End of First Semester of Graduate School

So today marks the day that I'm finally done with my first semester of Graduate School, and it has been the busiest that I've ever been. I still have some homework to turn in, but classes are over and today we presented our last prototypes.

I'm really proud of what we accomplished, and I think that this was the best game that i was a part of the whole semester.

Everyone really liked what we did and, as usual, everyone was really impressed on what Dan was able to achieve mostly on his own (I mean in terms of coding).

There are a few things that I wish we couldn't had more time to work on the project, but we still did a very good job.

This will be the last entry for this semester, and i can't wait for the start of the next semester where we will have a chance to pitch a game idea and have 2 games picked for the class to work on over the course of the next 2 semester. I already have an idea which is similar to the game I pitched last year in my undergrad capstone class, but I've made some improvements this time around which I hope will be enough to make it interesting for people to want to vote for it.

We are all suppose to submit a game design document this weekend, so I will see if I can post something over winter break. That is all for the foreseeable future, thanks for reading.

Prototype 4 Done

So I'm done with everything that I need to do for Prototype 4, and I'm glad that its finally done. I had a ton of 3D assets for this project, and I think that they turned out.

It was a little challenging because I had to model a bunch of different object that I had done before. One thing twas that I had to make a whole level in a 3D model as well as a boat, a fish, and a bunch of other stuff. Here is a render of the final scene that I put together using a bunch of the assets that I made for the intro screen.

I think it came out decent at the end. I will try to make one more post after the presentation tomorrow. That's it for now, thanks for reading.

Almost Done

So over the weekend, I got my act together and I managed to complete all of the art necessary for our fishing game.

They may not look that complicated, but it took me a while to do all the art myself, its actually one of the things that I actually don't like about the program. In the teams that we are placed, its always one producer, two engineers, and one artist. I shouldn't complain since Sterling has made a lot of the art for the HUD, but I just don't like it because if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have been able to get everything done by this next thursday.

Now the only thing that I have to do by tomorrow night is putting together a little scene in maya off all the assets I created and then getting a little render for the title screen. Then if I'm lucky, I may animate the scene so that it moves. But Dan said that he was going to look into it a little and see if it would work since he also wants to add some special lighting to make it look like time is progressing in the title screen.

Hopefully I will finish everything on time, so that I can finally get some decent sleep. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Fish Model Done

I'm not sure how the code for our game is coming along, but I'm now done modeling a fish for our game.

I also laid out the UVs for the model this morning with the help of Jorge.I'm now in the process of texturing the model.

I've also been working on a fishing rod, and I think it looks decent so far. I still need to work on it a couple hours more.

After I'm done with the fishing rod, I will focus on getting some animations for the fish since it can be time consuming.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Prototype 4

So today we got introduced to our next client and what we are expected to do over the last 4 weeks of the semester.

This project is going to focus on a new piece of hardware being developed at the University of Utah. Essentially is a new type of controller, much like the current Xbox 360 controller but different. We are still not sure how much we can write about it on our project blogs, so for now I won't go into details of what it is and how its different than current controllers. I'll just refer to it as "The Controller".

So inorder for the people developing The Controller to know what it can and can't do, they want us to develop a game that will focus on the new mechanism of The Controller. They want us to make the game to showcase all the cool features of The Controller and that it can make a game much more enjoyable thanks to the its cool new features.

Dan came up with cool idea, and we are calling it Feelin' Fishy. Its going to be a fishing game, but you aren't going to be able to see the fish under the water. There is going to be a way that we are going to let the player know when they have a bite and you will have to pull the fish to you.

For now, Dan is going to set up the framework for the game and I'm going to make some really simple models in Maya for place holder while I get caught up on my other classes. I will eventually have to make a skybox and whatnot, but that is not for at least another week.

That is all for now, thanks for reading.

Prototype 3 Done

I haven't done any blog entries for this project, and I feel kind of bad. But we did a great job.

