Mike Pope - Week 15

This is the true finale, for tomorrow we present our game to other classmates, professors, and just about anyone else who wants to come in and check out the presentations. I am very very happy at how far this project has come and how hard of work each of us did throughout the past 16 weeks.


This past week I haven't done much in the ways of art assets for the game, but I was able to put together the game's website with the help of Andrew and Kyle. With that done and out of the way, I created my speech and powerpoint slides for our presentation. Also, I created a brand-new game icon for our game! I think it looks REALLY cool. It's a spin-of of our old icon, so it still has that same feel. It felt really nice to take a much needed break from the crazy amount of work we've been dealing with.

Thanks for taking this amazing journey with us!

Kyle Windsor - Week 15

This week has been a fairly light week compared to last week.  I have been putting the finishing touches on a couple aspects and making a couple of the later levels easier because the difficulty was too intense.  But the actual work on Fat Ninja was fairly low.  What has taken up a bit more time has been doing the final prep, working on the site, power point, etc.  All told, this week has been busy, but a much needed break from the hustle and bustle of the past couple weeks.

Tate Marske - Weeks 13-15

It has been some time since my last major update.  This is namely due to the fact that I have been working like a mad person getting absolutely EVERYTHING within my power added, redone, and/or polished!  As easy as I think it would be to compose a list of things I DIDN'T do, I'll take the time and let you all know what has been going on in my line of work on this project.

NEW STUFF:
 - For our third world (Egypt) and up, the ROLL ability has been added, fully tested, and implemented.
 - For our fourth world (Hawaii) and up, the STEALTH ability has been added and implemented.
 - Testing has been done on tons of devices on my end, which led to me being able to fix and polish a TON of stuff.  More on that in a bit.
 - Menu scene has been completely scrapped and redone.  Some buttons weren't going to be used, others needed to be added in.  I redrew and re-programmed everything so that it matches the rest of the UI.
 - A "Sushi Bar" has been added.  Some call it the hunger bar.  Something needed to be added in to cause the player to feel a NEED to collect the sushi.  BOOM.
 - Unlock screens have been added for when you unlock new weapons and abilities.
 - Finish flags!  Finally, a handy way to see where the end of the level actually is.
 - How to Play.  This screen replaces the silly little dialogue boxes we originally had in a "tutorial" in level one.  It's much better on the eyes, and easier to read.
 - Can you sayyy, GAME ICON?!
 - I am positive there is more, but things are progressing at ninety miles per hour, so don't yell if I forgot something!


BUGFIXES / POLISHED / REDONE: (From the biggest to the smallest)
 - A HUGE fix is crashing.  I've re-programmed the entire level resetting state, so that all assets are more than properly dealt with and the game should no longer crash upon multiple resets.  Phew.
 - Sound should no longer cut out on any devices after multiple resets or otherwise.  It just plain shouldn't happen.
 - After level resets, some phones were having a problem re-loading textures.  This one was a toughie to nail down, because it only happened SOMETIMES on SOME phones.  However, I've solved it, and it's much more streamlined now.
 - Slashing has been completely redone.  Thanks to a suggestion from my professor, I was able to narrow down the phone-slowing culprit and redo swiping as a whole.
 - UI has been redone.  In addition to the new sushi bar, I wanted to keep things looking consistent and acting that way, as well.
 - General code streamlining has been done to make everything run just that much more smoothly.  We want to actually sell some copies of this bad boy!
 - Stray sushi has been removed and/or fixed.  Now you should actually be able to collect all of it.
 - Sushi counts on certain levels have been redone and fixed.



DETAILS AND ACTION SHOTS:

Rolling and Sushi Bar:

 Here, you can see chin rolling underneath of a bunch of large enemies.  This is the only real way to avoid these guys, so you're going to have to put this ability to good use!

At the top right, you can also see the first example of the sushi bar in action.  It slowly goes down, and climbs again as you get sushi.

Stealthing:

 Here is the first peek at the Stealth ability.  Chin goes to 30% opacity and the little meter next to the stealth button begins to tick downwards.  You only get a certain amount of stealth per level, so use it wisely!

Menu:

Here is the new menu in action.  The buttons slowly bounce back and forth, and it feels good to press them.  If you are an avid game-player, you know what I am talking about.  If you aren't, you think I sound like a crazy person.








Unlock screens:

This is the type of screen you will see when you unlock a new item or ability! pretty nifty, huh?











Finish Flags:

 Here you can see me rushing past the finish marker at the end of the first level.  Mike has had these flags for a long time, I just never really thought to stick them at the end of the level.  I think it's a nice touch.

How to Play:

 This is one of the example pages from the "How to Play" section.  It's much more basic than our initial way of running the tutorial, and players will appreciate it more.

Game Icon:

A nice little piece of sushi for your app drawer!

Andrew Morrison - Update 3

ALL AUDIO IS COMPLETE!!!

To date, I have composed 5 pieces, all distinct from one another and suited for the level that they are associated with.  In addition to this, I have also completed all of the sound effects!  I am very excited for people to hear my creations, and though the levels are a bit shorter than the duration, the gist of the technicality and intricacies can be heard, even through the subtle pieces.

The audio is a bit minimalistic, as I did not want it to detract from the music and the gameplay.

Either way, this game is turning out fantastic, and I cannot wait to see how it does on the Android Market.

Moving forward, the rest of this week will be comprised of constructing the website, as well as working on my portion of the presentation.

http://morrisongaming.weebly.com will be updated this week as well, for the full versions of the pieces that I composed.

Happy Gaming!

-DM

Kyle Windsor - Week 14

This week has been my longest and most productive week yet.  I completed all of my remaining levels, 3-3, 4-1, 4-2, and 5-1.  I didn't have any more issues and the one error I was having on 3-3 refused to show itself again and didn't interfere at all.  The only challenging part about all this is the time it took. 

With that said, next week will be finishing touches.  I will go back through the levels, make sure all the sushi is positioned right, add finishing touches to it, etc.

Mike Pope - Week 14

This is it. This is what we've all been waiting for. This is the point where all of our hard work pays off. We've watched our once small and lonely soccer ball on a field evolve into a slashing, enemy dodging, platforming running monster of a mobile game called Fat Ninja. This last upcoming week will be all about small tweaks and polishing. Hopefully, no huge bugs appear in these last moments.

As I mentioned last week, I was in dire need to completely finish up the remaining list of assets we had for our game. This included the rest of Egypt, Hawaii levels 1 & 2, The final level of Asia II, different unlock screens for our abilities and ninja tools, and finally some super cool extras that will just make our game POP!

I don't want to spoil too much of what we have planned for our final stages, but I will finish off this post with some screenshots that show off what I completed in this past week. Next week comes presenting! HERE WE GO!

Roll Ability

Retry Screen

Inside of a pyramid

Hawaii 4-1, with specific layers turned off

Kyle Windsor - Week 13

This past week has been one of my busiest ones yet.  I completed levels 2-3, 2-2, 3-1, 3-2, and got a good start on 4-1.  This made a large improvement and easily doubled the levels we already had completed.

The only problems I had was with level 3-3.  I'm pretty sure I know the issue, there are too many enemies in the level.  But I'm not sure where to change things and so I will be talking with Tate on Thursday where we will decide what to do.  The only issue is that if we back off on enemies in 3-3, then when we do the final level which is supposed to be very long, we will have very few enemies there.  Regardless, things will be decided Thursday and Fat Ninja is on it's way to being completed next week.