Xavier Smith, Week 3 Journal PPJ, Blog post w, GMAP 378

Idea creation, Team Setup, Slack, Mini-Game Creation, PPJ

Content with Hours (Examples included):

            Not everyone could make the entire group meeting this week, but we got everything we needed to done! I also decided to let the artists polish the games this week using the greyboxes created by the programmers last week just to make sure they have a fundamental understanding of unity just in case it's necessary. 3 new games should be coming soon!

(1.5 hrs)

             Made the greybox for the QWOP game! As I let my team know, I wasn't able to do much this week due to a game jam I was attending for one of my other projects, so this one still isn't 100%, but the basic functionality is there

(1 hr)

     

Content Positive (Duplicate hours from above):

-              

           -Divvied up tasks and everyone seems fine with their workload(1 .5 hrs)

-             -Got the basic greybox out for a game in record time! (1 hrs)

Content Negative

-          -Snowstorm ):

-       -Not everyone could make the full meeting

Total Hours for the week: 2.5 hrs

Xavier Smith, Week 3 Journal PPJ, Blog post w, GMAP 378

Idea creation, Team Setup, Slack, Mini-Game Creation, PPJ

Content with Hours (Examples included):

            Due to scheduling, we decided to change our meeting structure to one large meeting, then another one where we check in once a week on Sundays. This meeting we also talked about restructuring how we delegate tasks so that no one person has 30 things to do like last term (sorry David!). Finally, we drew up some mini-games, picked 5 to work on and went our merry ways. Here's hoping the new system runs just a little smoother

(1.5 hrs)

              Finished making CrazyBall! That one took a lot longer than I thought it would. We don't quite have the art and art direction for it yet, but it's still fun regardless. In a nutshell, the human players have to control a ball (player 1 rotates left/right player 2 moves forward/backward) and try to avoid one ball controlled by an AI, and the other controlled by the alien. This mini-game goes by in 4 seconds and everyone can move quickly so you're gonna have to react quick to this one. 

               Additionally, I went ahead and created generic movement scripts for humans and aliens respectively in 2D space that we can drag and drop into games to hopefully allow us to have a more universal movement system without having to worry about writing new scripts and changing code around. Here's hoping we find other uses for them in the future and the work pays off!

(6 hrs)

     

Content Positive (Duplicate hours from above):

-              

           -Work should be more fairly distributed now and mini-games should require significantly less time to be created from start to finish (1 .5 hrs)

-             -Learnt to make a cool little mini-map and added some more universal drag-n-drop script

s to the project cuz we all about that modular life (7 hrs)

Content Negative

-          none

Total Hours for the week: 7.5 hrs

David Monteleone, Week 2 Journal PPJ, Blog post 2, GMAP 378

Content with Hours (Examples included):

This week I worked towards the grey boxing of a new mini game (I briefly started some of it last week). This mini game has been code named the ‘Water Gun’ game. The idea revolves around shooting a target to move it upwards towards the top of a pole. When the target reaches the top, the humans receive points and move onto the next game. There’s a catch though! The aliens on the outside are mashing the up arrow to move their own target up towards the top of their own pole. If the aliens reach the top before the humans then the humans lose. I helped brainstorm this idea and come up with several of the game mechanics that I’ll discuss below. This time marked here is for brainstorming.

(1.5 hrs)

                Here’s where plenty of my Unity skills were tested. Since I was never too deep into one mini game last term, my nitty gritty Unity skills are lacking. The mechanics took me a while to make. The mechanics I implemented into the Water Gun game this week include: recoil from firing the water gun, syncing the player controls together, allowing the aliens to move their own target upwards with the up arrow on the keyboard, random motion from the alien ship hovering, and adding all of the necessary UI elements to allow players to understand the game. All collision mechanics had to be implemented by myself too.

                Here’s how the game works as a whole as of now. The humans hold their fire buttons together to fire the water gun. There is no direct aiming! As the water gun fires, the ship that the humans are in recoils upwards. This allows them to track their target up. If the water gun stops firing then the ship moves downward to its original position. The game relies on good cooperation between the humans. Messing up once can result in an easy victory for the aliens. The aliens simply need to mash the up arrow to move their target up. Now the aliens have a mini game that should get their hearts racing! All of the previously mentioned mechanics have been implemented into the grey box this week. Scoring, timers, winning, and losing work appropriately in the game too. I made a temporary selection box on the game select screen to play it with the other games. Below is some example code for how I implemented to hovering movement of the ship during the game:

  float offsetY = Mathf.Sin(Time.time * speed + timingOffset) *     height / 2;

        Vector3 vy = new Vector3(0, offsetY, 0);

        transform.position += vy;

(4.5 hrs)

Content Positive (Duplicate hours from above):

-          The original idea, concept, and mechanics for the Water Gun game were brainstormed. (1.5 hrs)

-          The grey boxed Water Gun game has been added to Alien Arcade along with its base mechanics. (4.5 hrs)

Content Negative

-          None

Total Hours for the week: 6 hrs