Final Build v2

Here is the link to our new and slightly improved final build. Problems still exist but they are beyond our fixing. Happy Gravmaning!

http://www.mediafire.com/?ampx1rph8ttmgp0

New Gravman Trailer is on Youtube!!

Click and watch! Do it now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBwJWdcRwnc&feature=youtu.be

Adam Work Recap

I served as both level designer and producer for Team QFASA. This required that I be a go-between and coordinator for the team, keeping the project on track. I took care of most of the blog responsibilities.  During most of the early part of the quarter, as we were focusing on getting the tools made to build levels, I focused on coming up with game ideas, drawing up level plans, and helping the others with their work.
After the programmers implemented a gravity system, I started building and testing level designs. I spent a lot of time playtesting our initial builds with different people, and ended up tweaking the gravity script in order to respond to player feedback. As we neared the end, I implemented numerous levels, scenes, and features in to our game, including spending an entire weekend preparing our game for submission.

Contributions List:
Levels:
Level One, Level Two (prototype), Repulsor Levels One and Two, Final Level
Screens:
Repulsor Win Screen, Wormhole Win Screen, Pre-Final Level Win Screen, Level Select Screen
Scripts:
Repulsor Script, GoalAI2, Updated PlanetAI
Other:
Beta gameplay video, Blog Upkeep, Coordination
And a long number of hours tweaking project materials to improve the game.

This was a good quarter. I enjoyed working with this team, and I believe that we made a quality game, despite the setbacks that we faced at the end. I think GravMan has potential as a fun puzzle game. Thanks for a great quarter, all of you.

-Adam

GravMan downloadable build

http://www.mediafire.com/?ttzd6nbx1triomz

I MADE THIS FOR YOU!!

I was the Art Director of Team QFASA.

I created all the art and models for GravMan except for the text.

Frank - What I did on GravMan

I served a double role in our game both as a designer and an artist.

I created all menu screens except for the wormhole and repulsor level win scenes.
I added all sound and sound effects to the game. I also created the text for the levels which took longer than I could ever fathom. I found code to animate the background. I also found code to make the buttons work. Overall I did alot of tweaking to get the menu to work correctly and to look right. I created the instruction screen which is a novel way to intuitively teach the player how to play.

I created a few models for the game that did not end up getting used.

This class was a great expirence and I could not have had a better team.
Great Job QFASA

Charlie did what now?

So I took up a heavy programming role on our humble little team this term.

The vast majority of what I contributed to this team was slamming out some rough code for whatever we were trying to accomplish each week. We would then meet up that week, Trent would revise my code, and after we would sit down and collectively problem solve any issues we still had left. It's difficult to lay claim to anything to specific coding wise, since looking at the scripts now I can't tell what I wrote and what Trent wrote. I figured out gravity twice, but Trent had a major role in making it all work. I wrote many scripts for our objects but again, they were all tweaked a decent amount after I had started them on their way to completion.

By far the biggest time suck I had was our original gravity system. For a good couple of weeks, Trent and I were convinced that we could write our own custom gravity script that would work awesomely. This did NOT happen. We reached a point where we had a working system but it was rather stiff and not very fluid or realistic looking or functioning. I stepped away from the forward progress for that week and went on a soul searching journey of sorts to find a better way. I came back the next week with a new way of doing things that was much cleaner and easier to tweak. It flowed better, and didn't break too many of our other scripts. Trent was kind enough to adopt this new system of gravity after spending so much time on the first system.

If had to sum up what I brought to the game in one word it would be "code". I wrote scripts. I revised already written scripts. I talked Trent through his mental blocks.

What I could have done better? I could have commented my code... at least occasionally. Trent was always on me about that one for sure. I could have also stepped in on the design side a bit considering my concentration is in Design/Production and not Programming.

I am proud of our game and am glad I was able to be on such a dedicated team this quarter. We had our bumps in the road for sure, but I think we came together and made a halfway decent game in the end.

Andy Update 2:38

Made a Repulsor Model. Check it out at some point if you get time and lemme know what you think.

Andy Update

Finishing the "worm holes." Gonna make a repulsor model after that.

Frank - Log Entry 9

Past week -
Created level 3. Tried different layouts and created a sketch of level 3. Looked at some sound effects and found a few button click sounds.

This week -
Get the game ready for completion.

