Game Review and Progress

Finished the target lock on system on Thursday (forgot to post this then) and have started on part of the AI programming for our final sprint.  Don't really know much about AI so it'll be a good learning experience.

Also just reviewed Curse of the Crescent Isle which was a pretty interesting little platform-er.  I liked a lot of the ideas they came up with, although the difficulty level was a bit high I thought.  No place I saw to give actual feedback to the creator though.  Might review a few other games for fun, it's cool to see what other people come up with.

Lock On System

Wilson and I have been assigned to work on the Lock-on System of the ship.  This has proved much harder than we initially expected.  We really need to get together with the team and talk about how we want the system to work as our initial attempt to get it to work was not as detailed as we would have liked.  I also came up with a cool idea of having the targeted ship glow red as opposed to drawing something around the ship which we weren't sure how to do.  If ships simply had a boolean we could toggle to indicate if they were locked on to and then just emit the glow I think it would both look cool, and simplify a lot of coding.

Pause and Onwards

We've got the pause screen working almost perfectly, there's one odd bug when you go back to the game from the options screen, but we're working on that.

The next step is to get radar and a lock on system working in preparation for the AI.  We talked about it a bunch today in class, and Wilson and I are going to start working on the lock-on system for our next sprint once we finish the current one.

Continuing Onwards!

For our second sprint Wilson and I have been tasked with getting the screens we made in the previous sprint to actually have functionality as well as making a new pause option for the game screen.  At this point we've made progress on both counts working separately and together, although the pause screen is coming along very well and should hopefully be pretty much done.

Functionality for the options will be a bit trickier since most of those functions aren't yet in game.  We're likely going to make and use placeholders.

New Screen

The controller customization screen has been set up with a nice graphic of an XBox 360 controller and 3 built in layouts for the user to pick from.  I think we're going to stick with layouts as opposed to letting the user completely map their own controls since it's both easier, and there really shouldn't be all that much with the controls to change.  The sticks are going to have to be used for movement regardless, so all that's left really is Thrust, and firing lasers and pods.

We did have an issue with the SVN attempting to commit the code though and lost quite a bit of it, which was frustrating.  We rewrote it, but we're going to continue being cautions when committing as this isn't the first time it's been wonky.

We also had a really great discussion of how the ships are going to work and I think we've settled on the idea of multiple balanced ships that you pick amongst per mission.  I was originally for 1 ship that upgraded and could be modified, but I think this idea will actually work really well and should make things a lot simpler to manage.

Options!

We've got the options menu functioning really, really well.  I'm really happy with it.  It's always nice to see your code work out so well and have a really nice result.  For Thursday we're going to get the controller layouts working.  With these up and running it should allow us to easily customize the game as we advance.

Progress

We've been assigned tasks and work is in full swing, it's really nice to know exactly what to do and being able to focus on it.  Wilson and I are working closely together and we've got a bunch of ideas for the Options screen.  We're going to focus our work on this weekend so that by next Tuesday in class we should have a fully working Options screen.  It's definitely challenging finding time to work on this assignment along with 3 other classes (especially 4400....) and my job at SCI.

Programming Team

Once again, due to the lack of postage not much has been going on.  It really seems like no one knows what this game exactly is or how to program it.  I know that I've never worked in 3D so that aspect is rather daunting.  We sort of laid out a basic plan on Thursday, but I still don't really have a good idea of where and what to start programming.  We have a week left to get our first sprint done in though, so the entire group seems to have a ton of work ahead of them.  Hopefully tomorrow in class we manage to assign tasks and really clarify what we need to get under way.

Group Formed

As should be evident from the lack of posting lately, Dungeon Descent sadly did not make the cut.  Of the three games that were picked, however, I think I ended up with the best group.  Twinstick DOTA is essentially identical to the game I made in 3505, so I had no desire to remake a Geometry Wars game.  Gravity Shift is already finished, so while it would be an easy project, I really can't see any work remaining other then level design.  Space Fighter uses 3D graphics which I've never used before so it should be a fun education process where I hope to learn a lot.

Presently we're all working on getting basic designs for the pods working.

Rough Presentation

Overall it seemed like our presentation went fairly well.  Once again it was a bit lacking in the excitement factor, unfortunately, but I think that's because we've never really learned (or at least I haven't) how to sell something.

I was really happy with our prototype.  I feel that the amount of work we put into it really showed and that (in a non-bragging way) it was much better then anything else we saw, especially considering we wrote everything from scratch and didn't take any of our code from elsewhere.

We got a lot of good feedback and I think we're well prepared for the actual presentation.

I really hope we make it to the next stage.

Prototype Day 2 Part 2

Finished touching up a few bugs on the equip screen, working perfectly now.

