wavingrobot

Nick Faure-Fields INB379 Blog

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Conclusion/Final Presentation

3/6/2016

Mickey spoke on behalf of our team today to perform the final presentation.

I finalised making the slide with him and practised for a few hours last night. We arrived today an hour and a half early to practice a bit more and tune in to the 2 presentations before us.

They included some things in their presentations which were worrying us a bit beforehand. Things like having a trailer-style video, no gameplay picture walkthrough, non detailed consumer market sheet etc.

When we presented, I manned the computer to change the slides like we practised. We managed to time the slides pretty much perfectly, along with him speaking over our demo video without any big pauses or gaps. It was really tough trying to get the timing right as we did not have the ease of changing slides to match his speaking pace.

Laz seemed impressed and happy with how it went, as his feedback was relatively minimal. We have a lot of plans for next semester, and plan to work on it during the holidays so we can get more done in the 380 unit. It was a shame that the panel could not critique our game, as it would have been nice to get the perspective of outsiders also. It has been extremely useful having Laz (and Alex) to help give us feedback throughout the semester. I was afraid at the start that we would get a tutor who would have low standards and essentially leave it all to us, but fortunately Laz was honest and fair with what he said, which helped our development beyond what we could have achieved otherwise.

Really enjoyable class, good team, good tutors, and I look forward to working further on the game next semester.

Group photo after the presentation to end it all:

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Week 13 Update

Meeting 36: 31/5/2016 - 8:30pm-12:45pm Skype

Met again. We plan to meet every night this week on Skype as our final presentation is on friday.

Showed the group the Voyagers logo and they were pretty happy with it. I helped some group members out with the organisation of their portfolios.

Everyone left around 10. Mickey and I stayed up to work on the GDD; refining and rewording some sections that were confusing. Also added a few sections that would help a person who has never heard of our game understand it more. We were meant to do the Powerpoint tonight but ran out of time. There is still a lot to do before Friday including a sell sheet, the video, the powerpoint, and storyboard. Mickey and I will skype tomorrow around midday to try and finish off the GDD and powerpoint. Then at the night meeting we will work on the other parts.

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Week 13 Update

Met with Christian this week to try and help him make the logo for our game, Voyagers.

Originally I had an idea for a hand holding a sword in the shape of a V for Voyagers. I mocked it up quickly.

Christian said he couldn’t refine it so we went on to create a logo menu with the title of the game instead. Perhaps we’ll come back to this idea later on. I mocked up another logo for Christian to try and refine.

Christian refined it a little and sent it back to me. I added some shadows and resized a few things till we had our final product:

Pretty happy with how it turned out. Looks pretty good overall

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Week 13

Meeting 35: 30/5/2016 - 8pm-12am Skype

I met with Christian a few times this week to help give feedback and work with him to make a logo for our game company, Ace Gaming. Some designs I had are below:

They were just mocked up really quickly to try and give inspiration to Christian who was in charge of making the logo. Eventually he made a few and we chose one for our game:

I also went and created a template for our group to use for their portfolios and other various documentation works that we would need for friday. Picture below:

I also asked the group about our key game aspects to ensure we had all the coding done so the rest of the week would be dedicated to compiling the game and making the powerpoint and documentation.

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Week 12 Update

Meeting 34: 26/5/2016 - 8:30pm-10pm Skype

Met on skype again to collate the work we did this week. This included putting Christians map that he worked on into the game as the minimap. We also compiled the remaining changes to the tower code.

I finalised some textures and animations with Nick W to get them all in the game, as well as inputted the minion model that the player spawns.

Overall just a meeting to see how everyone was going and to catch each other up.

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Week 12

I gave myself the task of doing sound effects for the group this week. I made a list on the online excel sheet we have and filled it out as I completed them. The group is free to add things as they please.

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Week 11 Desk Crit

Meeting 33: 20/5/2016 - 10:30am-12pm Desk Crit

We showed Laz and Alex our game so far in video format. They pretty much just said that we had a game, and needed to continue working well.

We showed them our to-do list which consisted of:

To Do List:

Fix Minimap Coding

Christian to make minimap visuals

HUD from blue player health to red, and missing health to pinky

Update player ability - death, cooldown, damage, model, animation possibly

Fix fireflies - too many/dissapears when not looking at it

Implement wiki (if possible just do like 1 button to bring up a picture, no need for it to work)

Fix tower placement rotation - placing clips into floor

Add enemy health degradation feedback - hue changing

Finalise zone 2 textures - houses, grass, temple

Projectile modelling/texturing

Minion spawn animation/particle spawn effect

Add enemy animations

Add Player animations

Implement Tower upgrades

Implement Player Skill Tree

Apply textures to enemies, towers and player character

Add full lightbridge functionality - maybe change mesh so camera doesnt bug out

Add nexus health to HUD

Add sound effect/music

We were really surprised that we got pretty much 0 constructive criticism. It seems that we are ahead of other groups and know what we have left to do. Later on I divided the work load to the group members.

