Riley Stewart PPJ 8 Post-mortem

Right?

1. Good variety of games

With variety of mini games being used, there was alot of creative freedom for each individual developer do test their idea. having a a basic framework for development to work off of, the developers had complete creative freedom over the game they developed. this helps prevent development from growing stale, and if for some reason the game cannot go forward, it's less of a loss to the developers.

2.Wide variety of drexel ride movement potential

With the variety of minigames available, it allows the developers to use the rides capabilities in unique ways. the movement of the ride can vary greatly between games. One game, you move as a mech walker, the switching to an interdenominational spaceship. Possibilities are endless, and there is full freedom for developers to find and test  these possibilities.

3. basic framework for development

After we hammered out the bugs of the system, a basic framework for development was created. This streamlines and makes development simple, allowing developers to simply drop and apply this framework onto the games making implementation incredibly easy.

Wrong?

1. Work schedule

This is a personal issue. My schedule for this term was fairly strict, with other heavy production classes this term and working 30-40 hours a week. This prevented me from efficiently being able to produce work on time, as the only easily workable days were late Tuesday and late Wednesday. being so, alot of my work was implemented the week after it was intended.

2. Communication

Communication was difficult, as it took a while to setup slack. even so, alot of people were very unresponsive, leading to alot of confusion with development and assembling assets. This was a bit more efficient and worked out later on, but not fully fixed.

3. changing game concepts.

During development, alot of the minigames were changed alot from their initial concepts. this led to alot of the assets having to be changed as soon as they were made, or even scrapped completely. this was very frustrating and confusing during development. For my personal work, alot of the assets I created were scrapped, such as the initial stello says, cardboard cutouts, and the ufo model.

Resolving for future projects

Now the major hurdles are understood and worked on, development as a whole is far more streamlined. with alot of communication going on between the team members, any issues one developer has, such as art, programming, and design can be communicated with all other members of the team.

Lessons for future projects?

• There's always a way to solve a problem in development
• t's a challenge developing these games, even with the small scope and a basic framework, it's still a full game that needs to be developed
• COMMUNICATE
• get the ideas down early to speed up development and prevent wasted time and work

Riley Stewart, Week 11 PPJ

Mech cannon- 3 hrs

With the project for the term coming to a close, the finishing touches need to be put on the project. For me that involved making the mech canon model, as the original plan of texturing the control panel was reassigned to Angela, being better at color work. Unfortunately I didn't have much of a break, as all of my time was taken up by family obligations and upon returning I had to do work on all the other finals I had going on. So the canon model was fairly straight forward, once selling on a design, it was just a short bit of modeling to be done. The canon was needed before I could texture it though, so that will be left for next week.

 Positive
- final modeling asset finished

Negative
- small amount of time available, despite break

Total Time Spent - 3 hr

Riley Stewart, Week 9 PPJ, Blog Post 6

Foot model: 2hr
Tube Dude rig fix, Animations, and implementation: 10hr
Dashboard: 2 hr

The majority of the week was spent fixing the broken rig on the tube dude. After many hours of tweaking and trial and error, I was able to create a workable, but not perfect rig. Afterwards, I created the animations for the tube dude, which were Idle, Front, Back, Left, and Right. Afterwards came the implementation into unity, which was not much fun at all. After doing a bit of research into Unity's animation editor, I was able to layout and create all the animation states and transitions needed for the game. However, having the coding ability of a potato, was unable to create a script triggering the animations. It ended up that David would have to endure the hardship of learning that. However, the tube dude turned out to be very successful

Another task I was able to fully complete was the foot needed for space aim. This was probably the most straightforward task yet. The foot was cut off a pre-existing human model I had made, which then had the polycount reduced. Following that, I applied a texture to the model in mudbox to make it look more like, well, a foot.

