Pages

Labels

Thursday, July 8, 2010

jordan postmortem

What went right:

Well I am very proud of the product we have come up with, although it is quite different from our initial idea, we have come to something that is much simpler in scope and concept, yet still fun and satisfying as a project.

What went wrong:

Aside from me being a turd from time to time, I feel like what went wrong is that we sort of didn't really understand what to expect from each other and how to get the best out of one another.

What would I change:

If I could have become a lot more interested in getting my work done from the start, then I think I would have been a lot more proud of what I have done. Although what I did I am satisfied with, I know that I could have done much higher quality work.

after death... right? thats what this thing is right?

WARNUTZ! ... looking back... looking forward...

What worked for us as a team?
As a team, we helped each other well, though some of it came in spurts, and at times to some but not to others.  I know that when we had our meetings, and when stuff was getting worked on, we spent a lot of time talking over things, and talking together about what to do and how.  I think we also had the same view for the game (for the most part) and that helped when we were trying to create new things, or alter our old ones. 

We also had a few people that jumped up and took over extra work when things were getting sketchy.  I know we all at one point worked harder then we thought we would need to, but I wanted to thank Lionell and Trevor and Paul for a lot of extra work that was put in on the game when the game was short of where it needed to be.

What didn't work for us as a team?
We didn't want to hurt feelings, and i believe that we could all go back now and say "wow that sucked when it was at this point" or "how did we let that go on for so long"...  But we didn't want to upset anyone and because of that, we didn't push each other far enough. 

I also think that we didn't keep in touch over changes or details at times... and sometimes people wouldn't know what was going on.

What worked for ME?
I think that the level assets turned out a bit better then I thought they might have, though they didn't come out quickly enough.  Luckily when Lionell decided on an art style, it used a technique that I've used before.  I did have an issue with line quality, and resolution and other things along those lines... but i think the final art style looked real well when it was applied to all the assets.

What didn't work for me?
I don't want to sound like I'm always falling back on this excuse, but I always think I'm capable of more in a short period of time then I am.  Scope Scope Scope!!!  Platforms game me trouble and trouble and trouble, and because of that I never moved on to new levels, I kept trying to perfect my assets.  And I probably could have fixed that issue if I would have kept my mind open and talked to people.  The final platforms weren't done until the game was nearly due.  They should have been figured out a long time ago so I could have moved on.

Moving Forward!
I plan to apply what I've learned already to the flowcharts and level plans that Max and Lance have been working on for level 2.  I would really like to be able to have a 2nd level for our game so that we can show some depth to the idea.

Starting over?!
If I were to go back and do this again... I'd have pushed myself harder.  I have some good stuff at the end of this project, but I could have had more, and I think we could have made much more if we pushed each other more.  I know its a learning experience, but I think i would have liked to have more game content.

Id like to thank you all for putting up with me for the past 20 weeks, I know I Can be a pain in the butt and am loud and obnoxious at times but you guys managed to deal with me... thanks everyone.

My Final Blog for Our Project ;)

What went right? I have a great imagination that I added to our weapons their own unique thing that went well when I finally got the right art style. I feel we grown on each other over these last 20 weeks . I'm proud we got our level finalized we've come a long way.

What went wrong? I feel that I let my self down and you all as well because I know that I possibly should have had at least 2 more levels worth of weapons. My mind was all over the place I wish that my pride and ego would have let me ask Jacob and lionell for help sooner.

What I would change? I would have to work harder on making my stuff more finalized. I know I have many ideas I can bring to the table but I need to finalized the first one so I can move to the next.

Phil's Post Mortem for U.I.

Hello All,

The twenty week process in Team Project was a great experience. The one strength I did have in this class was not taken advantage of, and it was my fault. I have a lot of experience in being a leader at work and wanted to do the same in Team Project. At the beginning, it was addressed that I was interested in being leader for Team Project. Instead of forcing the idea of me being leader on the team, I stood back and let the team decide who they wanted to be leader. The team had more confidence in Jacob, so I said ok and took a back seat. In my military career, I learned that people need to feel comfortable with a leader to have a smooth process. A lot of the team was working together for the first time and we didn’t need any drama because someone didn’t agree with me being leader. Since this was a team environment, it wasn’t about me and my need for a resume addition. So I did the best I could to play a supporting role to Trevor and Jacob, who both did a great job by the way.