[wavingrobot]

Week 11

Meeting 32: 19/5/2016 - 8:30pm-12am Skype

Met up on skype to discuss what we needed for tomorrows desk crit. I stayed up to finish making the map layout. Mickey stayed up to fix various bugs and implement the coding. The map was then uploaded to google drive for Brandon to download, and implement fireflies and some smaller changes. Mickey recorded some videos for tomorrow.

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Week 10 Presentation

Meeting 31: 13/5/2016 - 10:30pm-2:00pm. Meeting, Presentation

Mickey presented our game today. Video footage of our prototype so far is below:

General feedback was that our minimap”

wouldn’t show enough to the player. With how busy the level is, and how important it is that the enemies do not get past, the minimap would not demonstrate this. We were told to look into games like Mario Kart and a big, but opaque map design.

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Week 10 Update

Meeting 30: 12/5/2016 - 9:00pm-2:00am. Skype.

Did another classic night-before presentation skype meeting to collate all the work.

Mickey and I stayed up to make and rehearse the presentation. I made the powerpoint with him. Mickey worked on various coding bugs as I imported and rearranged textures and assets.

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Week 10 Update

Mini Meeting: 11/5/2016 - 10:30pm-12:30am. Skype. Only Mickey, Nick F and Brandon 

Had a small meeting with just myself, Brandon and Mickey to go through the map design and test whether it was small enough, and the location and placements on the assets.

I imported the assets I made into the level to see how they look and showed them to Mickey and Brandon. Pictures below

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Week 10

Meeting 29: 9/5/2016 - 8:00pm-9:30pm. Skype

Just talked about what we need for the presentation this friday. Discussed for coders to think about player feedback, fixing buttons, make sure we have some parts of the core mechanics done:

Player Shooting

Expanding Map

Tower Defense

World Events

We thought about a minimap and smarter AI but they wont be functioning for this Friday. Map was too large so Brandon needs to make it smaller and replace the placeholders with my assets.

We discussed what the towers would be placed on for the jungle, since its floating mid air. Went through various ideas like vines, tree trunks, branches, floating, clipped onto vines. Decided upon tree tops (mickeys idea)

Picture I made/modelled below:

Decided that wiki buttons need to be lighter colour/more distinguishable, Christian was to do this.

Nick W to work on rigging some more, walking animation and include player weapon.

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Week 9 Desk Crit

Meeting 28: 6/5/2016 - 10:30-1pm. Desk Crit

Met up before to fix a few errors. Then went on to desk crit.

Feedback was pretty standard, need to think about importing models, AI being smarter, feedback for the player when enemies are hit, make sure everything is balanced, map was a bit too large, and implement a minimap.

[wavingrobot]

Week 9 Update

Meeting 27: 5/5/2016 - 9-9:30pm. Skype Meeting

Went through a quick meeting today before tomorrows desk crit.

The playable prototype overwall was a pretty good start, although did not resemble an actual playable game still. I brought up various issues I had during the day for the group to discuss and decide. These included

Music/Sound Effects: Music not as important, will work on sound effects when full prototype working

Overlay Implementation: Will just be buttons to open them Tower’s Visual Indications: Semi opaque when placing Wiki have enemy spawn patterns?: No, makes it too easy Various concept arts for remodelling:

http://imgur.com/a/MzFIS

We also talked about whether we should have a full map as a picture at start of map like Cod zombies or in pause menu: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y5wpVMcSElU/hqdefault.jpg

Overall decided to have it in the pause menu as well as a minimap, rather than a visual one in the game.

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Week 9 Update

The coders had their own individual meetings this week which constitute meetings 25 and 26.

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Week 9

Meeting 24: 3/05/2016 - 5pm-6:30. Skype meeting

Just had a short skype meeting to show what we had done individually so far this week, and to catch each other up on it.

Mainly we went through the coding, with the coders showing how they had basic tower placement and shooting of the bow turret, as well as the player being able to shoot spheres.

We showed the new HUD and overlays that had the same theme, made by Christian and myself guiding and giving feedback. They can be seen here:

http://imgur.com/a/LCVxG

I went through in Brandons file of the map and attatched the assets I had made so far to see how they look. My assets in the world seen below:

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Week 8 Desk Crit

Meeting 23: 29/04/2016 - 10:30am-12:45pm. Desk crit

Alex was away for this desk crit, so we only had Laz to give us feedback. Today we were greenlit, although only by a small margin. Laz said that he expects a working prototype for next week, with general placeholders for the assets and the base of working coded elements.

In regards to our HUD, he was unsure about the layout and thought it was too cluttered and didn’t flow well. He also thought that our overlays, the wiki, tower upgrade and skill tree would not fit well over our game. For this we decided to try and make a theme for next week. We agreed with his feedback.

The coders plan to have some basic things done for next week such as the placement of towers, enemy spawnings and the player shooting.Our main game designer, Brandon, is going to make the map in UE4 using placeholders but in real aspect ratio.I’m going to work on starting some of the assets, and hopefully have up to half done by next week. Hopefully we can have the working prototype by next week, it seems achievable and we are on scope and to our timeline.