Finishing up the HUD and beyond

I'm still finishing up the HUD.  I'm having trouble getting the actual HUD to move along with the camera.  Right now it seems to just be printing to the screen and staying in the same place.  Hmmm...

After I'm done, I'm just need to start working on the doors (sliding tiles that only are affected by up/down or left/right gravity.  That shouldn't be too bad.

Snow Snow.... Where's the Snow?

So it looks like they canceled school...  And today was the day we were planning our relaxing party.  Oh well.

I've been giving the task of working on the HUD.  My problem lies in that our most resent copy of our project won't run.  We are missing some files from others and it's making it hard to really test anything when the program won't run.  I hope that everything gets submitted soon so I can get back to work.  I don't know how much time I will have over the break to get work done so it'd be nice to have it working today.

While I was working on the HUD, I thought that it would be a good time to look at the backlog for the HUD.  I know, I'm super smart.  Sadly, what I found was:

HUD.

Hmm... Guess that I'm going to have to make due with figuring out exactly what we want on there...

And on a side note... where's the snow?

Good Sounds vs. Sounds Good

So the first of the sounds is running.  I figured that I would work on getting all the content loaded (which took a little bit of time.  It's been a while since I did sound in XNA) but a few Google searches later, and we got the most important sounds started although we only have one sound actually playing in-game.  But more will come when I get some time tonight and tomorrow morning... hopefully.

The game is really coming along.  Most of the team is working on the level editor and it really came alive yesterday.  We met during and after class across the hall and spent a few hours getting some real work done.  We're going to have actual gameplay to show off on Thursday, and it's felling like it's about time.  We have been focusing on all the invisible (-to-the-player) stuff like the level editor that it's nice to have some real work to show for it.  Whew.

Sound

I've been put on sound.  We've had some great sound made by our artists, and I'll be adding them into the game.  I think that it's not going to be too hard, but I've been getting some great input from my other teammates.

Some of the important things that I heard were making sure that the sounds didn't line up in a row.  That can be a problem if there are a lot of sounds that come at about the same time.  Listening to a sound happen seconds after the actual part of the game that makes it would be confusing.  Other things include having the previous sound end so that a new sound can start and not be interrupted. We'll have to see how this really turns out.  I don't see it taking too long, but who knows.  We already found out that we have to use XNA 4.0 and who knows how many problems we might run into from that.  This'll be an interesting sprint...

Dropbox Tutorial

To make everything easy for our artists and programmers collaborating, here's a simple tutorial on how to link up to the shared folder:

1. Visit www.dropbox.com and download the software to your computer.
2. Install the software and choose where you want to place the folder.  The default on PC is My Documnets/Dropbox.  Use the free (2GB) choice.
3. If you don't see the Gravity Shift folder in the Dropbox folder, go to dropbox.com again and look in the "Sharing" tab.  If you don't see an invitation to the folder, email Morgan or Curtis and we can send you the invite again.  
4. Click accept on the invitation.  You should now see files downloading to your computer.
5. The folder is named "Game Music." Just change that to "Gravity Shift" or whatever will help you remember what is in there. 
6. Buy Morgan a Snickers.

Naming Conventions and the EVIL Checklist

The sound conventions are up and ready.  I've been talking a lot with the artists (mostly Steven and Lukas) and we've come up with some good stuff.  We may not have it all, but from what we've got, we can organize most everything... at least everything that we already have.

We've gone through the work our artists have done, and it rocks.  We've converted the names to keep everything in order.

The Evil Checklist:

Now that is taken out of the way, I'm going to be our resident Evil Checklist Specialist.  It doesn't sound too exciting, but I know it's important.  Let the good times roll.

Presentation, Collision and Sound

Our group got to talking and we feel like the presentation went pretty well.  We've been spending some time working together which has been a huge help.