I have a lot of weakness, as you all well know. I won’t make any excuses about that. I am not a designer or an artist. The U.I. area was the only area I could go to do the best I could do. I know my designs weren’t the best. I thought I could do well with the art bible, but everything was pixilated. I’m not a technical guy by any means. I did what I could with what I had.

What I would have done differently is set aside time to read books on designing. While working a fifty hour work week isn’t easy, I should have tried to stretch more time to research design to pull my weight for the team. It was a pleasure working with all of you.

Lionell's Post Mortem

What went right?

There are a lot of things that went right; we got a working game, a working website, and team experience. We all came to gather to produce a hell or a game. There was some bumps on the road and some emotions that flared but out of all that we still finished. I personally finally did what I should have done at the beginning, rise above and take some responsibility. it made me a better person and very tired.

What went wrong?

One of the major thing that went wrong was communication. At the beginning the communication of the group was lacking and throughout the class the communication levels felt like a sound image. At some points it was great and at other points it was non existed. Another problem was critiques. We were all too soft on each other and mistakes were made and not fixed. But being a total dick about things don't suit most of us.

What I would Change?

Being more direct would help if we were more direct with each other then the game would have turned out better or we would have killed each other but i am willing to risk that. I would have to go out side my normal zone to achieve such a job. Other than that I wouldn't change anything big, Some might disagree but I feel the game and how we put it to gather was great. Like I said before communication was off and as everyone know some people didn't pull their weight. Things like that I would change, but I can't; that's a personal problem and we all have it.

Trevor's Post mortem

What went right?

It’s hard to nail down every single thing that went right in the creation of Warnutz. If I had to pick one thing to start this off, I would have to pick the control scheme. Right up to Interfaces, our controls scheme used the keyboard and mouse. It was set up like a first person shooter game, even though our game was a side-scroller. After getting a lot of feedback from testers, and from the comments at Interfaces, we finally went with a standard control scheme. We also were one of the first team project classes to have a fully working game with a beginning, middle, and end to it.

What went wrong?

As a team, the only thing that went wrong was all of missing our milestones as a whole. Individually, I believe that we all did complete our milestones whether it was in game or not. We also were not as critical with one another as we could have been. If someone missed their milestone or didn’t contact the team for a period of time, we just let it slide.

What would I change or do different?

If there is one thing that I would have done differently would be to create better design for the menu. I would also make sure that everyone knew a decision that was made more publicly known and in writing, not verbally. For example, the control scheme that that we came up with after Interfaces. I feel that with more communication, there would have been a lot more added and done with the game both visually and mechanically.

Post Mortem team project 2

1. What is my strength? I am a hard worker never give up. Keep working even if told to redo the project. I work well with my team. Follow direction on how to fix my work.

2. what is my weakness? sometimes doing the same work over and over is hard. I realize nothing good comes easy it take work. I am not an artist cannot draw.
I cannot model human characters.

3. What would I do different? Used team members to record their voice for the team project.

Paul Postmortem

These past 21 weeks have been a real journey for us all and I am no exception.

Once we were sure that we were going to make our game as a Flash-platformer; I knew that I would be able to do my best to push the technology behind the game to do something truly interesting. I was easily able to get a base system in place in order to allow everyone to be able to start getting things into the game as soon as they were ready. Also, the majority of my milestones were a large amount of smaller steps; at least when I knew how I was going to approach the situation, and these small steps eventually formed a massive 10-story spiraling staircase.

while most of my weekly updates were a culmination of many smaller fixes, many times I felt overwhelmed and I couldn't get to start to work on some upgrades I had planned for the game from the very beginning. If I could do some things differently, I would have been better about utilizing my spare time to squeeze out some more work on this game.

Post Mortem by Max Jankowski

Over the two semesters that Team inside Voice worked on WARNUTZ I feel we acomplished a large body of work in the time we had!  Let me say, I am extremley proud of the team and I would have no problems working with them again!  In its entirity, I believe we had a fully functional game.  From art to level design, from documentation to communication we worked as a team! 

Even though we failed to hit any of our milestones I think the exception was to the teams benifit.  Another issue that Kim mentioned was our inability to be critical with our team mates; in a way this kind of hurt individuals and the team in some areas.  Specifically, level design suffered due to the stagnation of the process.  We were constanly waiting on other elements of the game to reach a certain level of production we could work with.

Something I would have done differently was to possibly lay out multiple concepts for levels sooner.  There was a point in the level design process where we had a template basically.  We could have easily started on multiple levels in a more timely manner after we had the process down.  Let me state that I am used to being a 3d level designer and it was a huge difference in the production of a 2d level design!

