Angela Buchanan, Week 4 PPJ, Blog Post 4, GMAP 378

Interface, 2D art, 2D animation, website

Overall this was a productive week for me.

The slot machine was updated and fixed sot hat icons can now disappear under it. I collection of icons was built to go with it. I did accidentally leave out a couple of games, but I can add them in later.

The UFO dash instruction text has also been fully updated to fit the new dash.

I abandoned the popcorn task to make time for the website instead. I encountered a problem with post formatting for the PPJ posts.  I fixed it, but the fix does not apply when viewing a post directly or when looking through the archives.

Positive Content   

- Slot machine fixed

- Majority of icons complete

-UFO dash  instructions fully updated

Negative Content

- website formatting issues for PPJ posts

Work and hours

Slot Machine Update (2 hrs)

Updating took a bit longer than planned, due to file structuring mistakes (My files weren't linked the way I thought they were). However, I was able to work around it and still save a lot of time.

Overall, I tested the animation and it appears to work well with unity. 

UFO Interface Update (.5 hr)

The reaming instructions were updated along with new ones added. As expected, it didn't take too long as most modifications were simple.

Slot Machine Icons (4.5 hrs)

Took longer than I expected. Since they were icons, I knew I could make them fast. However, 14 icons worth of work adds up over time. Especially when designing them to be quickly identifiable and understood.

Website (2 hrs)

Also took longer than predicted. Mostly due to the formatting issues with the PPJ postings. However, the website looks significantly better now and is a bit more informative than it was before.

Total Hours: 9 hrs

Angela Buchanan, Week 5 PPJ - Blog Post 2

Angela Buchanan, Week 5 Journal PPJ, Blog post 2

Art template, Concept art, Website design

This was a hectic week for me, but I managed to complete or mostly complete the goals I set for myself this week. I wasn't able to finish the concept art until the night before class, so it didn't give my team mates any time to look it over. 

Positive Content

-I got a lot of concept art done for the aliens, the ships, and the environment. So now our game is starting to develop a solid image for itself.

-Because I already had sketches, I knew the direction I wanted to go in ahead of time. IT also made it easier to discuss art direction during the group meeting because I already had examples to show.

- The concept art was able to be used to flesh out the art template. I also used the concept art to make the website look more personalized to our team. 

Negative Content

-Once again, I wish I could have gotten the concept art completed earlier in the week so that it have been easier to put together the sell pitch 

-As of right now, the concept art isn't working too well with he website background. Even though I modified it, it still doesn't fit the way I want it to.

- I also would've liked to play around more with the website's design.

Work and hours

• Concept Art - 8 hrs
• Most of my time this week was spent on designing and making concept art for the game. I feel like the concept art does a good good job representing the game, so hopefully it helps lead the artist for the upcoming week,

Art Template - 1 hr

I compiled all the images together and added brief text descriptions.

• Website - 30 min
• Most time was spent modifying the concept art in an attempt to make it fit better.

Total weekly hours: 9.5 hrs

David Monteleone, Week 5 Journal PPJ, Blog post 2

GDD Draft, Status Report, Team Setup, Midterm, Website updates, Task and Asset List

Content with Hours (Examples included):

This week I was tasked with carrying out the paper work. I was tasked with completing a GDD draft. In this draft I went through and cleaned a path so that the group can easily refer to the document in order to get specific details about the goal of the project as a whole. My goal was to make a document where if this game gets picked up in the second quarter, the group that joins us can easily read the document and gain a clear understanding of how to fit into the development of the game. This took the majority of my time, but is critical to get right so that the team can refer to the document and not get confused.

 (6 hrs)

Alongside this was extra team management and setup tasks. I further updated the website to contain the necessary information for our midterm organization review. I added a link to directly download our latest build too.

I went ahead and created a Slack group that the group will be utilizing as our primary means of communication during the development of the game.

I created and now manage the Google Spreadsheet that contains the status report information. This was compiled into a quick PowerPoint presentation or class.

I also put together a rough task and asset list.

(4 hrs)

I attempted to further develop the mini game, or boss level, Slapz, but ran into a time issue when my professor for CS 380 changed the date of our midterm. I needed to stop working on Slapz and turn my attention to studying.

(1 hr)

Content Positive (Duplicate hours from above):

-          GDD has the ground work laid out. The group can now refer to this for overall game design.(6 hrs)

-          The group has a setup management system and lines of communication(4 hrs)

-          The website is updated to be current and contains our current version for download(1 hr)

Content Negative

-          Due to a midterm rescheduling in my other class, I was unable to work on the Slapz mini game as much as I wanted to.

Total Hours for the week: 9 hrs

Tags: Programming, Website, GDD, Week 4, Week 5, David Monteleone, PPJ, Status Report, Task and Asset list

Cory Zicolella, Week 3 PPJ - Getting Started

Website Creation/TroubleShooting - 4.5 hrs / 2 hrs

Website Content - 1 hrs

Rough Menu Art - 1 hrs

This week our group had a meeting where, together as a team, we discussed the general story behind our game and the driving force for doing what we want to do.  We each brainstormed for a bit, and had fun tossing around some ideas for some theoretically really concrete and fun mini games to add.  A few of us are including our prototypes from the last class meeting in the game and will restructure them to fit the current environment they need to be in.

After that, I volunteered responsibility for creating our team's website and essentially our project development's 'home base' -- Sadly, I don't want to put a screenshot of the website you're reading into the post, but I assure you this post's existence is proof that I (somewhat) did my job.  It definitely needs to look pretty still, and have more content, but that will all come at one point or another once we actually get our feet off the ground and have things to put in here.  For now, this site will do for my own sanity's sake.

I also volunteered to help Xavier with the very small job of creating prototype art for a concept menu.  It was nothing major, but I did have to revise it once.  The scrapped version is below:

The new version simply replaces what would be the buttons with the names of the games, and they are all separate images instead of one jpg.

Content Positive

• The website, I think, came together quite nicely. Right now it's simple but I have further plans. (4.5 hrs)
• I made a small push this week to get Riley to help me put some content on the webpage so it wasn't mostly empty, and it looks great so far (1 hrs)
• 'Hand-scrawled' art has been prototyped for a menu.  It does its job (1 hrs)
• My prototype from the last class meeting will be integrated into the game, which means I will be able to develop it further 
• Team Communication so far has been fantastic and it makes everything so much easier.

Content Negative

• Troubleshooting a handful of minor problems with the site getting setup was annoying and took time away from doing other, arguably, more useful things (2 hrs)
• Despite how glad I am our website isn't barren, I wanted to get more up there. Ah, well.

Total Hours for the week: 8.5 hrs