Requirements for Final Build

Alright, everyone, we have one week left to get the game done. By next week we need to have a one minute video of actual captured footage. In addition, we will be presenting a three minute postmortum on our game. So everyone should be figuring out what went well and what went wrong while you were working on this project so that we can present what we have learned. Remember that everyone needs to talk.

So we've got a lot to do. Trent, Charlie, and I came up with this checklist of things to do. Whenever you get something done, email me and I will edit the post so that things get put in the Done section.

Andy:
Create Wormhole Art, implement it in Unity
Create art for gravity wells
Add background elements(add things to make our backgrounds more dynamic)
Implement fancy planets in unity
Create Repulsor art, implement it

Trent:
Repulsor script tweaked
Repulsor gravity well visualized
Create diagram of menus for Frank
Make game aspect ratio friendly
One minute screencap video for presentation

Frank:
Sound effects for collisions, win, launch, restart, reset
Sounds for button clicks
Wormhole level one finished (currently level 2)
Wormhole level two created
Fix how to play screen
Add story path after levels
Change level select screen to match story path
Add initial story page
Fix the menu animation's clipping problem or remove menu animation altogether
Orient menu text so that it is facing straight at the camera, no angle

Adam:
Make connecting buttons function
Repulsor level one finished (currently Adam's Prototype one)
Repulsor level two created
Replace generic walls with laser walls
Final level solvable with both repulsor and wormhole

Charlie:
Large planet script
Modify current script to small planet script
Fix the wormhole script
Fix issue where if a repulsor is too close to the start planet upon reset, GravMan gets pushed away, effectively creating a push loop

Done:
Nothing so far.

Charlie Week Final!

Did:

Finalized reset with Trent(I think that finally ended this week).

Made a script for a soon to come wormhole or blackhole object.

Looked into sound effects.

Considered tweaking the music to fix some minor issues but threw that on the back burner for now.

Doing:

Sound effects on collisions once we find some decent sound effects.

Finalizing the wormhole and blackhole scripts.

Making sure nothing breaks on the coding side of our game in the next week.

Trent's Weekly Blog 9

So this week we changed the planets to not be able to go out of bounds. Looked into the music player to try and see if we could stop the music from resetting each time you reload the level. Determined that wasn't worth the effort for such little value and that there were alternative solutions such as never hard resetting the level.

I want to remind people that I won't be here for the final day presentation. I spoke with the professor through email a while ago and he said to make a short video of myself explaining what I did and play it to be my section of the presentation.

So to do this week:
#Continue to implement stuff, working on the wormhole right now to make things jump between them.
#Make my video of myself
#Ensure continuity between levels, so if it works in level one it should work in level two.
#Possibly work on sound or art that's not done by the end of the week.
#I'll probably end up being the guy who makes the video for the presentation so make that too.
#Make a final build of the game

Playtest log 2

                After our last playtest, we have been able to improve a number of things. The gravity has improved since the original playtests, and that was reflected in some of the responses from testers that came back to test the new build. Players found that the improved instructions page helped them figure out the control settings, which speeded up playtimes immensely.

Things to look in to:

1. Variations in the planets: The majority of testers mentioned a need for more than one size of planet, and also in having planets with differing gravities. This will likely be accomplished by creating new scripts that have different radii and power ratings to create the effect of stronger pulls. We also plan on adding more than just planets to the mix. For example, wormholes are in the process of being made.

2. Background enhancements: This has been something that we have been looking at implementing for a while. Our testers mentioned that while the backgrounds of our scenes looked like they were in space, the backgrounds were too stretched and there wasn’t really much going on of interest. To fix this we will likely implement a tiled background and some background elements such as far off galaxies, suns, or some quirky elements.

3. Story screen: Players were interested in the game, but did not know why they were doing what they were doing in the game. They wanted to know the story behind GravMan’s situation, so a story page will be put in to effect.

-Adam

Art Updates

Working on a goal sign to identify the goal planet. Also on a texture for the asteroids Frank made.

Finally got perforce to work yesterday by reinstalling, so the updated planets are up there.

Charlie Week 8 (which is really like week 10?)

Done:

Reset function FINALLY works properly thanks to Trent and me spending all Monday working on it.

Threw together a trampoline object that doesn't work so that's been dropped for now.

Mentally figured out how to make a wormhole object.