Again, thanks team..  Thank you for this positive experience and the opportunity to test my game designing skills in a more professional light!

Post Mortem

Over the past 20 weeks there have been many things going on in terms of Warnutz! and other things. During that time we have accomplished much and I am proud of Team Inside Voices for the hard work they have all put in. I think that what went well for me is that I was able to communicate fairly well with the rest of the team. Max and I worked fairly well together getting many things completed. I believe that Max and I were the only ones to hit every one of our individual milestones. Even if we didn't hit the check points, we still managed to hit our overall milestone each week.

Now we also have to take the bad with the good. I feel that what I neglected and needed to work on better was the actual process for designing the level. Both Max and I ignored the overall process in general as we didn't bother with flowcharts or level wireframes at all until much later. That is definitely one thing I feel could have gone better. Also I feel that overall I was a little too quiet during team meetings and didn't give as much feed back as I should have.

Now there are many things that I probably would do differently if I could go back to the beginning of the class. First and foremost would be the fact that I would follow the process for level design all the way through. That means concept art, flowcharts, wireframes, blockins, and testing. I would also speak up more and provide alot more input. I think I would also push myself to do even more work as I truly feel that we could have easily had two or three levels. Maybe not all completely finalized but at least have a block in of some sort for other levels.

Overall I wouldn't mind continuing development of Warnutz! and creating more levels for the game as one just isn't enough in my opinion.

Thank you all for this great opportunity in building my skills as an individual and a member of a larger entity. Good luck in your future endeavors and maybe see you again sometime down the road.

Flowchart truly finalized

Yeah, I know it's taken awhile to get it done, but I finally gotten lvl 1's flowchart reformatted and document friendly. It's about the same length as the level 2 flowchart and has a lot more jumps between the seperate pages.

I will bring in the original visio file as well as a jpg of the files. Also, just to make everyone's lives easier, here they are for your viewing pleasure.






Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Update

I just wanted to let everyone know that the design document if finished and so is the website, minus the Ad's I have to get from Lionell. Also remember to do your powerpoint slides for our presentation. I should just be a clear and consise summery of what you have done for the past two terms. I don't think it needs to be really long at all.

I will bring the binder and whatever clear sleves I have from last time. There is a lot that is going to be in the binder. Also, I like to ask for everyone to bring a CD/DVD of some kind so incase the burning of files fail, we have extras to use.

That's it for now.

The power point

For those who don't know, I created a power point them for our power point presentation on Thursday. On Thursday I will make sure that everyone power point is in the same format.

We also need to determind the order in which we speek so we can line the power point up in that order.

That is all.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Art Bible Items

Hello All,

If you have anything else that goes into the art bible, place it in the Phil's Bible folder in the Calley Drop. Tomorrow at 2:00pm is the deadline. After that I will be printing and placing in the folder.

Thanks,
Phil

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Flowcharting

Level 2 flowchart is done, however, I NEED assistance with the first level flowchart. I have too much on my plate right now and very little time to get it done. So if you have spare time, Visio 2007/2010 let me know and I'll send you the doc.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Credits Section

Paul has asked if he could have his website be in the credits. I have no problem doing that and I will gladly put my own website up there also. However, I want to know how many of you have a website that I could link to? If it is just Paul and myself, personally, I don't think it will look good. If roughly half the team does have one, then yes, I will make a section on the website for it. Let me know in the comments!

Pencil Colors











Ok Guys here's different colors for Acornhammer














































Friday, July 2, 2010

Website stuff

I am still working on getting a gallery set up for the Art section. I have two galleries picked out, it's just a matter of implemting it and making it work correctly.

The Process section set up for the most part. I am brushing up on some simple HTML and CSS code to get the website functioning correctly. Under the process section, there will be sections for the various areas. I have set up a dummy template as of now to to show how it will work. All the process work will show up on one page, but clicking on a section will jump to that area on the same page (once I remember how to do that and once there is stuff in there to make it function right).

As of now, there is nothing more that I can think of, at least UI wise, that needs to be done to the game. If there is, please let me know ASAP.

Also as a reminder, any and all art work for the website needs to be submitted by noon on Sunday. Please either email, put it on box.net, or if it's too large, put it in Kim's dropbox and email me that you have done so I can acquire the files needed to be put on the website.