Prototype Day 2

We spent 6 hours working on the prototype today.  We started off getting the monsters to move a bit smoother across the map.  It's better, but still not perfect.  The vast majority of time was spent on the equipment screen.

I'm feeling really good about the work we got done with it.  We ran into a serious snag when we couldn't figure out how to use C#'s built in drop down menus (if it even has any....) and ended up having to completely build our own from scratch.  We actually ended up faking it, but at least we learned how we'd do it for real if we make it past the prototype stage.  In particular we focused on spell equipment as we felt it was the most unique part of the window, we also got a combination spell up and working.

Remaining work is to get the battle screen going and some fine tuning on the dungeon delving (the player still can't move around).  We likely won't have these done by Tuesday to demo for the class, but we'll have them done for the final presentation for sure.

Hook Creation

Today in class we got feedback from the teachers saying our hook was pretty weak, which actually wasn't terribly dissapointing as I've been feeling that way for a while.  We know we have a fun game (we wouldn't be so excited about making it otherwise), but we just weren't sure what set it apart and really made it fun.

Now we do.

We're going to have fully customizable items.  What this means is that items will still be gained from chests as before, however, you'll also have the option to break down any item in your inventory to it's component parts.  With parts you'll have the options of Enhancing or Creating.  Enhancement will increase the power of whatever item you select, for example an Iron Sword will become a +1 Iron Sword.  It will then take twice as many materials to increase it to +2.  This allows you to recycle un-needed gear to boost your current best gear.  Creation will allow you to take materials and make completely new equipment out of it.  For instance if you ended up getting 5 Iron Swords and no armor from the random chests you can break 4 of those swords down and assemble a suit of armor out of the materials.  To preserve balance items will only Enhance or Create inside of their tier (You can't break down 100 Copper Daggers and make a Diamond Sword).

This should really enhance the game as it preserves the random nature, but allows the player to customize exactly what gear they want to be using and will prevent "bad luck" from hampering a run down.

If that wasn't enough we're also going to be implementing customizable, character unique spells.  Each character will have 9 spell slots broken into 3 groups.  A slot for 2 spells, a slot for 3 spells, and a slot for 4 spells.  If correct spells are placed into a grouping then a combination spell will be unlocked for that character.  For example Level 1 Fire and Level 1 Water combined in the double slot would result in Steam.  On top of this, each spell will be completely unique for each character who equips it.  Level 1 Fire on the Black Mage would be Fireball, Flame Blade for the Warrior, Cauterize for the Cleric, and something else (lol) for the generic class.

We feel that these elements should really separate it from other games similar to it, as well as making it really fun to play.

Prototype Day 1

We spent 9 hours today working on the prototype.  Random level creation is up and running great, the stairs, monsters, chests, and player all randomly spawn.  We started working on getting the monsters to randomly move around, but ran into a very strange issue where it seemed like monsters were being created and deleted randomly (which is impossible).  We're really not sure at all with what is going wrong or why the code we've written isn't working as it should so a lot of time was spent trying to figure it out.

Things left to do:
Player movement
Player interaction with anything
Equipment screen
Combat (may be left out due to time constraint, generic RPG combat regardless)

It was really cool to get the basics up and running.

Prototype

Wilson and I are going to begin coding the Prototype for Dungeon Descent tomorrow, we're planning to go at it pretty much all day and we hope to make a lot of progress.  In class yesterday we brainstormed a lot about what we want the game to be like and I really like where it's heading.  We've decided that the special items will be the best items in the game meaning that they'll be incredibly powerful.  As a result, "blue" chests will be very rare (we're thinking an average of one every 20 floors) and it will be very exciting when you do find one.  A unique idea that popped up is going to be an item combination system.  Every 10 floors when you defeat a boss you'll have a chance to combine items you no longer care about into a randomly generated new item.  This item will be based off the gear used to create it and even special "blue chest" gear can be made.  CP was unable to make it class unfortunately, but he said he would be e-mailing us the artwork he came up with, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Top Nine!

Found out today that my game pitch managed to make the top nine so it's one step closer towards being created.  Really excited!  As soon as I found out in class I started sketching out my prototype ideas and I'm confidant we'll be able to make a really awesome looking demo of what this game is.  I really think it stands an excellent chance at advancing on to the final stage as well since it is so unique and there's nothing  on the 360 remotely like it.

Really glad that Wilson ended up on my team since we've been talking and thinking out the game for weeks.  CP has made a great addition as well, coming up with a lot of really unique ideas for it that have helped develop it quite nicely.

We hope to have some basic art assets done by Thursday and a very basic version of the prototype should be ready by next week.

Original Pitch

The original (modified) pitch presented to the class on 8/31 can be found here: Link.

Birth

And thus a blog is born.