Showing posts with label Term 1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Term 1. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Jordan's Postmortem
In terms of our team as a whole, I know that we have come quite far in the short amount of time that we've had together.
As for me, I feel like I was doing a pretty good job up until the past few weeks. I sincerely and painfully apologize for allowing myself to slip out of touch and get caught up in things that aren't nearly as important as the things I know that our team can accomplish. Things that aren't as important as our futures as individuals. I know that we might not all be fond of each other's methods or ideas, but I feel that we treat each other with respect and brotherhood. Few teams in our school, if any, can be compared to ours. I am very proud of the work our team has produced, and am honestly surprised by our digital prototype. Hats off to Paul and Todd for making sure that we had something to show for all of our raw sketches and paper work.
I shouldn't have let my team down like that. I never had intentions of doing so. In order to redeem myself and to show that I do care about our project, I have already constructed my own list of things to do over the break aside from the Animation work I was assigned. I want to produce a nice "Promo" style illustration depicting a dramatic scene that might take place in our game, and I also wanted to bust out some possible logos or "box" art. Anything to make our game even more compelling and appealing by the time Interfaces rolls around.
I know that many of you supported me even though I didn't really deserve it. I promise that I will make it up to you all by pouring my blood into the Animation work, especially since I've had some education in traditional animation. I look forward to Interfaces coming up and being able to make our school and our Department especially proud. Let's do this!
P.S. Hats off to Perry for coming up with that sweet ass concept for an axe. Though I still think it would be hilarious if the hammer was a cigarette butt with a stone tied to the end of it... : D
As for me, I feel like I was doing a pretty good job up until the past few weeks. I sincerely and painfully apologize for allowing myself to slip out of touch and get caught up in things that aren't nearly as important as the things I know that our team can accomplish. Things that aren't as important as our futures as individuals. I know that we might not all be fond of each other's methods or ideas, but I feel that we treat each other with respect and brotherhood. Few teams in our school, if any, can be compared to ours. I am very proud of the work our team has produced, and am honestly surprised by our digital prototype. Hats off to Paul and Todd for making sure that we had something to show for all of our raw sketches and paper work.
I shouldn't have let my team down like that. I never had intentions of doing so. In order to redeem myself and to show that I do care about our project, I have already constructed my own list of things to do over the break aside from the Animation work I was assigned. I want to produce a nice "Promo" style illustration depicting a dramatic scene that might take place in our game, and I also wanted to bust out some possible logos or "box" art. Anything to make our game even more compelling and appealing by the time Interfaces rolls around.
I know that many of you supported me even though I didn't really deserve it. I promise that I will make it up to you all by pouring my blood into the Animation work, especially since I've had some education in traditional animation. I look forward to Interfaces coming up and being able to make our school and our Department especially proud. Let's do this!
P.S. Hats off to Perry for coming up with that sweet ass concept for an axe. Though I still think it would be hilarious if the hammer was a cigarette butt with a stone tied to the end of it... : D
Perry's Post Mortem
Our weapons for me was tough to get at first because it took some time getting the weapons looking cartoony. I had to develop my process creating the weapons very quickly but a huge problem actually getting them working without having way to much detail. I got backed up a bit but I never gave up with giving my all for getting the final model sheets with help from everyone in the group.
Listening to others has been something that I'm becoming better at it's taken some time getting to know everyone in the group. Building the trust into others will have to be very important for us to move towards our main goal of presenting at interfaces.
Overall I'm very proud all 10 of us were here to show the newbies what hard work we've put into the 10 weeks. Let's continue to trust one another to accomplish the ultimate goal of creating a finished product.
Listening to others has been something that I'm becoming better at it's taken some time getting to know everyone in the group. Building the trust into others will have to be very important for us to move towards our main goal of presenting at interfaces.
Overall I'm very proud all 10 of us were here to show the newbies what hard work we've put into the 10 weeks. Let's continue to trust one another to accomplish the ultimate goal of creating a finished product.
