Vincent Slifer PPJ week 05

This week was, again, so-so for me.  I completed a new microgame, "Item Dodge," wherein players attempt to dodge an item shot at them within a very short amount of time.  Other than needing art, most of my games just need some fine tuning and testing to be fully complete in my mind.

Positive Content

• Finished the greybox for the micro game "Item Dodge"
• Implemented different control schemes to test
• Fine tuned other games

Negative Content

• Was not able to implement art

Work and Hours

Research (~1 hrs)
- How to create dampened sine waves and implementation with unity math

Programming (~3 hrs)
- Finished greybox for "Item Dodge"
- Finalized features for "Popcorn Popper"

Total Hours: 4 hrs

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 

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

Vincent Slifer Week 5 PPJ

Most of my time this week was spent trying to figure out how to configure the control scheme for the mech game.  So far, I have a basic set up that allows me to switch between keyboard and joystick controls, although I have not done a lot of testing.  Beyond the controls, I worked on a basic player health system and reworked the basic parts of the Mech game build.

Positive Content

• Joystick functionality attempt added
• needs to be tested
• Global player health added
• Locked and hid the mouse cursor

Negative Content

• Spent too much time on research
• Midterms & Essays are the greatest

Work and Hours
Programming Research (2 hrs)

• Researched methods to use the joystick controllers and 2 player inputs
• Researched how to use the input manager (needs more work)
• Relearned some old methods to make basic systems
• Researched Static variables as global variables

Programming (2 hrs)

• Troubleshot some errors from previous builds
• Implemented mouse lock system
• Implemented joystick to keyboard functionality for testing purposes
• Added global health system
• Coded basic health bar with UI slider
• Reworked old code to be more flexible
• Created script to delete bullets after falling specific distance

Total Work Time: 4 hrs

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!

Cory Zicolella, Week 5 PPJ, Blog Post 2

Team Logo Concepts/Creation - (1.5 hrs)
Target Model - (2 hrs)
Sale Pitch - (1.5 hrs)
Perforce Functionality (1.5 hrs)

This week I decided that I'd handle some of the more miscellaneous things, making one of what will be many target models for the Mech Game and Creating a handful of ideas for our team logo.  I also tackled the Sell Pitch based off of our GDD and created a skeleton file that no doubt will go through several revisions before project completion.

The first matter of business for me was getting the Sale Pitch out of the way, so I tried to make the GDD as straight forward and exciting as I could with the current art we have and direction for the game.  There isn't much else to be said here.

Undoubtedly the most fun this week I've had was with designing some team logos:

I believe at this point, we've decided to go with the bottom-most design to represent our team, although whether it will be colored or not, or what those colors will be are not yet decided.  Of course, all designs are not final.

The model was the source of most of my frustration and because of it, I may not be able to get to another one I was planning on doing (at the time of writing).  For whatever reason Maya continuously crashed and dumped all my progress for quite awhile. I eventually worked around it but it really hindered my progress; it took far longer than it should have.

Content Positive:

• I really enjoyed making the logos and the ideas that came out of it gave us a good selection (1.5 hrs)
• The Sale Pitch was created relatively smoothly, mostly due to how nicely the GDD was completed (1.5 hrs)
• The Target model is completed so the Mech game doesn't have to have floating circles now (2 hrs)
• We made a team Slack and that makes communication even more easy.

Content Negative:

• Perforce confused me so much, first because I couldn't find the right one to download, and then secondly because the UI was new to me.  Alas, I know how to do basic file management now. (1.5 hrs)
• The Target Model repeatedly crashed on me and really ate into my team, especially during midterm week.

Total Hours for the week: 6.5

Edit:  I worked on a rough version of the Mech Legs for about another hour and a half.  It was against crashing, I may have to troubleshoot Maya. This brings the new total hours to 8 this week.

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