Mike Pope - Week 12

Hello again!
I'll go straight into this week's post by saying that we're just about half way done with our Beta version, and we've got this far within only 12 weeks (and we still have 4 to go!!). In these next 3 or so weeks, we're all going to be working double hard, especially me, but we'll talk about that later.

Rock cliff Formations

This last week I finished up the backgrounds for the Madagascar World, which was a very fun set of levels to design. I started off in a somewhat sun-setting, kind of sparse, savanna. After that, it the player ends up in one of the "rock forests", running on top of rock formations which is just in between the savanna and the deep dense jungle. Would you like to take a guess at what's next? That's right! A deep jungle setting! This level is really all trees, of a bunch of different types. There'll definitely be a lot of obstacles on this level, I can tell you that.

This next week is going to prove quite difficult, but I know we can manage just fine. Since there's only 3-4 weeks left, we want to leave those last 2 or so weeks open for polishing our current game and other things involving the game (like website, trailer, etc.). For these next two weeks I need to complete world 3 and 4, and potentially a special end level ;). With these, I also need to finish up the character/enemy assets by getting the power-ups for Chin, and finishing the animations for the Armored Samurai. On top of this, I need to create the rest of the menu assets (which I hope to do in the next few weeks). We're almost there!

Fat Ninja

Kyle Windsor - Week 12

This week proved a surprise to me.  I had business that took me out of town so I made preparations to accomplish my work away.  The problem though, is that for Fat Ninja to compile, you need an internet connection even if the ADT is referenced locally.  As such, I have been unable to complete any levels this week.  As soon as this is done being typed I hope to work on a level tonight and tomorrow morning so I can hopefully have one level done for tomorrow.

I did manage to complete a couple new levels from world 3 though.  This will lighten the work load a little bit for this upcoming week which means I can hopefully be able to complete my leftover work from last week.  My worst case scenario is I can't accomplish any of my left over work for the next 3 weeks.  All told, this isn't the end of the world though because week 7 is when we are aiming to be done, fully built and finished.  But week 7 is still a week that can have work done in it so if through some issue or another, I am unable to complete a level until week 7, missing a day from it won't impact our schedule too greatly.

Mike Pope - Week 11

Hey guys!
This past week I was pretty much focuses on getting all of the current art assets polished up for our first bug testing run! So far, we have 4 complete levels, and that means all 4 levels needed to look spot on, with no glitches or errors going on (like un-even tiling/repeating or line breaks). What's very interesting is that on one phone, none of the above stated ever happened... but on other phones (like mine) there'd be line breaks ALL OVER THE PLACE!

Anyways, I was able to finish up the first level of our second world, Madagascar 2-1 this week. The original concept of this map was to have Chin end up running on top of the trees. There needs to be a lot of extra programming behind that, so I'm not too sure if that is plausible at this point. If not, it still works great as a floor running map... like our previous levels. Also, I started working on a samurai character, which will be pretty large compared to the rest of the enemies (and will be used much later in the game). From here on out, I am going to be working extremely hard on creating fresh, new levels for the remaining many that we have planned. Until next week!

Kyle Windsor - Week 11

This week has gone great  for me.  With the exception of a couple issues early on, I have made great progress. Early on, when I hadn't looked at the code much, I was getting some errors and issues.  But within about an hour I found out what caused them all, and I could read the code sufficiently to negate them all.

As for my work, I have completed 3 levels this week, as in I have debugged and tested them so that they are in Fat Ninja.  Only the last level I did, world 2 area 1, needs more work and that's because enemy types and terrain obstacles aren't in and will need to be placed.  But this can be done at a later time and should take a fraction of the time it took me to do the levels.

Andrew Morrison - Update

Okay, so I am a little behind in my posts!  After remedying some technical problems (external HDD crashing, bugged version of my composing program), I am back on track and ready to make your ears bleed (WITH AWESOMENESS).

The music for World 2 - Madagascar is tentatively complete, pending approval from Tate, and the sound effects will continue to trickle out as well.  They are a bit more tricky, as the sound manipulation can be rough at times.  World 3 - Egypt music will be worked on throughout the remainder of this week and next week as well.

QA testing is next week, and I am excited for feedback on how Fat Ninja is progressing, I think we have a very strong game thus far, and I can't wait for more people to get their hands on it!

Tate Marske - Weeks 9-10

     It's been a VERY busy couple of weeks for all of us.  In particular, I've been working on extending our game's capabilities since I got back from a longer-than-expected spring break.  Today was my second meeting with my group, and I've compiled enough work to share in this blog after hours of toiling over what seemed to be simple things.

     Particularly, I was having problems implementing a sort of level selection map for our game.  It seems simple enough - a map with a bunch of buttons all over it, and each loads a different level!  Well, it is that simple from an outside point of view, but I had to reconfigure a lot of previous framework code that I had written in order to make this work correctly.