Trevor's postmortem among other things
For the past ten weeks, our team of ten people have made an alpha prototype of our game. We have come a long way from the beginning, making iterations to our paper prototype, and then advancing in to thumbnails, sketches, and digitizing our paper prototype. We are only half way through the project as we have another ten weeks to go with it. Overall, we have a game about Squirrels fighting over objects in the back yard.
As with any project, thing will go our way, and other times will not. However since this is about my contributions to the project and not the whole team, I will discuss what went right and wrong for myself.
I will start with what went wrong on my end. Getting thumbnails and sketches for menus is not as easy as it sounds. There was a couple time where I found myself repeating thumbnails ideas. I also ran in to a problem with our User Interface flowchart. The flowchart that I had made up did not go down, but sideways. For readability, this was a bad layout. The word "final" also has a different meaning then what I had presented as a final Main Menu interface.
With wrongs, there is always rights. After revisiting the User Interface flowchart and actually making a "final" layout of the Main Menu and Loading Screen interfaces. Once that was completed, getting it in to flash was easy and making it work was also easy. The Loading screen and Main Menu interface came out they way I wanted it to look.
There is not much I would do differently. I had to redo a lot of the sketches and thumbnails due to being inexperienced in this area.
As far as everything else goes and the weeks ahead, I will be doing some work over the break. I have posted the pictures from tonight up on the gallery. If you cannot remember what your job is, it is up there. I will be working on flowcharting the store for our game as well as outlining the goals for the player to accomplish.
I am sorry if I over asked if everyone knew what they had assigned to them over the break. There have been a couple times where everyone was not on the same page. I just wanted to make sure that everyone is on the same page due to the fact that we are most likely not meeting over the break. Now if anyone is willing and able to meet over the break, we can arrange something to that nature.
If anyone needs any help with their parts or have any questions, you know where to reach us.
Necronomicon Post Mortem
So over the past ten weeks of our lives we all came together to make the love child that is known as Warnutz! An action-platformer in which the player needs to collect nuts to upgrade their character, and find the elusive golden nut to get the cannon. This cannon is then used to take down the opponent's tree base.
During the process of our development there were so many things that went well for our group. We managed to get a digital prototype just a little ahead of schedule, just a little. We also had many great ideas that we constantly tested to make sure would work within our game. We also had strong leads to help guide us and keep us on track so we should thank shark bait, er, I mean Trevor for keeping us on track.
Now not everything will always go the way we want it to. There were two things I think that held us back overall, communication and egos. First of all, each and everyone of us came into the class with an ego of some sort. Because of this, a chain of events began in which some of us were not really communicating with each other. For instance I held back the level design team on the days I was absence due to either car issues or work issues preventing me from coming in. Those days, I didn't really communicate with my sub-team members in any way shape or form. Lastly I think that in the initial blue sky/brainstorming sessions I was too focused on the big picture and came up with ideas that just were not possible within our time constraints or know how.
Now if I did get a chance to go back and redo things, I would most certainly step up my communications skills and probably reduce my scope on the initial assignments for the course as our (Perry, Todd, and I) demolition derby like game had a scope that was out of our capabilities. Overall, I enjoyed working with the team in general. We were able to kick out the work that needed to be done and do a little growing up in the process.
------
Now just for reiterations sake, and Trevor's sake, I have received my tasks that need to be completed during the break. It's not all on my shoulders though, it's more for the level design team in general. There are three goals that Max and I have to accomplish. I'd include Jacob in this but I know that he's going to be out of country getting married. But what we have to do are the following:
1. Create a table detailing various stats such as Player HP, Player Defense, attack speed, attack strength. Also we need to include stats for the enemy and the differences between their stats and the four different states the player's actual rank is (Nerd, Scholar, etc) as well as weapon stats them selves. Needless to say there will be a lot of charts. If I recall correctly Kim recommended Max for this role as Max is "a stats person".
2. We also need to list out the mechanics for the player as well as the systems. For those who forgot, mechanics is the player action (run, jump, etc.). The system is how the player goes about performing said action such as pressing the A or D keys to move left or right.