Helped Trent code stuffs.

Doing:

Playtests by Wednesday.

Hopefully building a quick wormhole object.

Fixing any other code problems that come up in the mean time.

Needed:

Not resetting music.

Sounds for collisions and wins/losses?

More levels.

I like how everything is coming together finally. Progress is finally being seen! Good work all.

Trent's Weekly Blog 8

So a day has passed since the last time I posted. Lots got done though.

Reset finally works. That's pretty much done.
Refactored a buncha the code to make it as clean as possible.
Oh yeah, resetting works whooo.
Making a playtest able build.

Next week we want to:
~Get new stuff working! Possibilities include worm holes, repulsion planets, trampolines.
~Other things.
~Conduct Playtests by Wednesday.

Adam Blog 8

I've been able to get a few things figured out in the past week, so things are moving along on the design front.

1. Repulsors!: Basically a simple reversal of the gravity script, but the repulsors have been working just fine. These planets push against GravMan, and can be used as effective ways to change the direction that he is going.
2. Gravity tweaks:   A bit more work needs to be done here, but more improvements have been made since my last post. I've been able to really get a feel for the interactions of both the attractors and the repulsors, so the flow should be nailed down fairly soon.
3. Prototype Levels: I've been toying around with different level designs, and one of my better ones has been posted on perforce. This one includes the recently created repulsors, and creates an interesting puzzle for the player.
4. Triple planets: By now the programmers have fixed this so that any level can have numerous planets, but i had made a controller that accepts more than 2 planets.

Things I'll be working on this week:
1. Putting out new level designs for testing
2. Testing scenes with people
3. More gravity tweaks

This week, everyone needs to be working on the following things:
1. Getting the reset and goal scripts back up and running. Trent was good enough to make a GravMan 4.0, but some things seem to have been lost along the way. The biggest of these are the restart script and the goal script. These seem to have stopped functioning efficiently.The faster we can get these back, the better.

2. Level 3: This will likely come in to being after Wednesday, as the results from the playtests will really help here. But with the deadline approaching, we need to get this in play. This means that the designers should be creating and playtesting level ideas with people.

3. Playtesting: As mentioned before, we have a playtest log that is due on Wednesday. Everyone should have their information in to me by Tuesday night, hopefully earlier so I have as much time as possible to write and post the report.

4. Persistent sound: This did not get fixed from last week, so if Andy could figure this out soon, that would really help

5: Enhanced Backgrounds: Andy, this is another thing from last week that I would really like to get done. Check out my last post for details about it.

Remember that our deadline is coming up faster than you think, so this week should really be a strong push for the project. Keep working hard, guys.

-Adam

Frank - Log Entry 8

Past Week -
Finished all menu screens which took alot of time surprisingly. Added a nifty win animation for Mission Accomplished. Created test levels and had a couple people play them. Most of the players said there were not enough obstacles within Level 1 and some of the levels I created had just some dummy objects to block people.

This Week -
Menu screens are done so now levels are the only thing left I have to focus on. I have a few ideas stay tuned.

Trent's Weekly Blog 7

So I'm like six days late with this... Missed class on Monday so I forgot until now when I'm working on our project again to post this. This week I made boundaries for gravman so that he doesn't shoot off screen and resets when he does. I helped Charlies problem solve the gravman reset issues he was having and I'm going to sit now and solve that fully. I did some perforce managing and got everyone a unique folder so that they can work in peace without constant errors.

Right now I am going to sit down and:
~Fix the forces GravMan reset fully
~Fully (re)implement the taggable as planets to make it an object in our game thing so each new planet doesn't have to be typed in by hand
~Merge all the stuff into a GravMan 4.0 build (this will be hard)
~Make a play test able build

This week I want to:
~Help everyone get their own folder to work in again
~Help get multiple playtest versions like the Professor suggested each with their own unique gimick and see where we can go from here
~Make the trampoline work, work on getting other new things working like a worm hole
~Come up with other fun new stuff to get working

Class - 2/29

I thought I was over this illness, but I was definitely wrong. Won't make it today.

Charlie #6

This past week I implemented the rigidbody forces gravity code into our current build. I tweaked everything to work with the new gravity. I fixed Trent's reset function sort of allowing the level to reload when gravman exits the screen and such. Also did some other coding stuffs.

