Angela Buchanan, Week 5 PPJ, Blog Post 5, GMAP 378

Texturing, Concept art, GDC Preperation

I new this week would be busy for me and that I would not be able to get much done. Therefore I took up easier tasks that I knew I would be able to handle. 

One of the artists requested that I make an orthographic to make it easier for them to make a model, so I put most of my time into that.

Additionally, the mech game needed color codes for the targets that are being shot so that the two players know who should be shooting what.

Positive Content   

- Orthographics if a alien is useful for concept purposes and modeling 

- Mech game got a much needed texture update

- GDC selection competition was stressful, but fun.

Negative Content

- GDC selection competition took more of my time than expected.

- Week was busy, other classes and tasks had a higher priority.

Work and hours

Alien Orthographic (2 hrs)

I didn't want the models for this guy to be overly complicated, so I kept the orthographic simple.

I didn't include the back, for it was not necessary. 

Mech War Texture update (3 hrs)

It took me a bit to decide the best way to go about doing this. Right now the colors represent the shades of lipstick (as already seen in-game).

I'm hopeing the two colors are different enough for the player to distinguish in-game, but that will be determined through playtesting.. 

GDC Preparation (4 hrs)

Mostly focused on polishing the presentation, getting/interviewing play-testers for footage, and rehearsal.

Total Hours: 9 hrs 

Xavier Smith, Week 5 Journal PPJ, Blog post w, GMAP 378

Idea creation, GDC, Slack, Mini-Game polish, PPJ

Preparing for GDC presentation - 6-8 hrs
Fixing up games – 2hrs
Editing Slides – 1hr

What a week! Most of the work this week was getting prepared for the GDC presentation and fixing up the games/making a suitable demo build for it. We had a bit of a setback in scheduling the motion base due to a scheduling error and had to go twice, however this gave us the chance to find and fix a loot of bugs in the game.

Firstly, one of the games we planned to show off had a bug where it ended immediately, and so I had to spend time figuring out what was causing that error, turns out it was just one line in the code that needed changing (along with some unity jank).  Secondly, I had to make a separate build for our presentation, as some of the games weren’t complete enough to demo. There were a few errors along the way but it eventually got done and our demo ran perfectly!

Additionally, some of our games that we needed to demo required a bit more overall polish and clarity in the instructions, so I made a few quick changes such as fixing up the movement/instructions on the QWOP game and swapping out the end-goal sprite for Runnerz.

Finally, we had to put together a presentation; I made the main slides (most of them just being reworks of Angela’s slides) before having Cory insert the testimonials video (now featured on our website!) and Angela fix the slides up to give them that extra polish.

Content Positive:

- We worked really hard to get our demo and marketing material up to snuff for GDC!  Everything we needed clocked in at under the 5 minute allotted time and we have things to use for the site now.

-  The game is all around more refined, especially for the games we demoed! (Namely Runnerz, QWOP, Interdimensional, Space Aim, Press/Don’t Press and Abducktion)

Content Negative:

- All of these things were stressful and took a lot of time out of the week

Total Time Spent: 9-11 Hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 5 PPJ, Blog Post 5

Preparing for GDC presentation - 6-8 hrs
Creating Powerbar - 1.5 hrs
Creating Pointing Hand - 1 hr
Website update - 30  mins

This week was largely taken up with time needed to prepare for the GDC presentation that was on February 5th.  Some of it was spent at the motion base gathering people to make testimonials towards Alien Arcade, some of it was tweaking the presentation and brainstorming what we should add, some of it was creating the Testimonial video from the various footage we shot, and of course lastly we had to practice the live demo and presentation multiple times and troubleshoot things as we caught them.  Needless to say, it was a very busy week!  Just in this portion alone, we ran into some editing issues, scene loading issues in the demo, and overall technical difficulty.  We powered through it though, and now as a byproduct of our hard work for that presentation there is also more content to market Alien Arcade with.

The actual plan for this week from the art team was to divide what was required for the games we were making for midterms week.  As it worked out, each person basically got assigned to two art related tasks and had to complete them.  For me, these were the Powerbar for the Ram the Planet microgame (and others that may need it moving forward), and the Pointing Hand for the Poke the Alien minigame.

For the Powerbar, I decided to make it blend in with the dash of the UFO and the menus we already have set up, this way it naturally looks as if it is an extension of the ship in some manner.

As for the Pointing Hand, I thought taking a (more) realistic approach would be silly and accessible in Alien Arcade, so I created a vector hand based off of an actual photograph and tried to get it to match.

The website update was just adding in and formatting the content that we had made for the GDC pitch, which included the gif of the motionbase and the Testimonial video.

Content Positive:

- We worked really hard to get our demo and marketing material up to snuff for GDC!  Everything we needed clocked in at under the 5 minute allotted time and we have things to use for the site now.

-  A Powerbar was created primarily for Ram the Planet, but also can be universally incorporated into games that require it.

- The Pointing Hand is finished and I think came out quite well for what I was shooting for.

Content Negative:

- All of these things took a super large amount of time out of my (midterm) week

Total Time Spent: 9-11 Hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 4 PPJ, Blog Post 4

Troubleshooting tent/Attempting to texture - 1 hrs.
Creating 3 gun models - 2 hrs.
Creating another version of the play test survey - 1 hrs.
Getting motion base footage/interview for GDC pitch - 2 hrs.

This time around I tried my best to make a variety of gun models for the Draw at Noon game, so we have a few options to choose from.  We also could potentially just use one of the two unused one in a 'clone game', so the effort spent on them doesn't really go to waste.  The initial ideas for these came from my sketchbook, where I spent a good amount of time making 15 or more drawings to later be used for model reference.  I then pitched them to the rest of the art team, and put their votes together into the top 3; I then modeled them as I saw fit.

A small amount of my time this week was spent fixing the tent.  I was informed that the normals for the model were on the outside instead of the inside, so it wasn't able to be used as an environment object.  This is mostly due to the fact that I haven't really specifically modeled for a Unity game before and forgot that the normal directions actually matter or else there is viewing and collision problems.  I fixed this relatively easily, and moved on to try and texture it.  The problem is that texturing isn't something I'm good at; I wasn't taught how to do it and easily get confused when my Maya scene doesn't reflect exactly the same way the tutorials do.  I tried this for an hour and couldn't make heads nor tails of the UV problem I was having, so I moved on so I could complete tasks instead of being stalled on one thing.

Another version of the playtest survey had to be made this week; this version is mostly grammatical/answer tweaks for the existing questions, and two new question blocks for specific games: Draw at Noon and Press/Don't Press.  I decided not to remove any questions, because although we think as a team we know where most of our current problems lie, we don't have enough data to support those thoughts yet.  So until the next time I have to edit the survey, I'm not removing any particular question sections.

Xavi, Angela and I also went earlier in the week to the motion base with some playtesters to get their testimonies before and after they played the game, as well as to capture some footage of the Drexel Ride in motion.  We ran into an issue where it took twice as long as expected because despite the fact that we scheduled a particular time, the person that could operate the computer didn't show up.  We still discussed Alien Arcade with the riders until the operator showed up though.  Hopefully we can turn some of the rushed ride and testimony into a useful video to use in the pitch of judges that determine if we will represent Drexel at GDC.

Content Positive:
-I flipped the normals of the tent so if it isn't this week, next week it should be able to be an environment.
-Another version of the play test survey was created (1 hrs)
-Created 3 gun models for Draw at Noon or potentially anything else (2 hrs)
-Obtained motion base video for GDC pitch (2 hrs)

Content Negative:
-Still not great (see: can't) when it comes to texturing. (1 hrs)

Total Time Spent: 6 hours