3. Lastly we also need to fix the platforms sizes to help improve the players ability to navigate the environment such as widening one platform.
I plan to meet up with Max hopefully during the break to work on this. But in order for that to even happen I need to get his address for this meet up. I'm going to throw this out there, but everyone is welcome to meet up during this (pending Max's approval as it's his folk's home).
So till next time guys, same Bat Time Same Bat Classroom! oh and CONGRATULATIONS JACOB!!!!!!
During the process of our development there were so many things that went well for our group. We managed to get a digital prototype just a little ahead of schedule, just a little. We also had many great ideas that we constantly tested to make sure would work within our game. We also had strong leads to help guide us and keep us on track so we should thank shark bait, er, I mean Trevor for keeping us on track.
Now not everything will always go the way we want it to. There were two things I think that held us back overall, communication and egos. First of all, each and everyone of us came into the class with an ego of some sort. Because of this, a chain of events began in which some of us were not really communicating with each other. For instance I held back the level design team on the days I was absence due to either car issues or work issues preventing me from coming in. Those days, I didn't really communicate with my sub-team members in any way shape or form. Lastly I think that in the initial blue sky/brainstorming sessions I was too focused on the big picture and came up with ideas that just were not possible within our time constraints or know how.
Now if I did get a chance to go back and redo things, I would most certainly step up my communications skills and probably reduce my scope on the initial assignments for the course as our (Perry, Todd, and I) demolition derby like game had a scope that was out of our capabilities. Overall, I enjoyed working with the team in general. We were able to kick out the work that needed to be done and do a little growing up in the process.
------
Now just for reiterations sake, and Trevor's sake, I have received my tasks that need to be completed during the break. It's not all on my shoulders though, it's more for the level design team in general. There are three goals that Max and I have to accomplish. I'd include Jacob in this but I know that he's going to be out of country getting married. But what we have to do are the following:
1. Create a table detailing various stats such as Player HP, Player Defense, attack speed, attack strength. Also we need to include stats for the enemy and the differences between their stats and the four different states the player's actual rank is (Nerd, Scholar, etc) as well as weapon stats them selves. Needless to say there will be a lot of charts. If I recall correctly Kim recommended Max for this role as Max is "a stats person".
2. We also need to list out the mechanics for the player as well as the systems. For those who forgot, mechanics is the player action (run, jump, etc.). The system is how the player goes about performing said action such as pressing the A or D keys to move left or right.
3. Lastly we also need to fix the platforms sizes to help improve the players ability to navigate the environment such as widening one platform.
I plan to meet up with Max hopefully during the break to work on this. But in order for that to even happen I need to get his address for this meet up. I'm going to throw this out there, but everyone is welcome to meet up during this (pending Max's approval as it's his folk's home).
So till next time guys, same Bat Time Same Bat Classroom! oh and CONGRATULATIONS JACOB!!!!!!
Jacob Boura's Postmortem
WARNUTZ!
For team project 1 we have been creating an action platformer in which the player controls a squirrel that has to fight in the national squirrel army against opposing factions to collect nuts and take control of the yard. The process was long and hard with many changes along the way, but in the end, I feel we have a nice solid idea that will evolve into a fun game quite easily.
What went right?
I think our group had good leadership and hardworking individuals that helped push the group along. People stepped up to get things accomplished when they needed to, and Lionell especially worked his butt off to keep the art team up to date with their milestones.
In general I feel that Team Inside Voice worked very well together, and though we might butt heads occasionally, we all found a way to compromise to reach our goal.
In my opinion, the digital prototype came along much faster than I expected it to.
I was a little worried when I first started drawing out thumbs for the environment. I was worried that my trees would look terrible, and I would have no art even close to what was needed for our project. Through the motivation of the team, and especially Max, I found some styles that worked, and refined my skills to be able to draw out our trees.
What went wrong?