We presented our project on Wednesday to the Museum and they loved it.

I don't know if I wrote any details about our project before, but it changed a bit since then.

Originally we wanted to make icons of cities for people to shoot at, but we eventually decided to go a little more abstract. I ended up making a duck target like in many traditional shooting galleries. Then we put a banner around the duck with the name of a city around it. This is to make a point that this game is about Utah.

There is a lot more detailed information about our project at the project blog and our game is now on display at the Utah Museum of Natural History.

We still need to clean up a bit to improve the experience, but that shouldn't take too long. For now, we don't know what else we will be doing until Monday when we find out what we will be doing next.

Thanks for reading.

Prototype 3 is Underway

So I haven't posted anything since we presented our 2nd prototype. The presentation went really well, thanks to Josh's awesome presentation skills.

We got some good feedback, like we needed to make sure that the circuits looked a little more complicated and that it had to make sense on how it all works. I thought that the layout I made would get the idea across that it was a bomb and that everything was connected, but I guess it needs to be a little more clear.

I still don't know if any of the prototypes that we showed will actually get deployed to the Mechanical Engineering students like we were told at the beginning of the project.

Since then, we've started on our next prototype. This time our client is the Utah Museum of Natural History. They just finished building a new building for the museum and they are in the process of getting all the exhibits ready for when they officially open their doors to the public. But they have one problem, one of the exhibits that they had wasn't working the way that they had hoped.

The exhibit is called Futures (or something like that) and it has to do with technology and the future of Utah. They want to have a short game in that exhibit that will teach the visitors about how Utah will be impacted by its doubling of the population in the next 40 years and what we will have to do to manage all of our resources.

The game that they have right now has all that information, but its too wordy, too long, and really confusing. So we were called to try and save the exhibit.

We have to incorporate as much information about water conservation into our game, but it has to be a short game (about 2-4 minute play) that will be fun and teach something to the visitor about the future of Utah.

My team this time consists of: Brandon Karratti as the producer, Jorge Elola & Pace Sims as engineers, and Christine Olinquevitch & I as artist.

I'm so happy that there is another artist in my team this time, it means that I won't fall behind like on the other 2 projects because there is too much art to do and I have to do all of it.

So for our game, Pace got the original idea of coming up with a game that you have to "shoot" your resources to parts of Utah that need it the most. While making sure that you keep everyone happy and keep track of your limited resourced. We hope that this will make it easy to understand and fun to play for children and adults.

We are going to make this game using flash, I'm still not sure how all the technical stuff will work but I can leave that stuff to Pace and Jorge to figure out. In the meantime, Christine and I have to come up with some placeholder art so that the engineers can start to put stuff in place since we only have 3 weeks before the museum opens.

If we succeed over the other team (there is only 2 teams working for the UMNH this time, everyone else is working for another client on a different project) we will have our game shown on the exhibit.

I will have to brush up on Flash, but I don't think that it will be too hard since Christine is a graphic design major (or something like that). :)

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Prototype 2 Presentation Today

So the time to present our second prototype has come.

Overall, it went really well. Our game really emphasized that it was going to be used for educational purposes and we managed to get our idea across of how it would look once it was finished.

It was still a little confusing for some people, but they managed to get the idea in the end and gave us some input on how we could make it look better.

One of the things that someone said that really got burned in my head is that the assets have to scaled up, never down until you have had time to experiment with them. This was because the grid for our game was really big compared to the size of the circuit/problem on the board. So basically the cells needed to be bigger to allow the player a more clear view of the art and it also gives us more room to work with.

Finally, I don't know if any of the games will actually be used/fully developed but it was a nice experience getting to work for a client.

After all the presentations, they told us a little about our next project. Apparently there are a few people that will be flying in from a company that is looking to expand but don't have much experience with games. We weren't really told what we were going to do, so will have to wait until next week to find out.