     Here is what has been completed on my end:
          - I now have an implemented, but currently blocky looking, level selection screen.  Once I can get a sort of map layout from our graphics guru, I'll be able to make it look much nicer!  The important part is, it's working

          - I've gotten all of the current animations for our character working and implemented into the first two levels, at least for bug testing.  Before, our character simply ran through a looping running animation.  Now, we have a running, slicing, and throwing animation for our character!  Swiping has become more exciting by ten fold, now that our character actually reacts to it!  It's pretty neat.

          - I've also managed to aid my level designer in correctly installing and using his development environment.  It seems that moving the entire eclipse project from one computer over to the next can be rather challenging.  Either way, I'm glad he's up and running now, as testing his own platform and enemy placements will become much smoother and easier!

     I expect things to pick up pace here a bit.  There was a bit of a lull after spring break that was rather hard to break, as I was having some major technical setbacks and everyone wound up a little jumbled.  Still, I have enormous hopes for this project when presentation day rolls around.  We are going to be ready for it!

Mike Pope - Week 10

This week I've been working some more on the enemy ninja and the rest of the background for Asia 1-3. Soon, I will be working on the start of World 2, which is Madagascar! Since I'm starting from scratch, I hope that I can get through it quickly, since I have some basic ideas of how I want to do it. Unlike the first level, there will be a one or two time dynamic object that will go by, which will help play into the background a little more, which helps the player know where exactly the gaps in the floor are.
Here's some pictures of what I had going for a background this past week.

Asia 1-3

Like I mentioned, I finished up the ninja and rigged and created animations for it. Basically, all it does is throw ninja stars and die. Unlike the main character, this mesh was rigged using the 3DSMax Biped, instead of standard bones. I think it turned out very well! We'll see what we need next for the new levels!

Kyle Windsor - Week 10

This week has been one of my most productive yet.  I spent the first half of the week trying to get eclipse fully working.  I uninstalled and re installed it on my primary system and things didn't work.  I then tried to install it on a fresh computer and everything worked fine there.  The only difference (besides being a fresh computer) is I had to install 32 bit on the other system.  When I tried on my primary system with 32 bit eclipse worked fine and the errors I had with my code at large were fixed.

Andengine proceeded to have issues then.  I proceeded to Google a few things and after testing some solutions (adding a library type, fixing/cleaning the file, etc) nothing seemed to work.  I'm still not sure why, but when I took a look at things today, the Andengine issues were fixed but then Fat Ninja still had a ton of errors.

After talking with Tate and looking through some options, the only thing I can see is that the Andengine files aren't actively in Fat Ninja's library and as such, they aren't being referenced in any way.  I haven't found a solution yet but with the issue narrowed down so far, I hope to have everything fully functional tomorrow.

As for my progress, outside of the computer issues I have coded out a preliminary form of levels 2 and 3.  I have levels 4 and 5 partway done and plan on having those completed for tomorrow in a similar form.  I will also have at least 1, I'm aiming for 2 more levels drawn out and if possible coded in though having the ideas down is my priority.

All told, despite not having the levels actually done, I think I have managed to stay on top of things sufficiently that I am not too far behind.  By the end of next week I should have 6 levels fully completed.  If my goals for this week are met and my computer is running for next week, I should have 4 levels completed and 4 more coded if not necessarily debugged.

Kyle Windsor - Week 9

This week was fairly productive despite having a problem that hindered work.  I finally got the code working, sorta, on my computer.  This allowed me to view everything and to make changes to it which was something I couldn't do before.  But now there are a few errors within the code that prevents it from compiling at all.  So for this week, I was unable to actually test any of the levels I made and put in place.

Instead, I took the format established in the code and coded 2 levels in a word document that can easily be copied and pasted in at a later date.  This way I at least kept some work up until the code is fixed.  But that only got me two levels that were half completed.  So I also made sure to have at least the design sketched out for the following two levels.

All told, I have levels 2, 3, 4 and 5 completely designed, with levels 2 and 3 also coded on the side.  This week I hope to fully complete, test and have ready to go these 4 levels.

Mike Pope - Week 9

Well, back from spring break and going into the final stretch of our Senior Project! While the past two weeks have been for relaxing and revitalizing for the last 8 weeks, I've been very productive.

First off, I wanted to make Chin (the main character) blend into the game a lot more. What I mean by this is that the way I rendered him in 3D for the alpha made him look "too realistic" to fit into the drawn, cartoony style of everything. Deciding to tinker with the rendering and material settings in 3DS Max 2012, I found out a great way to make a more "cell-shaded" or cartoony render setting.

As you can compare to previous rendering outputs, the shading is now much more flat and solid colred. To make sure this style looked perfect for the game, I even tested it against the level background. I must say it looks pretty damn good! Also this week, I finished UVW Mapping and Texturing Chin, as well as re-tweaked some animations.

Finally, I completed the Asia 1-2 level. Bascially, I wanted to keep the same structure and feel as the previous Asia, so I decided to put it in a sunrise moment, giving everything a orangish-purple hue. Also, the area is slowly going towards the forest, so there are less buildings and added trees. For Asia 1-3, I plan on making it at the very tip of the forest, so there will be a lot more trees.