There were some occasional misunderstandings between people, our original presentations were weak. Though we did come a long way since, I do feel that we don’t know exactly what all is needed for our document, for our documentation, for our process books etc. I think a breakdown of each area is in need, and luckily, we are doing one during the first week of next term.
What would I do differently?
I left my role up in the air because I was trying to do what was needed, what I wanted, and in the end I started late and didn’t know where to go from there... I was lost for a while and worked super hard to try to catch up when my role was finally defined. I have a problem letting other people take over for something that I think I should be doing, and its soooo hard for me to actually let go, but I must.
Wrap it up?
All in all I think we accomplished a lot, AND all of us grew a bit throughout this process. We still have a long way to go, but our progress already makes me excited and confident that the future will be bright.
For team project 1 we have been creating an action platformer in which the player controls a squirrel that has to fight in the national squirrel army against opposing factions to collect nuts and take control of the yard. The process was long and hard with many changes along the way, but in the end, I feel we have a nice solid idea that will evolve into a fun game quite easily.
What went right?
I think our group had good leadership and hardworking individuals that helped push the group along. People stepped up to get things accomplished when they needed to, and Lionell especially worked his butt off to keep the art team up to date with their milestones.
In general I feel that Team Inside Voice worked very well together, and though we might butt heads occasionally, we all found a way to compromise to reach our goal.
In my opinion, the digital prototype came along much faster than I expected it to.
I was a little worried when I first started drawing out thumbs for the environment. I was worried that my trees would look terrible, and I would have no art even close to what was needed for our project. Through the motivation of the team, and especially Max, I found some styles that worked, and refined my skills to be able to draw out our trees.
What went wrong?
There were some occasional misunderstandings between people, our original presentations were weak. Though we did come a long way since, I do feel that we don’t know exactly what all is needed for our document, for our documentation, for our process books etc. I think a breakdown of each area is in need, and luckily, we are doing one during the first week of next term.
What would I do differently?
I left my role up in the air because I was trying to do what was needed, what I wanted, and in the end I started late and didn’t know where to go from there... I was lost for a while and worked super hard to try to catch up when my role was finally defined. I have a problem letting other people take over for something that I think I should be doing, and its soooo hard for me to actually let go, but I must.
Wrap it up?
All in all I think we accomplished a lot, AND all of us grew a bit throughout this process. We still have a long way to go, but our progress already makes me excited and confident that the future will be bright.
paul Postmortem
Well, that was a great and fun-filled term. We had some great ideas go around, we refined things to great extreme, and I did some programming. What I felt went right included things like seamless integration of the previous platform base, and various upgrades were successfully implemented.
What had gone wrong on my end was that I felt that we had not fully planned on how we were going to approach various gameplay aspects. For instance, I had to take some liberties with the player characters movement speed and jump height. But also this made me hesitant in moving forward so I wound up not doing anything about enemies and implementing the store design.
Overall, I feel we got a great start to our game, and I can’t wait to get this project finished!
Lionell_Post Mortem
Team Project was a hell of an experience; I would love to do this again. For me as an artist, the process of character design was fairly known already. I just needed do the work load and practice drawing the character a million times. Also being asked to draw specific parts of the squirrel's body. Like I said, It was a great experience for me as a concept artist and I can't wait for the second one.
As for the team aspects of this class, i believe that giving me all of Jordon's work was a little horrible. Because of this my brain was shot and for the first time every I was racing against the clock. Also, Paul and Todd's relationship was a bit one sided. Todd couldn't get any word in and his code wasn't shown in the presentation. Todd did get the butt end of the stick. Jake and Trevor was over worked and basically did the entire design doc by themselves. This was a one sided team; the LOUD vs the quiet.
As for the team aspects of this class, i believe that giving me all of Jordon's work was a little horrible. Because of this my brain was shot and for the first time every I was racing against the clock. Also, Paul and Todd's relationship was a bit one sided. Todd couldn't get any word in and his code wasn't shown in the presentation. Todd did get the butt end of the stick. Jake and Trevor was over worked and basically did the entire design doc by themselves. This was a one sided team; the LOUD vs the quiet.
milestone April 22, 2010
What went wrong? The problem for me started with getting on the same page with Paul He and I talk and work it out together, Paul is a good man He built the game shell as the start. I built the working user interface code for the game. Paul stop me and said I need to comment every line and the braces need their own line. To make reading my code easy.