This week I plan to help Trent with more coding. Ideally we will fix up all of what we currently are working on (resetting issues, new planets/items) and be able to move forward into new and exciting things. I also need to run some playtests when we cobble together a solid build to show off.

Adam Blog 7

This past week saw the creation of level two, and, as mentioned in previous posts, it was all kinds of special. Thankfully, though I've been able to do a lot of testing on it and have fixed a number of issues as a result.

• The issue of Z shenanigans has been fixed due to work from both myself and Charlie, so we no longer have to worry about GravMan falling through the background or flying at the camera.
• I fixed a number of issues that were interfering with GravMan's trajectories. The first was fixed by turning off downward gravity on the Cube object, so GravMan would only be influenced by planetary gravity and not natural downward gravity. I also moved the background back because GravMan's foot was clipping it.
• With the previous issues fixed, I've been tweaking the gravity power and radius of the planets to make their effects flow more smoothly. It is still a work in progress, but I think that the attraction and escapes have improved. As of now the radius has been changed to 17 and the power to -30.
• I've set up a new scene, one that I call "Scene 20 - Test Scene". This is where I will be performing all of my gravity tests and tweaks.

So level two is progressing fairly well. I'm looking to improve on a number of things in the next week:

• More work on gravity to make the flow feel right
• Possible incorporation of the slingshot planet. I'll be talking to the producers about this.
• New rounds of playtesting

 There are a couple of things that I would like to get done as a team over the next week:

1. Persistent sound: If we could make it so that the GravMan song does not repeat every time the player restarts the level(which will be a lot), it would improve the feel of the game. The professor mentioned how to do this, and I'll be sending him an email about how to go about it.
2. Gravity well indicators: Charlie said this might be as easy as adding a circle around the model, but I would like there to be some indication of how large and possibly how powerful a planet's gravity is.
3. GravMan respawn positioning: When GravMan flies off the screen too far, he respawns at the home planet (thank you whoever got that fully working). The only issue is that he is facing the direction that he was at when he flew off the screen. Meaning that he should be facing the same way as when the level begins. If that could be worked on that would be great.
4. Trampoline: This is something that we have been talking about, and I think that Frank has made a model for it. If we could get an animation for it that would show it bouncing GravMan as he hits it and implement the functionality behind GravMan hitting it  we could start adding it to our levels.
5. Enhanced backgrounds: The new backgrounds that Andy has put out can now be tiled, so we can add those in. Something that I noticed when setting up my shots was that I would use some of the stars on the background as reference points to where I should put the planet. I think adding objects in the background such as distant galaxies or random fun stuff could be used no only to spruce up our game, but to help the player shoot.
6. Playtests: Next Wednesday we have another playtest log due. Find friends, find random people, have them play the game. The more feedback the better.

Anyway, the game is still coming along well. We still have a lot of work to do, so everyone please email me what your schedule looks like for the next week because it would be a good idea for us to meet outside of class.

-Adam

Andy: Update #Something

Created a background. Frank had the idea of altering it for the other levels, so I am going to do that.

Created updated planets with fun things around them (moons, satellites, rings, etc.).

Frank made an some asteroids. Yay Frank! They are in my e-mail, so thank you.

Brian mentioned that GravMan kinda looks like he doesn't have a head, so I'm going to try to alter him by showing his eyes in the visor or something else that will make it more apparent that GravMan is in a bubble suit thing.

Frank - Log Entry 7

Past week:
I did a few versions of the text for the menus then once every one chose one I made the text in maya and added them to the Main Menu. I also changed the instruction screen so it is easy to read as suggested by the Professor. I added Andy's background art to the menu, the instrction scene, and Level 1.

I also created a satellite model and a trampoline model. Also a team member from my capstone class let me use two of her asteroids she used in her Game Mod class. I only added a texture and manipulated a few vertices, Thanks Michelle!

This week:
I will finish the win screen and add any final details to the menus, I am spending too much time on the menu system and need to focus on the actual levels. I will do what is needed of me to further complete our GravMan game. The end draws nigh!

Frank - Log Entry 6

past week:

I edited the menu to look better. Created a gravman animation for the menu.

this week:

Add the 3D text I made in maya to the menu screens. Create some space stuff.

New level and its….specialness

I created this list before reading through Charlie's most recent post, so I know that some of the things I mention have been addressed in some form.

