GDW Game Completed

Our GDW game is now done with and officially submitted. In my opinion the title is a bit misleading as I don't feel that we have much when compared with some of the other groups.

Unfortunately a lot of people in the group (myself included) weren't too interested in the game after the design was completely re-done by the game designer. It was originally supposed to be a more cartoony game but our designer didn't get into GDW3 so somebody else took over as the designer.

Also, although our group seemed big only so many of us were actually working on the game, and two programmers can only do so much.

That aside, I think it was a nice little demo we have. If anything this was a good learning experience. The game engine course felt like a "throw you into the ocean so you can learn how to swim" kinda course, hand having to dig around everywhere and try to follow some of the examples was a good way to learn how engines worked.

Hopefully whatever game we work on next semester will be a much more well planned out game and everyone will be interested in working on it.

Weekly Update

So for this past week I have been working on getting the game in release mode, particle systems, and joints in maya.

I have been able to get the game in release mode, so it is safe to say that we will be able to build our game in release mode for the final submission.

The particle systems however, is proving to be a bit troublesome and although the game is compiling and running without errors, nothing shows on the screen and I am working to solve that problem.

Up until recently, I didn't know that it was a requirement for the model to be in the final game, and now that I recently found out, I had to take some time out to fix up the model and work on the assignment. Here is a picture of what it looks like now:

I will be spending most of this next week working on the model in order to finish it in time for the assignment due date as well as in time to get it into the game.

Weekly Update

For the past week the group has made good progress. The reason for this was because the milestone was supposed to be due this week but was pushed back. The group had worked hard to put all the code together and create a prototype of the game for the GDW workshop.

I have been busy with getting 3D sound to work as well as getting a base set up for loading shaders into the game. I believe it will eventually make everybody's lives easier as they will just have to put the shader/sound into the game and don't have to worry about getting it set up properly before it will work with the game.

I will most likely be spending this week on creating all of the sound with another member of our group as the person in our sound department has decided to quit and not work on the sounds anymore. Hopefully we will be able to get all of the sounds recorded and put into the game for the actual milestone due next week.

Weekly Update

With assignments slowly creeping up on me and piling up I now have to try to make the most out of this week as I may not be able to spend as much time as I hope to on programming. For programming I've continued to work on the particle system and it is almost complete. I only recently got my hands on the psd files for the particles so I will now be working on a tga loader to load them in. Once that is done, it should only be a matter of tweaking the numbers in order to get the particles move properly and as desired.

On the business side of things, some other team members and I have managed to complete what is hopefully the last assignment for the course. Hopefully, we are correct and with business out of the way, I can spend that time focusing on programming the game.

Having had some small meetings with other members in the team, it seems everybody in each department is making good progress, although the amount of work required to finish the game is still significant with some members wondering whether or not the game will truly be "complete" within a few weeks. As for me, I don't think the game will truly appear "finished" in December. It will probably look like a game in it's beta phase and hopefully we will get to continue to work on this over the next semester and the final result will be a fun game.

Milestone 3

With milestone 3 due this week, it was a good opportunity to see just how well everything is going in the big picture. With the game being due in 3 weeks, it feels like development of the game is way behind schedule and still needs a lot of work. However, after having done professor Finney's exercise and having a discussion with him, it seems the team is doing fine and is on schedule.

All of the business stuff has been taken care of well ahead of time, so I can say that I am ahead of schedule there. For the programming side of things, I have been playing around with the FMOD files, trying to get them to play a few sounds while I wait for the sound department to start producing sounds. For the art side of things, although I have little involvement in that department, it seems they are making good progress. There are now models the programmers are able to use, although they aren't final yet and will continue to change in the coming weeks.

Weekly Blog Post

With a huge pile of work gone off of my desk, I've been able to spend more time working on our game this week. I was able to set up some of the basic stuff for our game and get it going. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my hands on some of the models so I had to quickly make a level in Maya. I decided to the base into a bowling game until I can get my hands on the models and be able to load them in and code them. Also, I've been able to get the Xbox 360 controller working, and I can now control the amount of vibration on each motor as well as allow the player to throw the ball down the lane using the D pad.

Here's a picture of the level I quickly made just to test out the controls and have the basics all set up. The ball was thrown down the lane using the Xbox 360 controller as input.

I will probably be working on getting FMOD to work next. That way, when all the sound files have been recorded, we can easily put them into the game without much hassle.

Work Pile Up!

My week has been and will continue to be filled with a pile up of assignments (mainly business). I've taken a huge chunk of my time this week working on business course assignments in order to make sure the group stays on top of things in this area as our current business lead has not been doing a very good job.

Looking at the project management assignment, I can say that our group is actually doing okay this year in terms of staying on schedule. Some of the things I had hoped would be done weren't really done but they're nothing major and I'm happy to report that everybody is doing what they are supposed to and we are currently on track when compared with the schedule originally created.

The remainder of my time (time not spent on business) has been spent on playing around with wildmagic and exploring everything it has to offer. This is for helping me with programming for our game, getting Dr. Hogue's assignments done, as well as preparing me for the midterm, which seems to be working out well. Below are some screenshots of what the homework assignment look like:

The first one is taught me some of the basics of working with wildmagic such as translating, zooming, and rotating, which have all been applied to a textured object. The second one is of a ball smashing into a wall of cubes/bricks and having knocked them down. After the workload dies down this week I'll be able to spend more time on programming some more stuff for our game. I'm currently considering spending more time on getting the xbox 360 controller to work with wildmagic but I guess that all depends on whether or not the team needs me to work on something else that is more important first.