Ryan Crim, Week 7 Journal PPJ, Blog post 7, GMAP 378

Content with Hours (Examples included):

My main task for this week was to update the scoring in the game to make it more visual to players without requiring a lot of time to look at it. To do this, as a team we decided to split up the score in two different scores (one score for the humans and another score for the aliens), so that we could implement a tug-of-war style score bar. The way that it works is that depending on the difference in scores between the two teams, the bar fills with more of the winning team’s color as shown in Figure 1. In addition to implementing the score bar prefab to add to each game, I also updated the Score and ScoreChange scripts to properly work with the new scoring system as well as went through the scripts for each individual game and reworked them to handle the new system and to add points for humans/aliens accordingly. After this extensive reworking of the games, I went through and tested each one to make sure that all of the updates work as expected. Furthermore, I updated the High Score scene to properly display each team’s final score and to show the top three high scores for both the aliens and the humans as shown in Figure 2. I also noticed that the scores were not being saved anywhere as well, so I updated the high score script to load from and save to XML files for each team’s high scores. (5.50 hrs)

Figure 1. In-game score bar showing change after a win for the humans

 

Figure 2. High score screen showing scores for both teams

After working on the scoring, I had a bit of time to flesh out a quick idea that came up to implement a DDR-style micro-game. The main gist of the game is that the screen is split into two with the aliens on the left and the humans on the right as shown in Figure 3. “Notes” are spawned in the center of the screen and move toward each team’s input area. If the player inputs the correct direction (see screenshot for controls) when the note is over top of the corresponding input area, the team is awarded +2 points and the note sparks a bit (seen by the green note on the alien’s side). If the wrong input is entered, the input is entered too early/late or the note reaches the edge of the screen, the note fades away and no points are awarded (seen by the rightmost red note on the human’s side). The notes continue to spawn until there is no time left. In terms of the work required for this, it involved writing each of the scripts, building up the scene with all of the necessary art assets and retrieving the current background music (http://www.playonloop.com/2010-music-loops/95/). In order to make the work a bit easier, I salvaged bits and pieces of the code from each of my other games, those being Abducktion, Draw at Noon and G-Switch. Some of the repurposed code included the analog input logic from Abducktion and the object rotation from Draw at Noon/G-Switch. (5.00 hrs)

 

Figure 3. Screenshot from Dance Off micro-game

Lastly, I made a couple of modifications to Draw at Noon. The first of which was adding in the textured alien model that was being worked on the past few weeks. The issue at this point, though, is that the current model does not have any rigging or animation as I believe it is still be worked on. Therefore, as you can see in Figure 4, the t-posed alien looks out of place, however, it does look better than the existing 2D placeholder. In addition, I made a couple of slight changes to how the bullet works, including updating its speed, starting it exactly in the barrel and changing the color of depending on who shot it (pink for humans, green for aliens). (0.50 hr)

 

Figure 4. Screenshot of Draw at Noon with textured alien model

Content Positive:
- Reworked the scoring to be split between the two teams to create more competition
- Added visual score bar prefab to each game to make it easier to tell who is winning
- Updated High Scores to show saved scores for both teams
- Added Dance Off micro-game
- Added textured alien model to Draw at Noon
- Modified bullet behavior to improve it slightly

Content Negative:
- Still waiting to see if the rigged/animated alien model happens

Total Hours for the week: 11.00 hrs