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.   

Getting Started

  For this week we continued to get together to discuss the planning of our game. We have such things as weapons, and enemies figured out. We also decide on a scope and preliminary level design.  I have also been working on my model for the Intermediate Modeling Tech class which is coming along nicely. I have also modeled a piece of geometry for one of the levels. Having a designated artist on our team is also a big help as they have agreed to help texture the models, something I have always disliked doing. Unfortunately a lot of homework will be due next week so work on the game will most likely stall. We should be able to get some more progress once things have calmed down more.     

A New Beginning

For the first week, my group and I came up with the general design for the game. We have the story; genre and direction of the game ready to go. We also expanded our group with two other members. This should allow us more freedom and to increase the scope of our games. Once we get the Wild Magic’s engine running on all of our machines we should be able to begin prototyping our game.   

Extra Week Game Progress

Unfortunately, I have no real progress to report as we had planned the game to be done on the original due date. We felt that the game was “done” when we presented it at the lightBox event. Obviously there are improvements that could have made, but there comes a time when you have to drawn the line. We were able to utilize the time to finish almost all of our homework for all of our classes. This includes the game doc which has grown to mammoth proportions but is now complete, which feels good to say. The post mortem is also done. The only thing left to do is to work on the business of gaming pitch and study for exams (both of which I have started). It really does pay off to start homework early. I am looking forward to going home and relaxing a bit once school is done.