Dress up Madness

So our new groups for our next prototype have been made, and our prototype has been selected. This time we are going to be developing a game for Siena Entertainment. They mostly specialize in ebooks (try them out, they're pretty entertaining) in the Apple app store and they want to branch out into gaming. WE are to use one their IP (Intellectual Properties) to develop a game. There are four groups working on this and they have four IP's. This where we hit our first glitch. There was one IP that was targeted for toddlers ( 1 - 5), one for preteen girls (8 - 10), and the other two were pretty open in there age demographic. We ended up being assigned the preteen girl game. Our other constraint is that we need to use Unity to develop the game.

So what we have decided is that we are going to be developing a dress up game using the IP we are working on. There are some other elements we are working into the game, but it is mainly dress up. We'll get more into the other parts later.

The main obstacles I see in this game are that the two programmers involved both have full-time jobs (this wasn't too bad for me before because I was very familiar with Power Game Factory and XNA, which brings us to the next part of that obstacle) and they neither of them have ever used Unity before. The other main obstacle I see being a problem is moral. Some people on the team aren't very excited about the project and it kind of affects the rest of the group. I think this will go away as we get more element worked into the project... minigames!

Yes we are trying to fit in some minigames. Charlie our producer and I sat with one of our Executive Producers and 'brainstormed' some ideas on what we can do to make this app less of a toy and more of a game. Hopefully this will excite the team a bit more.

As for the programmer obstacle, Felix and I are both looking at Unity and implementing things that we know we will be using in the project. That is menus, UI, and tap and move. I've also been making a list of what needs to be done by the Engineers (programmers) and how to divide that work up between us most efficiently. That will be fleshed out by our next meeting.

Our Artist (Michelle) in the meantime is starting to create assets for us.

Well keep your fingers crossed for us.

Post-Mortem

Well, the XNA prototype for Mechanical Engineering has finally been "completed" and presented. I am very pleased with the outcome of our game. I'm especially pleased that we were able to get all our main features in (minus the money collection). I think that the success of this build was rooted in our team work and willingness to work over Fall Break.

When we first got together we effectively planned what the roles of each team member would be along with what each member expected from the others in the group. I believe that this openness and frankness allowed the group to function as a cohesive unit, thus allowing us to get the project together. I feel that Troy did an excellent job on getting us to do this early on. I was very pleased that we were able to get art assets from Ashley early on in the production. This helped the engineer's immensely. From my past experience with XNA I can't help but cringe at the stress and and effort it took to get art assets from our team that we could use in game. Having it early on allowed us to work out those bugs early on and boosted the moral by making the game feel as if it was actually progressing. I mean no matter how much code we had, if we can't show it off with a graphic it just doesn't come across as being done. As far as Engineering the game, it was great that both Kameron and I were familiar with XNA. We were able to quickly hash out what we needed to program and divide the work so that we wouldn't need to depend on the other person's code early in the development. For example, Kameron worked on the level setup and game objects the first week, so I worked on mouse control and the menu, credit, and other screens because they didn't rely on each other. As we got further into the process where single files were in need of editing, we were able to sit together and team program our last minute essentials when

Cheers to our team Repel. I am pleased with the results and I can only hope that the rest the projects in this class go as well.

Fall Break Fun

Before Fall Break started Troy (the Producer), Kameron (An Engineer), and I (Another Engineer) got together and started to work on putting the actual Physics into the game. Troy had been studying the exact Physics we would need to work the catapult and how the different variable affect the projectile formally known as Prince. We ended that session with the Prince launching and gong the desired distance with a nice looking parabola of travel. We decided that we should meet again during Fall break to get more done and fine tune the Physics.

We met again during Fall break. Kameron had made it so that the Prince would change position when the angle was adjusted. I added a scroll bar for the length of the catapult arm and made the adjustments so that the prince changed position with the arm. At the point the Catapult arm remained static and only the Prince's position was changed. The Physics were also smoothed out so that the Prince traveled in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Mouse Control this is Major Tom

We decided that since this new project is going to be for windows that we would like to use a mouse as a controller. I figured that that would be simple, but it ended up being a big pain. First, you need to make the mouse visible, easy. Now you need to make it so it can detect objects and influence what they do and that they can tell if they have been clicked. Not as simple. You do have a MouseState provided for you, but it just tels you if there is click on one of the buttons. I decided that since I had to write a bunch of code for detecting if the mouse button is being held, and if the click counts as a double click that I would just write a new mouse class or object. so that is what I did. The cool thing about ti is that we can now have a custom cursor for our game, and I understand how it works, because I coded it.