I was having a lot of trouble with the collision detection for a while though.  Even now, it's been a little crazy acting.  For the demo, we got the collision to be EXTREMELY basic so it wasn't that interesting to look at.  We've been claiming that the way it works wasn't a bug... it was a feature.  Curtis and I were working on it trying to find the difference in the midpoint of each of the objects that were colliding, but since we were having some of that not working, we, for the demo, just had it jump back to where it was before the collision with a new velocity of (0,0).  Then gravity would just start taking affect again.

When it's coming strait on, it just looks like it's bouncing, but at any angle, it looks like it sticks.  For the demo that was fine, but our next skirmish will bring a much better detection.

One of the projects that I've been put on is helping the artists with keeping organized.  Part of that consists of getting the artists to collaborate with files, the other is keeping those files organized, including file names.  After speaking with Steven and Lukas, we started on a simple naming convention and we'll start implementing it over the weekend.

I really do think that moving to weekly pushes is going to help us stay focused.  Most of our work was done in the few days before our goals need to be done, so cutting that time down is really going to help us work productively and output a great game.

Collision Reworking

So it seems like collision detection has unearthed some other major projects.  Yay!  The code for collision detection "should" work, but when it came time to test it, we ran into some really hefty snags.  See, here was the problem:

We had three classes: GenericObject, PhysicsObject and Player (whose parent was PhysicsObject).  The problem lies in that PhysicsObjects are abstract so we'd have to create another class to inherit from Physics to do some work.  That would work, but then it caused some issues with detection of collisions. So some reworking of our structure is the next big step.  We have a plan which will make it much easier (using inheritance for different types of objects) and make collision a breeze, but it'll take a day or two to implement.

I never thought that making a working game would really be this consuming.  I think for the most part, we are going to be behind for Thursday (at least with collision...  the rest seems pretty close), but in the end, all the work we are doing now is going to make an AWESOME game.  Each of us really gets excited about working on it and being able to see our progress really makes a difference.

Work Continues

Work continues on the Gravity Shift game.  I'm still working on the collision detection, but this weekend has been a little busy (since Thursday) setting up for Halloween and Murder Mystery Dinners.

But today (Sunday) will be a good working day to get some more work done.

I've been looking at the code and I really feel like I'm going to have to change quite a bit because we really want to deal with two types of objects.  The first part is already done: Gravity-affected objects.  This includes the player and any environmental object that we want to respond the change in gravity.  The second is objects that the player (and other gravity-affected objects) can run into but is a non-gravity-affected object.  And then easily have them coordinate with the level editor...

I've got my work cut out for me.

As for Git, I feel like I've gotten the kinks worked out.  There were some problems which a few of us had, but I think that it is all taken care of and it should be easy from here on out.  Whew.

Collision Detection

I'm moving onto working with the collision detection for the game.  From what Tyler was saying, he tried a simple implementation that didn't seem to work.  His ideas were about the same as what I was thinking of implementing, so I think I'm going to have to do some drawing-board work for a little bit here.

I haven't done a whole lot of coding as much as I have been pouring over the code.  Tyler had some issues that he didn't know how to address which I'm working on solving but we'll see.  I'll have some more time tomorrow to work on it and I hopefully can get some real work done.

Menus and Git vs. Ankh

So most of the backlog is complete.  I was in charge of the menus, and I think I've got the important stuff.  

HUD

Opening Menu

• Gameplay

    ◦ New Game
    ◦ Load Game
           ▪  Level Select

• Options

    ◦ Controller Settings
    ◦ Sound Settings

• Achievements (View)

Pause Menu – This menu would have to be set up so that players cannot abuse the pause feature. This could be done by a countdown or only allow pausing while your player is not moving (resting against a wall)

• Return to game

• Restart level

• Exit to Main

• Options – same as Opening Menu → Options

• Level Stats

This can also be found at the wiki.

Also...

I've been sold on Ankh.  I really love the ability to integrate with Visual Studio.  I think that I'm going to bring that up with the group and move to get git out of our sights.  Git seems like something powerful and good, but for this project, I'm beginning to have my doubts.  

