Back on Track

I was going to post this earlier, but the internet was out for the entire campus. Now that mid-terms are out of the way, we have finally gotten time to work on the game. I was able to spend most of the weekend working solely on it. I added bump and specular maps to my character using mud-box, which made it look a lot more interesting. I have also started to rig the character so that it can be animated. I have to say I am happy with the progress. Although it seems that the more we progress, the more problems we run into. So far my group is having troubles implementing shaders, bump maps, menus, game states, practical systems and the stand alone tool. I am hoping we can get shaders in there as it will make everything look a lot better. I am also going to MIGS next week so I am not sure if that will have a huge hindrance on the progress.

Here is the character from mud-box; I feel that it came out quite well.  

Midterm Madness

One midterm down and just two more to go (including the one for this class). Direct game progress has been very minimal, but studying for the midterm has increased my knowledge of the engine and should be beneficial for the game in the long run. I also received my 20 XP by showing my work to the TA during one of the tutorials. The model I showed last time has also been fully UVed and is ready for Mudbox. As I said in my pervious blog posts, once the midterms are finished I should be free to work on the game. I have even done some of my other homework ahead of time so that after the midterms I should be free to work solely on the game. 

Starting up again

I was able to do a few of the homework questions (M-2 and almost M-8). They should be able to provide experience to be used when working with the game engine. I also meet with my group and we came up a list of classes we will need for our game. We also divided the workload so everyone knows their respected responsibilities. During this meeting, we also iterated on the scope of our game, what we will do this semester, what we will save for next semester, and what will be cut out. I also looked into some of the sounds we will use is the game and how they will affect the atmosphere and theme of the game. We were also able to solve the programming issue that I spoke of in the last blog post. It seems the challenge this semester will not be coding the game, but understanding and using the engine. I am also using the examples as an aid to understand the code. I also UV mapped half of my character model; I just need to mirror the attributes. With mid-terms creeping up, progress of the game will be slow, but should resume once they are over.

I was going to post of picture of homework M-2, but my other group members seem to have already done that, so here’s this instead. 

Stalled

For this week my group designed and modeled the basic outline of the level. I also finished my character for the game and he is ready to textured. I also create a few more pieces of geometry for the game. The basic outline of the game flow was also created. Unfortunately we cannot progress further as the programming section has stalled. We are having trouble understanding how to use Havok with the engine. Until this is solved the games cannot progress much further. Once we have overcome this burden, I do believe progress will greatly increase. I also plain on starting a few of the homework assignments, which will eventually find their way into the game.