David Monteleone, Week 8 Journal PPJ, Blog post 5

Drexel Ride bug, Space Aim Art, Unify UI, UI art, Game select, mech warfare bug, Runnerz, PPJ

Content with Hours (Examples included):

The Drexel Ride bug is fixed! After a couple weeks of being a pest, I was able to implement a fix to all mini games so that scenes can transition from game to game without destroying communication to the Drexel Ride. This took a solid amount of time and a large amount of debugging at the Drexel Ride itself. I had to schedule two sessions at the Drexel Ride and work on concept fixes at home. Xavier came up with the idea and gave me a base implementation. I got it to work with each scene. At the same time, after fixing the bug, I got some playtests from players actually inside the Drexel Ride!

(3 hrs)

After fixing the bug, I moved onto unifying the UI so that the feature of our UI is in the last Alpha Build. I unified each game so that the UI and all UI elements are located in the same places for each game. After implementing that, I added several of Angela’s controls UI art to display what the controls are for each game. Now players have a way to know what controls should do what in each mini game. After fixing up the UI I moved my efforts onto removing the ugly game select screen that was present in all of our previous builds. Now the aliens on the outside select games on the main menu screen. I also added a counter that displays the number of games left for the aliens to select. There was also a critical bug from the mech game that didn’t allow users to use the mouse of the main menu after playing the mech game. I went through and found the bug’s source and fixed it. Below is the UI I organized and unified.

(4.5 hrs)

Last week I added a new minigame called Runnerz. I added red indicators at each jump in the game so that players now know when to jump. This is definitely a balancing piece that will be worked out in the coming weeks. I also made my timer and scoring system utilize the same code used in Mechanized Warfare and Space Aim. Less code means less bugs!

(1 hr)

Last, I added Cory’s Lego grill artwork to Space Aim. Now players are going through a Lego grill in space aim. It’s a crazy idea, and it looks awesome! I had to add box colliders to his model and test that it works for the current version of the game. The Stello Says art was not ready and thus I couldn’t implement it.

(1.5 hrs)

Content Positive (Duplicate hours from above):

-          Drexel Ride bug is fixed and players have played all mini games in motion. (3 hrs)

-          The UI is unified and using artwork. The ugly game select screen is gone. The mech mouse lock bug is fixed. (4.5 hrs)

-          Runnerz has red flags added for balance and uses the same code from our other games. (1 hr)

-          Space Aim has the Lego grill art added with the proper colliders. (1.5 hrs)

Content Negative

-          Stello Says art was not ready to be added.

Total Hours for the week: 10 hrs

Tags: Drexel Ride bug, Space Aim Art, Unify UI, UI art, Game select, mech warfare bug, Runnerz, PPJ

Chenghao Wang, Week 7 Journal PPJ

For this week, I added few new features to the Space Aim game.

    

First of all, I added a 3^rd player control the moving wall, it can make the people outside be involved in the game. And I redesign the placeholder wall to adapt this change.

And I also changed the data like the moving speed, the rotation speed to balance the game, but all the data right now is temporary and will be ready to change when the arts are implemented. 

But when I updated my stuff to Perforce, there is a conflict since someone else just updated his stuff. So I have to redo everything, this is the major issue this week.

Positive Content

• - The team discussion was going well.
• - Implement 3^rd player.
• - Redesign the wall
• - Rebalance the game.
• - Redesign the shaking effect. 

Negative Content

• - Perforce issue.

Work and Hours

Programming (4 hours)

• - Create new player control.
• - Redesign the wall design.
• - Change moving speed.
• - Redesign the shaking effect. 

Total Work Time:  4 hours

Angela Buchanan, Week 7 PPJ - Blog Post 4

Angela Buchanan, Week 7 Journal PPJ, Blog post 4

Interface Design, art assets

I expected my schedule to be busy, but not this busy. Unfortunately I did not meet my intended goal, but I still managed to get work done. My biggest issue was focusing too much on the cutout when I should have stuck with a rough draft of that and focused on working on the backgrounds and interface.

I have a template laid out for the interface now, so I expect to get the remaining art assets out quickly next week.

Positive Content

- The cutout art is fully completed

- I have a template set up for the dash interface, so making the remaining interface elements should be relatively quick and easy

Negative Content

- Unexpected schedule mishaps made the week busy

- I spent way too much time on the cutout when I should have focused on more important assets

Work and hours

·         Cutout – 5 hrs

·         Art for a cutout that will be used in the mech game. Muscles are difficult to draw even with a reference.

·         Interface art – 1 hr

·         Turned the concept art into a template so that I can quickly create assets for the dash. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted.

·         Background art - 1 hr

·         Since it’s for the background, I wanted to make it so that it can seamlessly tile. As of right now, I kept them simple, but I may add texture depending on surrounding assets. Both are vectors and can easily be expanded.

·         Status Report - 30 min

·         I am now fully in charge of making the status report.