Level 2 Creation Plan: Created level 2 based on the way we set up level one. 2 inventory, 1 home, and 1 goal planet. Scripts were applied as they were in the first level. So basically a duplicate.

Navigation: Added Level 2 to the level select page, and added connections from the goal planet to the win screen.

Level 2 Placement: Placement in the level was set differently, though it was done to make a kind of “continuation” of level one (the end planet was on the lower side of the screen in lvl1, and is set there in lvl 2).

Level Challenges: I added 2 large walls to add difficulty. The simple idea was that of a “funnel shot” where the player needs to swing gravman in to the wedge created by the two walls and hit the planet.

Wall Changes: Walls had to be made rigid and frozen in their XYZ positions to prevent them from drifting every time a planet hit them, though it was hilarious to watch.

Planet Changes: Similar changes needed to be made to the inventory planets, as anytime they would hit the walls they would start drifting off toward the player. So the Z position was frozen. X and Y drift still occur though.

Gravity Situation: Gravity still seems to work in this level fairly well.

The GravMan Situation: GravMan’s interactions with the level have been….interesting to say the least. I would suggest playing through the level a few times to see this because it is kind of difficult so describe.

1.       GravMan seems to have a tendency to go through the walls. I thought he might be going around them somehow, so I froze the Z position.

2.       GravMan goes off the screen a lot, and is respawning back at the home planet. I don’t if that is supposed to be happening as a result of the programmers doing something, but when GravMan reappears at the planet his trajectory is affected. When refired his path goes….wherever.

3.       Even though he is locked in Z, GravMan still seems to be getting some Z drift. Whenever he gets too far he falls behind the background screen. I moved the background and he was definitely getting some Z movement.

4.       This only happened a couple of times, so I can’t exactly say how this happened, but there were a few times that GravMan was off the screen and the game went to the win screen.

So we have a new level. It’s just in a very special state right now. Please take a look at it (especially the programmers so we can try to figure out some of this stuff) and see what you think. I'm putting what I've worked on so far in the GravMan 3.1 folder. I'll keep working on it this weekend.

Charlie Week 6

In response to the list here are how we plan to address many of the issues:

Add Boundaries:

We will throw in a simple location check in the GravMan update function that will thorw him back to the starting position when he flies off the screen.

Remove Drift on Collisions:

There are two solutions. We could simply kill/reset gravman on all collisions, or we could play with the physics materials of the objects in question. My theory is that the default material has too high of a bounciness value(yes, that's how they phrase it in unity).

RigidBodies Failing in Setup Phase:

I honestly don't know how we keep breaking these collisions and I'm not sure how to fix this one while keeping the current collision method intact.

GravMan Facing Towards Movement:

You guys keep bringing this up, but honestly do we need this? I think it adds to the "silliness" of our game if we just have gravman spinning around haphazardly through space.

Gravity Well Indicator:

Super simple solution would be to just make a colored ring of some kind (or a cloud of space debris in orbit to make it cooler) and scale it up in game to be the radius of the well around the planet. We can easily attach such a ring to the existing planets and it doesnt even need to have any physical effects on the game.

Quit Button:

This is a very simple Application.Quit(); line in the code somewhere. Do we want it based on a key press in game like ESC perhaps? someone can also make a button for it in the menu/win/lose screens (I don't get buttons still).

New GravScript for New Objects:

I'm not exactly sure what you meant by this but I think Trent has had the future in mind while reworking the scripts recently so we should be ok.

Decide on a Gravity Style:

It seems we decided on using both styles of gravity and just using them for different styles of planets or something. This is great and all, but it present a handful of problems. The physics based style won't work with our current launch method for gravman. It also is checked slightly differently so I'm not sure how practical using both styles is going to be but I'm willing to try to get them to be friends.

The List version 1

These are some basic things that I ran in to. I'll definitely be adding more as things come up.

Boundaries on the level need to stop GravMan from permenantly flying away.

Remove the drift while setting up planets.

Planet collisions should always be in effect. Don’t know exactly how or why it happens, but if you run the planets in to each other enough, the collisions stop working when placing planets.

GravMan should face the direction that he is facing.

Might fall in to the ‘add things category” but some representation of how far out the gravity well expands would help.

Quit button functionality

Need grav script to be applicable to new objects.

