters will combine ever since we decided upon that as our art direction... this morning i started to think that the current pixel-esque art style of the characters would blend extremely well with TF2 style scenery.. so i took a screen shot in garrysmod and just dropped the characters in and i think it blends extremely well.
it has a "cartoony"/comic look about it and it allows us to make low poly models without sacraficing quality or leaving us looking amateur, that is of course if we can nail the textures.
Tell me what you guys think.. I'm probably not going to be doing much in ways of enviroments because the sprite art is turning out to be a huge task, but think it over and tell me if you guys feel comfortable going with in this direction artistically.



~Scott

Design - To Be Discussed

I know Peter had something in mind for a design meeting, but we didn't get to have it on Wednesday.

We still have a lot of stuff we need to discuss as a design team. I did write up a decently sized game design document but it's still incomplete. Mostly right now it covers characters and story, but it's all subject to your thoughts. You can download it here.

Right now the things we need to cover are:

• Weapons and Armor (What they are. How they effect the character exactly.)
• One-Hit Kill Weapons (How exactly they will function and what their effects are.)
  
• AI Allies (How exactly they will function and what their effects are.)
  
• Level layout (How long do we want the game to be played? How many fights in one level?)
  
• Level artwork (What sort of art style do we want? How are we going to do it?)
  
• UI (Do we want text popping up on screen when characters talk, or do we want no talking at all?)
• Storytelling (How exactly is the humor going to work? Is it all visual? Are we happy with the story written so far?)
  

This is only a spur-of-the-moment list, so if you have anything you wish to add I suggest you add to it. But I'm going to say we need to have an extended design meeting on Monday, get all this stuff ironed out, and move on with creating the code and artwork for it all for the rest of this project.

Marketing - T-Shirts

Okay. On the T-Shirt front, I meant to get everybody's sizes on Wednesday but never got a chance. I'll try again on Monday.

After tossing a few e-mails around I've decided to stick with the first printing company I found, which means that each t-shirt will cost around $22 each. We'll be going with the black shirts, small logo on the back and big logo on the front.

So if you can, try to have at least $22 put aside by Wednesday next week for a t-shirt, the Wednesday following at the very latest.

If you're on the blog here (like you should be), do me a favor and reply to this comment with your name and shirt size.

Game Design - Talk

Check out Brad Power's talk from an IGDA meeting...

http://pve-blog.blogspot.com/2009/08/pragmatic-designer.html

Art: 3D Information

Edited to Andy's recommended max sizes.

2000 polys per level model max.

1024x1024 texture resolution max.

Design: Themes

We decided upon the themes for our 5 primary levels.

1. Space Agency (Tutorial, Menu and Last Level)

2. Space Debris (Junkyard in space)

3. Space Hive (Bugs in a meteor)

4. Space Pirates vs Space Ninjas (Space Dojo vs Space Pirate Ship)

5. Space Moscow (Moscow. In Space.)

Web: Team Logo Design

Worked a little more on the Drug Addicted Robot logo. Went for something really simple, I'm pretty much content to leave it as is unless other people have ideas for it.

On the T-Shirt this would be a small bade on the back of the shirt, just below the collar. I'm still looking into finding a place to do the custom shirts.

-Matt

Font licensing

If you are going to use TTF or SpriteFont files for fonts in the game - you need permission. Get the written consent from the author. See this thread about the current state of using fonts on the XBox.

http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/11511.aspx

Go here for fonts, but even though they are free, you must get written permission from the author.

www.dafont.com

Book resources

http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/Professional-XNA-Game-Programming-For-Xbox-360-and-Windows.productCd-0470126779,descCd-DOWNLOAD.html


This is all the code for the chapters from the book we use

Andy H

Web: Logo Design

So I've been working on the logo a little in my downtime today, I mocked up some text and "icons" and came up with this.
It's still very much a work in progress (hence the mass amount of space). I plan to add an eagles head to the top of it and see how that looks. Took me about an hour to do this and another hour to do the mockups of other stuff, so if we're not happy with this one I can do something else.

Also, I had an idea for our little "studio". What about Drug Addicted Robot?

-Matt

EDIT: Back from work and done a bunch more work on it. After bouncing some ideas around I decided to make a CIA-esque "badge" for it, too. Just for that little extra tongue-in-cheek. The badge is finished but I'll likely spend some more time on the actual logo yet.


EDIT: Spent some more time on it, threw around some more ideas. Came up with this:

EDIT: Final version until Monday and I get some feedback about how it looks.

Introduction

Welcome.

Term 3:

We are working together towards a beta release of a game created on PC, to run on an Xbox for the GO3 exhibition on the 1st to the 3rd of October.

Term 4:

Following that in we will be going into Tech Talks, QA, Bugfix and polish to cover the requirements of the course for that Term.

I will provide you all with DSAP's soon.

What are we doing right now?

We are planning.

This sprint will be only 15hours, as planning is fairly extensive for the commencement of the game projects. Following sprints will be around 24 hours including hopefully 3 hours of planning (want to keep planning short next time).

We are broken up into two main departments, Programming and Art. Of those traditional teams we have formed megescrum teams called Design, Sound and Web which comprise members from each team. There is also a Leads scrum.