Other tasks for the week, unfortunately did not turn out nearly as well. I began texturing the long overdue control panel in mud box. However, it became apparent that I would not be able to create the texture efficiently in the style needed so it was back to square one, as a new set of UV's would be required in order to efficiently Photoshop it. The uv's took a decent amount of time, requiring specific and organized placement in order to properly work. I was unable to get to Photoshopping the new texture, as it already being late, and along with having an unfortunate accident involving my finger left me highly De-moralized to say the least. As for the mech cannon, that had to be pushed back an additional week, as the tube dude was #1 priority this week which took up most of the time I had available. Hours for this week were heavily restricted, as I had a heavy final workload for my primary class this term, along with my hours working at my jobs being nearly doubled over the last 2 weeks (that paycheck though)

Content Positive
-Tubedude COMPLETED 10hr

-Progress on control panel: 2hr
-Foot COMPLETED: 2hr

Content Negative
-Work hours doubled, other finals severely reduced workable hours)

-Control panel forced to be reset

-Mech cannon pushed back a week

Total Time Spent - 14 hrs

Riely Stewart Week 8 PPJ

Tube Dude Rigging - 6hrs
Dashboard texturing - 2hrs

The main task for the week was to setup the rig for the tube dude. I talked to a professor who is very experienced with rigging, and was able to get information on how to set up a rig for it properly. I spent a couple of hours setting this up, and filled in the status report with an estimate of how far i would be. However, I found that there was an issue with the rig setup and had to backtrack quite a bit. After another two hours of working with it, I was unable to find a solution to the issue as of yet. It's most likely something simple I'm overlooking, so sleeping on it or having another rigger take a look would probably solve the issue.

The other task was to texture the dashboard overlay I had modeled earlier in the term. I created a UV set for the dashboard, but need to further confirm that we are using the modeled one and not the one Angela drew, as that is the one currently in the games.

Pro.
-tube dude rig is mostly setup
-dashboard ready to setup

Content Negative
- broken rig

Total Time Spent - 8 Hours

Riley Stewart Wk 7 PPJ

Modeling Bodybuilder Cutout - 1hr
Modeling Wiggly-Tube Dude - 1hr
Texture Control Panel - 0hr

This week was relatively low on production, having Co-Op A round come up and the mad rush to finish my portfolio, in addition to the need to make up missed class work. The tasks for this week were small however. Complete a Tube-Dude model for Stello Says, Model a cutout for the alien bodybuilder for Mech War, and Texture the control panel I modeled last week. The model production was straightforward and simple, and was done in under 2 hours. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to start the texturing job on the control panel.

Pros
-Base model for Tube-Dude completed
-Model for Tube-Dude complete, able to move onto texture, rig,and animation

Cons
-meeting was difficult
-heavy workload
-late start
Co-Op

Riley Stewart Wk 6 PPJ

UFO Modeling

My task for the week was to model the primary UFO object to be used by the player, and the control panel overlay that will be seen by the player. Using Angela's concept art, the ship was modeled in about four hours, followed by the control panel, which took about three hours. The UFO model itself is primarily used for shadows and reflections that might be seen by the player, as the game will be played in first person. The control panel will be a single png image that will be overlaid onto the players view. For next week, the control panel will be textured and modified as needed, along with the ship if necessary.

Total Time: 7 Hours

Pros:
- Primary models created

Cons:
-Perforce

Total Hours: 7

Riley Stewart Week 5 PPJ

Task for the week: Initial modeling and animating

This weeks tasks for me were fairly limited: To work with Xavi in fleshing out assets for the game "Stello Says". Unfortunately this was not able to be started until the beginning of the next week as I was out of town for the end of the week/weekend, but this was discussed beforehand during the group meeting (thus the small tasks this week). However, we were able to discuss what would be needed, which was a series of pistons modeled to push a cockpit, to simulate the movements that would be done by the ride system. The basic model was completed after about 3 hours of work, going through various design changes over the course of being modeled. The animations have not been completed, as the setup needed is different and a bit more complicated than what I had initially considered.

Work time: 3 hrs

Pros:

-  Basic models and animations beginning to be created and tested

-Aesthetic ideas being tossed around

Cons:
- Out of commission for most of the week, small amount of work done

-Everyone's favorite time of the year: Midterms!