Figure out which gravity system is better between the current one and the one used in GravMan 2.0

-Adam

Adam Blog 6

What I've been doing:
Planning out some possible ideas for levels
Working on touching up what we have now
Running tests with obastacles and how current gravity interactions can solve obstacle puzzles

What I will be doing:
Now that our programmers have gotten the gravity script in a form that can be applied to new objects, I'm going to start testing out the level ideas that I've come up with. So probably a lot of hours spend looking at GravMan swirling around planets.
From this I aim to create feedback for the programmers on how to improve our systems. I'll be creating a list of suggestions or needed system fixes, as suggested by Trent.
Hopefully within the next week we can have a new level.
-Adam

Trent's Weekly Blog 6

Did a buncha scripting and script planning this week.

What I did
!~Changed the gravman script so new planets will be easier to implement. Right now it just searches the two named planets and finds which is closer than sims gravity, I changed it to search for everything Tagged as a Planet then simulate gravity for all of them.
!~Cleaned up some of the older scripts that had a buncha weird comments and unused stuff in them.
!~Close to being able to make new levels a lot easier. Just need to mess with the level controller and planet script to make those add able too. Same was as I did in the script.

What I'm doing
~!Making the level creation simpler as outlined above.
~!Waiting for the list from Adam of small things to fix, so changing what we have now to make it better rather then adding new things, polish what we have before adding so that the new things are more polished too.
~!GravMan colliding with planets interaction, Frank asked for this and I will see what I can do.

Andy's Update Number Something

Working on background and UI still. I'm thinking about making the UI a 3D object in Maya, so I'll be working with that today in class.

Alpha Notes and updates

These are the things that people suggested we do after the alpha presentation:
1.Visible inventory. People wanted to always be able to see what is in their inventory. Trent mentioned that we could have an inventory that auto-hides when GravMan is fired.
2. Gravity well improvements. Possible options:
    a.Dotted lines around the planets showing the range of the gravity well.
    b. Markers on the planets giving a "well size" such as a marking of 1-20 on the planet.
    c. Moons or other things hovering around the planet to give an idea of well size
    d. Different color planets would have different size wells. (more below)
3. Shot aid: It was mentioned that there should be a dotted line showing where GravMan will fly to based on the planet configuration. This line would taper off after a certain amount of distance. Another suggestion was that we give the trajectories of  past GravMan shots that failed, whether it is more than one past is up for discussion.
4. We need to figure out better scales for both the planets and GravMan
5. There was a suggestion that different color planets would have different effects. This is something that we can work with in various capacities. Examples would be color based well size (as mentioned before), color based effects (such as antigravity, rabbit planets, or others)
6. Stronger physics, but that's something we are working on anyway.
7. Enemies, or other moving objects that would require timing skill.
8. We had suggestions for an unlocked GravMan that you can aim. I think that what we have is good, but we should keep this in mind as a possibility.
9. Obstacles: This is where we need to improve what we have in lvl 2 and beyond.

Comment if you have any other suggestions that you think that we should take in to consideration now that we have our Alpha build.

As an update to be aware of, Trent is making a new work build called GravMan 3.0. All new work should be done in this folder.

We should start focusing on getting in new levels. Also, getting the inventory space up and running should also be a priority. Let me know if you have any questions. Keep up the good work, guys.

-Adam

Unity Version Issues

Here's the version of Unity we use,
http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/UnitySetup-3.4.2.exe.

Others will not work. Adam go download this one so we all have the same version so that you can send the files you work on back up.

Note this is the same version that the in class computers have as of February 15th 2012.

Trent's Weekly Blog 5

Had an issue with my unity on my computer this week so that I couldn't change scripts, which really screws me when I want to be doing programming stuff. This week I mainly made the video for our alpha presentation and made a playtest 2.0 build that works so we can do more playtests if we feel and I fixed some of the bugs inherent with that. There was an issue with perforce where the whole project got screwed up and didn't work so I solved that. I'm also now working on a GravMan 3.0 new clean build so we can start working again. Have to reinstall Unity though, but not the newest version so I had issues there. Hopefully It will we a productive week, we heard a lot of good feedback from the presentation that we can implement.