Get Git

So Tuesday's assignment was based on file sharing between the team.  Thus begins what can be described as "Get Git."

This comes in two phases.  The first was easy.  Get ("download and install") Git.  Done and done.

The next has been a little harder.  Get ("understand") git.

So I've been messing around with it and I think I'm getting a handle on it, but I'm going to have to really work at it to understand that.  I know that this doesn't really make an interesting blog post, but oh well.

EA

We had some great input from the guys from EA on our pitch.  We've been working hard on making the presentation work and look good, but in all reality, we are all about done with the idea.

Office Heroes (formerly Dough Joe) was a great concept, but the person whose brainchild it was is gone and those that remain on our team have all been eying some of the other games.  This has been a real learning experience in the past few weeks.  Although something may look good on paper and even conceptually, the real deal-breaker falls in the implementation.  It's been fun to work on it thus far, but we're all about ready to move on...

Reworking

We presented yesterday and it was... surprising.

We were quite impressed with the other teams' gameplay.  Intimidated, we decided to not show ours quite yet.  It still has a lot of tweaking to be able to present, but we're getting there.  We'll be ready for Tuesday but we have some great ideas to add to our presentation.

We're going to be adding some gameplay videos (as to avoid problems getting it running) to show some basics of the game.

We're going to update some graphics because this:

just isn't going to cut it for Tuesday.  We'll "borrow" some if we have to.

What do you show in 7 minutes?

So the thought on our minds is that it's going to be much easier to come up with some great screenshots showing how great this game is going to be rather than having the game play be shown.  So we've veen working on adding some character art as well as working up a new 1-pager for Tuesday's demo.

We've been hitting some snags in this process, but I really do think that we are learning a lot about the game-making process.

Here's some of the good stuff we've got so far:

Game Theme Overview: 

Office Heroes is an energetic light-hearted variation on the classic fighting-style video games that incorporates office supplies and environments.  A fast paced fight between two players with office supplies as characters and weapons ends when one player has defeated the other twice.  The Office Heroes characters are a parody of super heroes of our culture in the form of objects you use each day at work or in home office.  

Meet some of the cast:

Killer Clippy

Flexible and strong, Clippy is known throughout the office as a leader of organization and hidden ninja skills.

Abilities: Change shape and attack in a different form.

Irate Nate Inker 

Vicious if you look at him the wrong way, yet very artistically gifted, Nate Inker draws gasps from the lips of all those who oppose him.

Abilities: Uses ink to slow enemies and draw barriers

Memo Max

With the ability to go unnoticed, Max sneaks up on his opponents before they ever knew what hit them.

Abilities: Takes sketches found on his paper to attack

Chuck “Fangtooth” Stapler

Pointer McArrowson 

Dr. Bobble Head

Major Features:

  Power-up System

  Pick character, Random power-up/weapon selected

     Damage Boost

     Defense Boost

     Speed Up

     Health Increase

     Stronger Special Attack

Keep On Chugging Along

We met as a group today and I like where we are going. The art is coming along and the mockup is coming along nicely too.

We've got to come up with ideas that make our game different than other fighter games. Some of the ideas are random powerups when you give or receive damage ad well as items in the level that you can use to your advantage.

I'll be working on menus to integrate into the XNA mockup game which could be a splash screen and a simple way to show player selection and such.

Onward and upward!

Brushing Up

So I've been brushing up on my skills in XNA.  My job this week is to start creating the mockup game in XNA and it's been fun to get to know the environment again.  Although, I realized that Visual Studio 2005 on my laptop just wouldn't cut it anymore so I started the downloads.  Yes, downloads with an "s."

It seems that most everyone else is using 2008, but I figure for my own personal fun, I'd get 2010 as well, so they are now both installed... Wohoo!

Theme and Goal

Possible times to meet are directly after this class.  Zack, let us know if that would work for you next week.  