What went right? My user interface code work well Paul was able to read my code and add it to his code for the game. This was a great learning experience for me, to use in the future.
The team is a great team of members to work with. We did not see things the same. But we learn to work together and correct things in our game document. I enjoy working with everyone on this team and looking forward to working with them in term two.
What went right? My user interface code work well Paul was able to read my code and add it to his code for the game. This was a great learning experience for me, to use in the future.
The team is a great team of members to work with. We did not see things the same. But we learn to work together and correct things in our game document. I enjoy working with everyone on this team and looking forward to working with them in term two.
Phil's U.I. Post Mortem
Hello all,
What went right?
I'm glad that I found a position that I could contribute to the team. There aren't many jobs I'm good at so finding a fit was great. I'm also glad that I just had storyboarding with Chris Fick, that really prepared me for the thumbnails and sketching. I'm still not a great artist, but I did try my best.
What went wrong?
I'm very analytical, so it was hard for me to blue sky and create thumbnail ideas. From my military background I was taught to plan ahead, use logic and be tactical. To let go and throw logic out the window is not easy for me, especially after the military drilled it into me. Also my work schedule isn't easy either. Fifty hours a week with an hour drive each way does wear on me.
Overall,
I'm happy with our progress. I think for the most part we are getting along rather well. (Better than I expected, I will admit.) I know I need to improve on staying on task with my milestones. The brainstorming ideas and concept drawing is not my strong point. I will try to improve on that.
Also thanks to everyone for understanding about my back. And a special thanks to Trevor for helping me out with carrying my stuff. I owe you one buddy.
Thanks again,
Phil
What went right?
I'm glad that I found a position that I could contribute to the team. There aren't many jobs I'm good at so finding a fit was great. I'm also glad that I just had storyboarding with Chris Fick, that really prepared me for the thumbnails and sketching. I'm still not a great artist, but I did try my best.
What went wrong?
I'm very analytical, so it was hard for me to blue sky and create thumbnail ideas. From my military background I was taught to plan ahead, use logic and be tactical. To let go and throw logic out the window is not easy for me, especially after the military drilled it into me. Also my work schedule isn't easy either. Fifty hours a week with an hour drive each way does wear on me.
Overall,
I'm happy with our progress. I think for the most part we are getting along rather well. (Better than I expected, I will admit.) I know I need to improve on staying on task with my milestones. The brainstorming ideas and concept drawing is not my strong point. I will try to improve on that.
Also thanks to everyone for understanding about my back. And a special thanks to Trevor for helping me out with carrying my stuff. I owe you one buddy.
Thanks again,
Phil
Phil's Update 4/22
Hello all,
Sorry I can't stay for the Green Light. Good Luck I hope we nail it.
Anything comes up text me.
Phil
Sorry I can't stay for the Green Light. Good Luck I hope we nail it.
Anything comes up text me.
Phil
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The pitch and presentation
This Thursday marks the end of Team Project One, but there is still the second half of this class to go. On Thursday, we will be presenting a pitch presentation of our game to the new students. Let's be professional when we enter are be ready and gearing to go. Jacob, Lionell, and myself will be presenting. Everyone will be in a white dress shirt, tie, black pants, shoes, and socks. Let's put on a good show for the new students and show them what they will be doing when they are in Team Project.
On box.net is the current design document. The latest version is 9. I am still going to be working on it, but I encourage everyone to give it a look over, check grammar, spelling, fragments, and make sure the the tone of voice is the same. If you see any of those issues in the document, please use the "Errors in the design document" web document to note those errors.
Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 4:00pm, Lionell, Jacob, and myself will be meeting in the fishbowl room the right had side of the first floor (i believe room 151). The entire team is not required to go, but feel free to join us if you like.
