Long Weekend, Project Aim, Engine Practice

We have a 5 day long weekend (thanks to easter/anzac day) and so this time allows some more project work and other assignments to be completed than usual. During this time, Jordan has also released a sort of lab task which allows us to learn and practice using the engine of the game. This will prepare us for when it comes to developing parts of the project, having an understanding of the different function calls and parts of the engine.

I am now also working on a part of the technical documentation, the Project Aim. Shouldn't take too long, as it is similar to an area already created on our website explaining what our project is about. I will also be creating a context diagram, showing the different parts of the game and their interactions.

Mid session recess and Manual Design

Its near the end of the mid session recess, and i've made a dent into the game manual. The basic layout and formatting is what i've been focusing on, with the various parts of information being provided to me by the rest of the group. I will have it all complete by our meeting on Wednesday, and hopefully it doesn't look too bad considering we'll be missing screenshots and having placeholder graphics. The basic information about the game is all there however, and will provide enough of an understanding of the game for the preliminary documentation, although some minor edits may be made the game is further developed.

More Meetings and Game Design

We had our other weekly meeting on Wednesday, with a skip on the supervisor meeting due to Luke being out of the country. However, we discussed a large deal of details for the game, really focusing on getting the character design laid out, as well as the storyline(s) of both the characters, and the game itself. Vince did a large amount of work in that area, as well as designing a number of moves for the characters that will evolve once the limitations of the 2d bone based animation are found. We are also going to begin focusing on the game manual, and over the mid-semester break, we will hopefully put together all of the basics of each page, and have a presentable game manual ready for showing off. There will be some placeholder graphics and minor changes to some elements, however, for the most part it will be complete.

Each of us have been allocated a section of the game manual to complete, with each section being sent to me to be combined into the manual itself. Luckily, the mid semester break will make this easy to complete, with a lot of our spare time having the potential to be spent working on the project.

Extra meeting

Today (Tuesday), we had an extra group meeting to spend some time finalising the project requirements. We went through all the different functional and non functional listings, and decided upon a few minor adjustments. We also had a large discussion on the 2D-bone based animation that was intended for use. This will have to be adjusted slightly to allow a much greater range of movements in the fighter's actions, hopefully preventing fighting styles from looking identical and somewhat rigid, with very limited movesets. There was also discussion upon the timeline of the project, and our hopes to push the 2nd semester work into our mid-year break, so as to allow us more time to complete the implementation segment of the project.

We will still be having our group meeting tomorrow as planned, and plan to section off work relating to the user manual and some other forms of documentation. This will also allow us to have work allocated to us to continue to work on during the mid session break, as well as possibly making a start on identifying the different areas of the game engine that will need to be focused upon to get the basics started.

Progress

We had 3 meetings this week - the subversion meeting on Tuesday, and our group meeting & supervisor meeting on Wednesday. A lot of planning in the actual content of the game has been set out and decided upon, with a key focus on the different screens of the game. Vince has designed a game screen, and Adam has brought together screens for the menus and character selection, which all look great and are showing how the project is evolving. Discussion also occurred on how the game will play, with some basic technical limitations discovered that will need to be overcome later.

There was also a small amount of discussion on the theme of the game, which can really make or break it. We seem to be aiming towards a more 'happy' style of play, but this is yet to be contemplated fully and will be decided upon at a later stage. This will probably be reflected in the artwork of the game as it progresses.