Game's Theme: Aggression caused by frustration and boredom.  Escape from boredom and frustrations in an office by taking them out object characters.  

Game's Goal: Beating your opponent two times

Some possible characters:

Paperclip

Memo

Stapler

Bird counter-weight

Dust Bunny

Stressball

Mouse pointer

Whiteout

Bobble-head

Morgan and Randy: Make a simple mockup in XNA that has placeholders (simple sprites and movement with controller)

Lukas: Make a few concept-art samples of the characters.  We'll need some stuff to put into the XNA game, but we can talk about that on Tuesday when we come back.

Zach: If you could be in contact with Lukas and come up with some special moves that characters can use.  We'll meet on Tuesday and start adding what we like into XNA. 

Dough Joe

For the next pitch process, I'll be working on Dough Joe.  It's a pretty neat concept.  It's very similar to how Smash Brothers on the N64 starts out (the hand playing with the dolls and having them fight) with the fighting style of Street Fighter, (et. al) but this is based on the desk of someone who is extremely bored at work and he gets objects from his desk to fight each other.

The characters are quite clever too.  My personal favorite is Clip.  He's the paper clip like in Microsoft Office, who pops up and gives you annoying suggestions but he Clip can transform into more deadly things like an alligator mouth or a hook to grab other players.

I'm excited to get working on this project.

Dough Joe First Pitch: HERE

The Votes Have Been Cast

We got through the pitches this week from everyone.  I have to say that we seemed to have a lot of ideas and it's been fun to hear everyone's pitch.

After listening to each of the pitch ideas, we voted on our favorite (top 10) games and now we're just waiting to hear back.  I do have to say pitching a game idea is stressful.  You don't really have a lot of time to explain the ideas that have been formulating for months.

Whatever games are chosen, I'm sure they are going to be good.  I honestly just can't wait to get started on making one!

Nexus Pitch

Overview

Many casual games seem to lose their luster after a few hours of gameplay.  The game itself isn’t customizable and the multiplayer is either boring or nonexistent.  Nexus is a 2D vamped-up version of Peggle throughout space, on different worlds with different environments, obstacles and even differing gravity which includes many customizable features for free play including scenery, difficulty, gravity levels, and even multiple players. 

Players shoot balls into space trying to hit certain power spheres while also using special powers that can be gained throughout the levels.  Extra balls may be earned, but earning more balls becomes harder as the level progresses.  The player wins if all the power spheres are hit in a round before they run out of balls to shoot.  Some levels will have walls to bounce off, but others will be in space a if your ball flies off, it’s just plain old, “goodbye.”

Gameplay

Using flash-inspired art and character design, Nexus is a light-hearted game that can keep anyone entertained for hours.  It can be picked up in minutes, but can take much longer to master.  This game is split into four modes: single-player, singer-player battle, multi-player co-op and multi-player battle

Single-Player

Because gravity is going to play such an important role in the game, it seems logical that it is the thing that changes the most.  In single-player mode, the player can travel to each of the worlds, playing in varying challenging levels while learning skills to better use in battle or multiplayer games.

Single-Player/Multi-Player Battle

This is where you use your skills to win against the computer player(s) (or player opponents) who are trying to destroy your power spheres before you destroy theirs.  Each ball is given to you at certain time intervals, so timing is essential and you don’t want to be caught without a ball to use in your defense. 

Multi-Player Co-op

Nexus gives you the option to play along side your friends and try to use your combined maneuvers to outsmart the cleaver levels and tricks that are in store.

Powerups

Nexus comes with a vast array or powerups.  They can be used when a powerup sphere is hit with the players ball.  Powerups include:

• Black Hole: A force of gravity that balls are attracted to
• Space Torpedo: Your shot splits into two balls when it hits a power sphere
• Escape Pod: This returns your ball to you to use again
• Super Nova: An explosion helps hit all the power spheres in close range
• And many more!