Adam Blog Entry 5

Not going to be as long as that massive block from last week.
What I did this past week:
Created level select page
Created buttons on multiple scenes
Created connections between scenes
Made small updates to the skybox
Worked GravMan in to the game once we got a model
Did various texture/material work


Things for this week:
Begin designing new levels: We have some designs stored away, and now that we have some gravity I think they can start taking shape.
Begin designing new inventory items: Black holes, repulsors, and....rabbits.
Create an inventory area: I think that this might be able to be done through having an inventory page that has planets in it, and when one of the planets is clicked it would appear on the screen and then can be moved with the controls that we have now. Programmers, feel free to tell me if this is possible.
More playtests: The more info the better

Things are going fairly well. you guys are doing good work.

-Adam

Alpha Build Presentation

Also on Youtube:
http://youtu.be/0rjFhLZiD_g
Note: It's unlisted, so you need the link to watch it.

Alpha Build Presentation

Charlie Week 5(?)

So it's week 5 I guess? Anyway I'm going list format this post.

This past week:

Revised the written code form last week.

Commented all the things!

Fixed bug with the goal not triggering Win when hit.

Added rigid body collisions as a quick fix for things objects phasing though each other annoyingly.

Modified the control scheme to be more approachable.

This next week:

Mouse controls?

Different "space" objects.

Figure out wtf a "prefab" is and how to exploit that knowledge to our advantage.

Look into "negative explosion" gravity now that we're using rigid bodies anyway for collisions.

Use prefabs to create objects while game is in motion.(or something. requires research on my part)

In other news... its my 21st today so hooray for that! :)

Kthx. Go Team QFASA!

Log Entry 5 - Frank

Past Week:

Added theme music to the Menu Scene and the Level Scene. Added Andy's Art to the planets. Found an animation script that will create a nifty animation for a texture, which was used on the menu scene. Did all sorts of crazy that ended up losing the link to materials Trent reverted on perforce and all turned out well.

This Week:

Make the menu system better looking, as of now it looks too old and grainy. Hopefully add a different skybox. Perhaps some sound effects to a few things button clicks, GravMan Launches, etc. Perhaps I can even make some asteroids.

Update and Prep for Monday's Alpha

We've mad e a lot of good progress over the past couple of weeks, and this game is starting to really take shape. For Monday, we need to show the class what we've done. We will need a minute video of gameplay, so if anyone is good with video editing, leave a comment here about it. The computers at the lab have screencap software on them, but getting some on one of our computers shouldn't be that hard.

Things that I think that we should touch on in the video:
1. The fact that we have decent gravity now. This is kind of key to our game, so if we could get that in to the video, it should take a front row in what we show.
2. New art, and our new GravMan model that is now in game.
3. Moveable planets
4. Music

Check out the link that the Prof posted on the site for more information and a sample video that we can use for inspiration.

After the vid, we need to give a two minute presentation about what we have done, and each of us needs to talk. So I guess one of the easiest ways to do this is everyone compile a list of things that they have done, and they can use that to present. In fact, if people want to post up what they want to talk about, we can work from there.

Things to do before Monday:

1. Prep video (All): Again, post here if you think you can handle that. I can probably throw something together, but I'm not exactly great with video software.
2. Collision detection (Programmers): If we could get it so that planets cannot be moved off of the screen that would be great. Additionally, planets should stop GravMan if he collides directly with them, and planets should not be able to be placed on each other.
3. GravMan turning (Programmers): When GravMan is being influenced by gravity, he should always face the direction that he is moving.
4. Music implementation (Art/Design): Put music in our level 1. We can decide if we want music on the menu.
5. Upgrade textures (Art/Design): Andy has been working on some new designs for the planets, and we should get those in to the game.
6. Be ready for presentation (All): Come prepared with things to talk about in our presentation. It is only 2 minutes, but everyone has to talk, and it should be productive. Refer to the assignment about this.
7. Playtest: Remember to keep getting input from other people. It would be good to get a new round of playtests now that we have a more workable and understandable prototype.

We've been making pretty good progress, and with a few more tweaks we can have a well done alpha for presentation. Let me know if you have any issues or if I can help out with whatever you are working on.

-Adam

Andy's Weekly Post 4

I don't think I've been doing these enough to be on my actual 4th update, but someone put 4 and I'm gonna be on top of these blog posts from here on out so I'm starting with 4 anyway.

This week I remade GravMan. Turns out I did only have it saved on the missing computer cause I'm special like that. Anyway, I uploaded him along with 6 differently colored planets and tonight, Frank told me that nothing from me is on perforce except what I showed you guys in class, so I'm going to re-upload them right after this post and that should be all set.