To go with the Mouse object I ended up writing a new object class for clickable objects. That is, this class is for any items on the screen that we want to click and have interact with the mouse. things such as buttons and scroll bars.

I made up our menus and went a ahead and applied the clickable object code to them and it's working pretty good. Now to make scroll bars. Yay!

Art Assets and Sound

So one of the main tasks that I've taken for "Germinators" is that of putting the art assets into the game. Basically, our excellent artist scans his inked drawings and sends them to me. I crop out the inked version of the drawings and set them on a transparent background. After this I scale the images to the size they need to be for the game, and then I give them the texture they need to have for the game. When I took on this responsibility I was not aware of how time consuming it would be. It takes quite a bit more time then I expected. To the left you can see our main character.

I have, however, been able to put quite a few more assets into the game. Our Producer sketched up a level for us and I went ahead and put it into the game and added masking (this is what lets the sprites or characters know where the floor, wall, ceiling, platforms, etc... are) so that we could start testing the placement of platforms and other objects. We also now have four "normal" germs and the "Boss" inside of the level. I also created a "super-form" for our main character. He assumes this form when he hits a power-up. To be honest I created the form using already existing art from our artist. Yep, crop, copy, and paste are my friends. The power-up form is on the left. Our character becomes "Super-soap boy".

We also have some music and sound. I imported the files that our Producer produced and set them to play at the appropriate times. There is the normal level music, the power-up music, and the end-boss fight music. in game so far. I still need to place some of the other sounds we have. These are just general effects like taking damage and collecting items.

I've also been involved in setting up the way the game functions. I'm mainly responsible for the main character and the end-boss. Originally we were going to have our character get "sick" when he touched a germ. At this point his health would steadily decrease until he succumbed to his illness or he washed his hands. Unfortunately we have not been able to find this functionality in PGF. We have decided that the character will just have lives for now as that endeavor was taking up too much time.

Another obstacle that we found was getting the "Super-form" to function properly. The already created power-up in PGF only makes it so that the character isn't harmed while in that form. We wanted it to act more like the "star" in "Super Mario Brothers" where he killed everything by touching them. Unlike other areas of PGF the power-up item cannot have its attributes edited. I was finally able to get the functionality that we wanted by creating a "hotspot" in the game that activated a script that would change the character to the "super-form" for a certain amount of time and then change back. So now we every power-up item in the game is encapsulated in a "hotspot" box. This way when the power-up is collected the script is initiated and the desired effect is seen.

I've also worked out the Boss' characteristics and how it fights. The boss is initially in the form to the left. When enough bars of soap are thrown at it it transforms to another form that also needs to be beaten. I've got all of that working now and the first incarnation of the boss is pretty good. I need to work on the logic for fighting the second form of the boss now. I may put up that image later.

The game is gong quite nicely. I think what we have now would make a pretty decent prototype as is, but as we have more time we are going to continue improving the game.

Germinators: Infiltration of Cesspool Elemetary

So in our group project at school my group is creating a platformer prototype game using Power Game Factory. This is an game development kit developed for the creation of Macintosh games. Now this isn't my first time using this product, so I'm somewhat hoping to be able to get some things done technically that I wasn't able to do before. We'll see if time permits.

For our current game we were given only three conditions that had to be met. first, we have to use Power Game Factory. Second, we need to take on a serious topic. Finally, the game is to be a prototype, not a finished product. We are taking on the topic of germs. Specifically, germs in our childrens schools and how our kids can prevent getting sick. That said, we are building a game where an elementary student is fighting of germs at his school using soap. Think of it as "Super Mario Brothers" take on the flu if you will.

So far in our development I have created our title screen, and created the Player character using the art that our very able artist has provided. I have also created the main "weapon" of the Player. I'm also working on some of the special mechanics of our game. In my next post I will get some screen shots up and describe a bit more of our game.