Total weekly hours: 7.5 hrs

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

Cory Zicolella, Week 7 PPJ, Blog Post 3

Creating Qualtrics Survey v1.1 - 3 hrs
Lego Grill Model - 2 hours
Sell v3 - 1 hour

This week I went hands on with the Qualtrics survey, improving it from its previous 8 question version to a 30 question version complete with branching and question validation.  This will be the basis for the next iterations of the survey (which I have plans for), hopefully including some heat map picture info and other things.  The survey combines both experiences with and without the use of the motion base using logic pathing, so I don't have to make two different surveys to accomplish slightly different things.  Instead, I included all of the relevant questions and organized them accordingly.

I also tackled the 'Lego Grill' model idea we had for Space Aim- in our meeting this week we realized we need to capture our wacky essence that we had pitched for so long, and we can't do that without some wacky game concepts or models.  So for Space Aim, our direction we decided to go in was perhaps make the ship a big foot trying to navigate its way through the holes in the lego walls, that also seemingly are covered with hot grill grates (ouch!).  This would have taken half the time, had I not finished the model the first time then realized it was far too high poly for Unity.

 I then remade it with roughly half the polys it used to have, and that still may be too much, but it's certainly better than it was (and I have an idea of a way to drastically reduce it more if I have to).

I also made some minor updates to the Sell pitch including coloring text and changing the font to reflect our art direction.  Alot of my time here was spent trying to get some good pictures of the games from the Unity scenes to include, but I didn't have a controller I could connect to my PC which made it sort of a wasted effort, because I couldn't navigate.

Content Positive
-The Qualtrics Survey is 30 questions, and has full branching and validation (3 hrs)
- I have a v1 of a Lego Grill model for the Space Aim environment (2 hrs)
- The Sell Pitch v3 has been updated to reflect art direction (1 hrs)

Content Negative
- I had to remake the Lego Grill model as soon as I finished it; but it was my fault
- Midterms this week impeded the schedule I had originally planned
Total Hours Spent - 6 Hours

David Monteleone, Week 7 Journal PPJ, Blog post 4

Content with Hours (Examples included):

This week involved a large update to Alien Arcade with plenty of work from myself.

First I had to implement a transition scene for each mini game to move to when it ended. Now when each mini game ends it loads the transition and the next mini game. The game now acts as a seamless fluid piece.

(3 hrs)

I added in music to fit each mini game along with art for the menus and transition scenes. I then added scoring that persists throughout the duration of the game. Now when players score in each game it adds into a cumulative total. I added a high score screen at the end of the game that tells the players how well they did altogether. The new main menu can be seen below with the art from Angela:

(3 hrs)

From the input given from the group, I decided that Slapz should be converted into a new mini game called Runnerz. This new game takes the platforming concept from Slapz and makes the game entirely about jumping and moving about a platform world. The base grey box mini game was added to the build and can be accessed from using the blank panel on the main menu on the far left.

(3 hrs)

Last, I attempted to fix the Drexel Ride scene transition bug. The ride will break when the object talking to the motion base is destroyed. Thus, we implemented scene transitions that do not destroy the object. Our first implementation only worked for Stello Says and jumping back and forth to the main menu and Stello. Besides that the transition scene broke it. This will be my main priority next week. Our attempt to fix the Drexel Ride bug is the snippet of code below, sadly it didn’t completely work:

(3 hrs)
       
        GameObject myObj = GameObject.Find("TransformWrapper");

        myObj.transform.parent = null;

        DontDestroyOnLoad oldDont = myObj.GetComponent<DontDestroyOnLoad>();

        Destroy(oldDont);

        myObj.AddComponent<DontDestroyOnLoad>();

Content Positive (Duplicate hours from above):

-          Mini games now transition from game to game. (3 hrs)
-          Music, Scoring, and High Scores are in the game. (3 hrs)
-          A new mini game called Runnerz has been added and is a grey box. (3 hrs)

Content Negative

-          The Drexel Ride scene switch bug continues to be an issue. (3 hrs)

Total Hours for the week: 12 hrs

Tags: Music, Scoring, High Scores, Transitions, Runnerz, Drexel Ride bug, PPJ

Vincent Slifer Week 7 PPJ

This week was fairly productive, on my end.  I added new features to the Mech Game, to make it more fleshed out in regards to player interaction.  The features now give something for the "Alien" players to do while the riders are in the mini-game.

Positive Content

• Created interactive features for Alien players
• Target Switching
• Projectile Spread
• Camera Shake
• Implemented circular visual cooldown timers

Negative Content

• Some miscommunications with Perforce
• The same art assets are still being used

Work and Hours
Programming (3 hrs)

• Implemented new Mech Game features
• Gave aliens interaction in game - they can :
• Shake the players
• Switch the color of the targets
• Increase the spread of the player's projectiles
• Gave alien actions radial Cooldown timer
• Altered older scripts to better accommodate new features
• Altered some inputs for testing in the Unity editor without joysticks

Research (1 hrs)

• Methods for circular UI Sliders in unity
• Methods for cooldown on timed effects
• Methods for altering an objects material in script
• Methods for altering an objects tag dynamically in script

Total Work Time:  4 hrs