I'm going to start mainly working on a UI and background stuff this upcoming week. We'll see how it turns out and any ideas you guys want to share on the UI specifically would be appreciated.

Trent's Weekly Blog 4

Checking in during class as suggested. This week I have been behind on progress :/ I moved the perforce to a new folder, took notes on the playtests in class, and responded to emails. Not much outside of class. I plan to start working on different programming tasks and helping others implement their stuff this week. First off I wanted to get gravity to work better, sounds like a broken record, but that is the central feature of our game so it should be done well. I have some ideas from what I've seen in class that may help or just continue digging around the internet to find out more.

Adam Blog 3

Sickness is all sorts of fun. Took me out for maybe 3 days. Anyway, did work on lighting the scene and doing some skybox work. Not as much as I'd like to have done, though homework from other happened to be heavy and other bollucks.

Anyway, look forward to getting back in to the groove this week. The progress that we have been making has been pretty good, and I'm happy that the gravity is starting to kick up. Good job all.

-Adam

Log Entry 4 - Frank

Past Week:

Posted a couple questions on the unity forums and tried to implement what they replied with, sadly to no avail. I did learn a few things aabout button scripts.

This Week:

Finish the main menu with an Instruction screen. Also complete thealpha milestone.

Textures

Still working on a net on a planet as the goal planet. Lemme know what you think about that idea. Also, try to learn/work with shaders in maya to get a look for the planets that resembles Gravity Wars, or whatever that game with the rocket launchers is.

Charlie writes some code...

This past week I wrote code which now allows for multiple objects to be around in the scene and controllable. The code is a bit sloppy and needs some commenting/revising. Next step is to make the objects have different effects on gravMan (more scripts). Fix gravity for Alpha milestone. Fix the controls in the menu screen to allow keyboard controls. Other things still need to be done as well, but I don't remember all of it at the moment.

Charlie Week 3 Check In

So... this past final week of January was a bit slower for me up until the Monday work day we had in class. Throughout the week I toyed around with gravity to mostly no avail. Thankfully Trent was able to cobble together a functional gravity model on Sunday just in time for us to throw together a playtest for this current week.

Other advancements since my last post that potentially were not in the playtest build:

1. Reset function so we don't have to relaunch the game after every failed attempt to win.

2. Four directional movement of the planet in the set up phase of the game.

3. Played around with Trent's gravity a bit trying to figure out exactly what he did and how to improve upon it.

Plans for this week:

1. Mouse placement of planets in game.

2. Improved gravity effects still.

3. Multiple planets in the scene with implemented distance checking by gravman.

Playtesting Results

We learned a lot from this play test. After looking through the notes, I found some similarities in the responses that we got from each of our testers. The first was that it was hard to figure out what they were supposed to be doing without any guidance from the game. With no tutorial screen or controls menu, the player was left to their own devices to figure out what they were supposed to be doing. They also were frustrated by the fact that there was no ability to restart a level after firing a shot, or the fact that you HAD to restart the level after firing a shot. These things had to be told to the player.  The menu screen with the moving camera received mixed reviews, and will need to be looked in to as whether it should be kept or not. Many players were unaware of the fact that the green planet was not the target to be hit but the means to hit the actual target (the yellow planet).  From the results that we found, some of the next steps need to be in creating an effective way for the player to learn to play the game.

Things to look in to:

1. Introduction screen: Small screen showing the story of the game, something that can be browsed quickly but gives the player context

2. Reset: An ability to reset a failed level will be added for ease of use.

3. Controls Page: Lets the players know what buttons to press

4. Improved Gravity: Bigger planets will have larger gravitational pull than smaller ones

5.  Collision Meshes: GravMan will no longer fly through planets

6. Tutorial Screen: A screen showing how to use gravity to get GravMan to his destination

7. Sounds: Music and in game sound effects as events happen

8. Scaling improvements: Make GravMan more visible and the planets have better sizing

9. Improved art: Players could not initially tell that the green and yellow spheres were supposed to be planets, so an improvement in this art will be taking place to make it more obvious that these are planets.

10. Art filler: Currently there is just a large space skybox in the background, and more will be added to the scene to spruce up the look and feel (planets, galaxies, stars)