Still very much a work in progress...

After last Friday's meeting, we set some pretty ambitious goals for features that would be completed by this week - namely, a working prototype of the first level and additional features (weapons, effects, NPC elements, user interface, etc.).

As usual, I did not complete as much as I would've liked, but we've got a rough title screen (that will be filled with random floating, rotating trash) and a screenshot of the basic UI and gameplay.





























In an hour or so, we'll be meeting to throw to together what we all have and see what is still needed. Tonight's time will probably be spent drawing large spaceships and tiny guns.

Screenshot 1

Here is a screenshot of the test build we are currently building. Eric did a great job creating the star effects (which actually rotate and create a nice aesthetic which you can't see from the screenshot). The "LOVE" circle is our current player ship which is controlled using the "WASD" scheme and the mouse is used to control which way it is facing (aim). The large rectangle is our current "ship" item which will most likely become and enemy. The two blue dots are what we are building our "trash" items from. The large circle represents a trash item that is too large to be "picked up" so there is a restitution factor that I added which makes the player bounce off of it. The smaller trash item is going to be able to be picked up by the ship since its radius is small enough, and therefore it has no restitution.

Mentor Meeting

Sorry about the delay in blog posts; I went back to my parents' house this weekend and they don't have internet access. But I'm back on campus now and I've got all the time/internet in the world to update this badboy.

Last Friday, we drove out to Hunt Valley to finally meet Michael Curran from Firaxis. Walking into the Firaxis office was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Games are actually made here! How awesome is this? And everyone is dressed in casual street clothing and everyone is smiling. The office itself was lavish but not gaudy; soft carpet and panelled walls that were inviting instead of intimidating.

But enough about the building. The meeting was the important part. Michael, who was a sound producer, had one of his programmer friends, Dom, sit in on our meeting. They were both very friendly and very knowledgeable. The first thing they asked us for was a general run-down of the game idea. I explained it to them best I could, with the rest of the team filling in the gaps that I missed. Then the two mentors started telling us about the design process and how Firaxis goes about it, and that segued into Dom giving what sounded like good advice to Jack and Eric about programming (they were both nodding and saying, "That's a good idea," whenever Dom said something, so I'm assuming the ideas were good. It's not like I would know the difference. Something about a Luau?). They suggested that we make deadlines for ourselves, even if we don't meet them. The idea is that having a direction/a goal will make the game get done more easily/earlier.

Then Dom left the room to go flag down another guy who was an artist. That left us alone in the room with Michael, so I took that opportunity to ask him about sound and music and such. He told me about the vast sound libraries that are available, and he even offered me samples from the Firaxis sound-base, which I thought was very generous. We talked a little more about audio editing software, but then Dom came back and took us to another office that belonged to someone who's name I forget. But I remember he was older (maybe 30's?) and had a green goatee. He was an artist and he gave us advice on how to build/construct game levels and enemies. He agreed with Dom and Michael that we should set deadlines for ourselves, and his agreement prompted Dom to challenge us to complete a working prototype of the first stage by next Friday. So that's where we are now- we're going to try and complete a prototype this week. We're closer than I thought; Eric showed me a model of the first stage and it looks great. He layered the stars in a certain way so that the 2-D level l looks 3-D. I'll try and post a screen shot here.

Skeleton Engine

The team met at the DMC yesterday; while we were there, I unsuccessfully tried to get the SVN thing to work on my laptop. Jack and Eric were much more successful in their attempt to program a rough version of our engine. They developed a little program where there was a cirlce that could be moved using WASD controls relative to the direction the circle was facing (there was an emblem on the circle for the sake of keeping its); the circle's direction was controlled with the mouse. It was pretty wicked.

On the art front, I worked on more plot/level design and Xuan sketched some more concept art for planets and weapons. We plan to meet again tomorrow at 5:30.
-Charles

Idea Exchange/Mentor

We met again after class today to try and arrange time where we were all free so we could finally meet our mentor.  We're shooting for Friday afternoon, but if that doesn't pan out, we're going to fall back on Thursday morning.

After we had that straightened out, I showed the team the ideas I dreamt up for different guns and such.  Many of my ideas still need a lot of work (the elemental phase shifter, namely), but the good news is that now Jack and Eric can start actually programming our engine and Xuan can start sketching.  We're meeting again tomorrow at 5:30; hopefully tonight I can polish my weapon ideas and maybe even draft a rough copy of the narrative arc.

-Charles

Goals of our Game

The team met today and we decided once and for all on the direction our game is going to take. We're going to stick with the action/puzzle idea in a 2D world. The main character is going to be a lowly I.B.L.O.U. grunt who gets kicked around by his superiors. I'll write more of the narrative later. Right now, I just want to jot down the goals of the game that we've developed. Ken Rolston said we have to have goals, so here they are:

1. Suction of trash/cohesion of trash ball mechanic
2. Portal/Warphole mechanic
3. Gravitational physics
4. Other guns?
5. RPG Elements of gun advancement/skill, purchasable upgrades

Goal number four is still under development. I'm gonna sketch some things out before our next team meeting this coming Sunday.

Oh yeah, we should probably meet with our mentor soon. I don't think Peter will buy the 'I've been suffering from lupus' excuse that I was going to give in class today.
-Charles

Concept Art

As Charles said, we had a brief meeting today just to go over some possible ideas for the game. I did some rough sketches of the spacesuit for the main character - à la the infamous Big Daddies of Bioshock. I'll probably be working on updating and cleaning up those sketches on Photoshop some time this weekend.

Also, I came up with a very rough (read: unfinished) background concept for the game via Photoshop:



I think the planet turned out pretty nicely. :D


~Xuan