However, there is a mandatory 4:00pm meeting on Thursday in 233 to make sure that everything is ready to present. By 5:15pm, I would like everything to be ready to present at 5:45pm. Anyone who is not presenting, I would like for them to critique Lionell, Jacob, and myself on our presentation so that we say "WE" and not "I".
final week, first term.
well, the prototype is as far as it can be taken until break. Anything else would be too late to start for Thursday; so all that is left on my end is documentation. Oh boy.
Final week by Perry
We've got some really good stuff to show for the Presentation on Thursday. It may not be in color yet but it's some pretty solid work. Our three speakers will practice before they give the newer gamers our ideas for our game. The new gamers will see the ultimate prize for staying in school and finishing their degrees. Few will reach it here and the hard working one's will take it to the next level like us.
Monday, April 19, 2010
A Quick Change to the Design Doc...
As I was going over the comments Kim put in our grading from our last design doc and presentation, I realized that when doing the competitive analysis, the "how our game is different" part is going to be absorbed. So I will add that to the competitive analysis so that the document and research makes more sense. Sorry Trevor, but you dont need to do the "what makes us different" part anymore.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
As things stand
Thank you to everyone that was able to come to the meeting Saturday. I know 7:00am is early for everyone, but it was well worth it. As of now, there is a loading screen that is coded and working as well as a Main Menu. I have also put in Phil's credits screen in to the game as well. There is also a complete level in the game as well, with the proper collision. When i was playing through the level, there were some areas that were hard to jump to. I think it would be easier to have the space bar be the jump button instead of the "W" key.
We still get to get a real main character and the weapons in the game. I am not sure if we will be able to get the shop working in the game or not. I am working on the design document so if you need to get a hold of it, please let me know. Otherwise create a web document or word document with your update portion up on box.net in the design document folder. I am not sure where to find the story for our game, so whoever has it, please upload it to box.net so I can add it to the game.
There will be a 4:00pm meeting on Tuesday so we can all get together and get the rest of the stuff I have mentioned, or may not have mentioned, in to our game. I would also like to go over the design document as a group, create a power point for Thursday, and possibly practice it.
That is all for now. Let me know if you have any questions about anything.
We still get to get a real main character and the weapons in the game. I am not sure if we will be able to get the shop working in the game or not. I am working on the design document so if you need to get a hold of it, please let me know. Otherwise create a web document or word document with your update portion up on box.net in the design document folder. I am not sure where to find the story for our game, so whoever has it, please upload it to box.net so I can add it to the game.
There will be a 4:00pm meeting on Tuesday so we can all get together and get the rest of the stuff I have mentioned, or may not have mentioned, in to our game. I would also like to go over the design document as a group, create a power point for Thursday, and possibly practice it.
That is all for now. Let me know if you have any questions about anything.
Saturday Morning Update
Hello all,
I have given the Flash files to Trevor. The files are for the HUD, Shop, and Ending Screens.
All other info is on box.net.
Ill be working till 11pm. Call if you need anything or have questions.
I'll be here after 6pm on Monday as well.
Later,
Phil
I have given the Flash files to Trevor. The files are for the HUD, Shop, and Ending Screens.
All other info is on box.net.
Ill be working till 11pm. Call if you need anything or have questions.
I'll be here after 6pm on Monday as well.
Later,
Phil
This early Saturday morning
So currently we are all here on this Saturday morning working on getting our content in to our flash game. The User Interface is coming along. I am still piecing it together. After that, I will either put it in our game myself, or pass it off to the programmer.
Friday, April 16, 2010
To the Artist_lionell
Also on Saturday and Sunday I will be putting together the concept bible, so I need all the are you've done thus far. Perry has already given me his art, but if you have come up with something else i need that too.
EVERY THING MUST BE SCANNED IN; NO ORIGINAL WORK, MUST BE DIGITIZED!!!
EVERY THING MUST BE SCANNED IN; NO ORIGINAL WORK, MUST BE DIGITIZED!!!
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