One last thing, please verify your email address that is up on the website is the one you want there.

Updates from the game

****THIS THINGS ARE IN GAME CURRENTLY****

Fixed trees

Fake loading screen

Fixed Menu Buttons

Artifyed fake loading screen

In-game grass 

*Note* "we might have to change it if nobody likes it"

Lie-Berry is updated

That is all "I think"

..."I like spoons"

Attention Team

Hello All,

I have made a folder in the drop box for all art bible work. Please place all work that needs to go into the bible in the folder. Also please place work in by Monday.

Thanks,
Phil

... issues

ok i was playing the game just now... we've fixed some things but found some other problems...

biggest problems are with the bosses now that they are animated

Rufus (with the fish) attacks to fast and has to big a reach... he is way to hard to kill right now

also

Bubba holds his weapon to far down right now... if you try to walk in to hit him... you kill yourself on his weapon... you cant get in to do it... he needs to hold his weapon up higher.

ALSO

i fixed my branches... and removed the hooch today

paul made a "loading screen" for starting the level.

we also are working on the overstates and buttons for all the UI

if you have updates... DO THEM ASAP...

Our game and were its at

Yesturday was hell, but a lot of things got done and the game is near completion. Everything must be done by Monday, I know we'll have to ad more stuff on Tuseday and perhaps Thursday, but It would be great to have it done on Monday. 

My Scedual is as follows

Friday - ads

Sat through Mon - fix art in game

after researching "yes I did research" I found the dimitions for basic on-line ads; I will be drawings an ad for each demition. I will put these up later on Friday "Blog and Box".

Yesturday Paul has asked me to find another level BG music, Sorry Paul, but NO. I will not find another one.

I hope everyone hits their milestones and I'll see some of you guys this week end.

Milestone done

I posted the new audio sound file documents and the level music2 file on box net.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

I figured out the bugs!

Mainly concerning Paul here, since he was involved in this affair:

I've already figured out the errors we were having and have fixed them. It did involve certain frames of Bubba's and Otis' animations. They weren't mislabeled, and didn't have unreferenced weapons in them. Hard to explain, should not have even been an issue, but Flash is bipolar like that.

Anyhow, ERRORS begone!

Documentation notice

As far as level design documentation, all that's needed is flow charts. I know I need to fix the level 1 chart as it's too confusing. However, I am unsure of how to actually clean it up. If you have suggestions PLEASE post them. If you feel like altering it yourself, all you need is the flowchart and Visio 2007/2010. But do let me know if someone is going to modify it.

In terms of level 2, that flow chart is in progress. I don't think it will be as confusing as Level 1's flow chart as I broke down the level into five segments. This one I think I will be able to keep organized alot better.

So my milestones are mainly to documentify the flowcharts some more and that's it.

See you guys next week!

P.S. I propose that we take time on Tuesday to practice our presentation as well as on Thursday.

Max, you and I have to figure out how we're going to present our stuff seeing as we were both working on the same thing.

New AcornHammer Color


I want the weapon to be seen in the background not to disappear in it.

Art Bible Alert

Hello All,

Everything that needs to go into the art bible needs to be in Kim's' drop box by no later than Monday. I have to combine all of first term and second term together by Tuesday. If you can drop into your work into the drop box by this weekend, I can add it in sooner.

Thanks,
Phil

Max's Milestone

So Trevor has gang-pressed myself into proof reading the entire design document for gramatical errors, flow, and structure.  I will be proofing the document on Tuesday before class and obviously I will be reporting and correcting any issues that I find.

Max out!

THINGS THAT STILL NEED TO BE DONE!!!!

check them off... if you do one... comment it

Fix rock Text on buttons to tie together better...
change overstates for buttons.
Change RED overstates on signs to green
fix the way the audio menu tells you the audio is off or on
outlines on grass and mountains
fix in game grass
fix platforms (straighten out branches)
put visuals into tutorial menu
remove the "start new" screen... change "tutorial button" to say "help"
fix transition from menu's to in game with a "screen" that shows bosses and allows for a fade out of old music and fade in of new
fix clouds
fix tongue on animations
fix key frames for animations to remove the "skippyness"
remove hooch
fix colors of weapons to make them stand out better against the character
size down bubba slightly
navigate pause menu with arrows  //might be kinda too hard

all sound files are in our game.

My Job as the audio sound designer for the squirrel warnutz game. Is done there are no more sound files needed to be add to the game. I am going to watch the game get play test.