In the meantime that is all, thanks for reading.

End of Fall Break

So over fall break I worked on a bunch of stuff, and I still didn't manage to get everything done that I was suppose to.

I manage to do the following things: a new game board, title screen, icons, and some text for the buttons of the title screen.

Most of the art work that I made was done in maya and then I just rendered it and tweaked it in photoshop.

Here is the new title screen:

Bomb Defuser is just a working title for now, and it will most likely change.

I still have a bunch of stuff I need to work on before the presentation on Wednesday, thanks for reading.

Simple Layout

I've made some progress in the art needed for our game. A while ago I posted some really crappy "art" for our game. 

Well, I think that I've at least made some improvement. Here is what I have so far, and keep in mind that I'm not done yet.

So that is the general layout of our game. We have our main grid in the center, then our tool box to the left and a box that will provide hints, tips, and the game state at the bottom. I'm trying to do something simular to what Bioshock did with their hacking mini-game. I'm planning on adding more stuff to the background to make it more interesting. But it the meantime, this gives something to the programmers to work with.

The red things at the side of the grids are suppose to be wires. I don't know I think I did a good job, but please let me know if they don't look right. For this project, I'm going to try and focus on the layout and the art of the layout as our "one sliver" of good art for this prototype.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Prototype 2 Coming Along

So today we were suppose to get another visit from our client since he came up with a few ideas to improve our games over the weekend. But he never showed up, so for the meantime we continue to work.

Our group sat down and talked about some specifics of our game. We talked about how the game is going to be laid out, and how we are going to do it. For now, we will stick to the "bomb diffuse" idea that we have and I've altered an image that I found on the internet to be our bomb for the game. I made the fuse longer and straight so that Felix and Derek can use it as a timer for the player.

The idea is that we won't so how much time the player has left to solve the puzzle, but the length of the fuse will sort of tell him how long he has before the bomb explodes. This will add some tension and hopefully get the whole "bomb diffusing" idea across to the player.

Josh will be helping me with the icons and I will try to focus on the layout to make it look as good as possible. This will be our "one sliver" of final art on how the game will look if it were ever to be developed beyond this prototype.

Here is the image that I reworked for our prototype:

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Presentation

So today Josh presented our idea to the client and overall it went well. They seemed to like it and we are going ahead with it.

We sat down and decided on what tasks each of us was going to work on to get a solid version of the game by next week on Thursday. After that, we will polish and add more levels if we have time.

In the meantime I have to work on better art than what I submitted yesterday. One thing that we added is that since we need a some reason to motivate the player, we decided with defusing bombs. So for now, the idea is that there will be a bomb with a lit fuse and it will move slowly. Once the fuse reaches the end, it will blow up if the student didn't finish the circuit in time.

So to start out, I will be working on the bomb. I will also be working on some tiles and icons for the game.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Stuff For Circuit Mockup

So like I said before, we are going with a circuit mockup for tomorrows presentations and I had to make some quick icons and 2 grids for the game idea that we have. A few of them I just grabbed from the internet and resized them.

 Here is my stuff:

So as you can see, all the images are really simple and it's just to get the idea across. Some of them I make, but its just easier to adjust images for this mockup.

I also emailed all my stuff to Josh and I can't wait to see what he will come up with for tomorrows presentation.

In the meantime, that's all. Thanks for reading.

Prototype 2

So today we found out what we are going to do for the next prototype, we are going to work on a game to teach core concepts of Mechanical Engineering to incoming freshmen.

At first it was kind of hard to try and come up with something because what the client told us was so broad and didn't really narrow anything down to try and focus us in a particular direction.

So after our team sat down and talked about different possibilities for a game, we decided to stick to a game that would teach students about circuits. Felix (we are in a new team now, which is: Josh as producer, Felix & Derek as engineers, and myself as artis) found a game that is really fun that shows the player simple concepts of a circuit board. 

Here is the game that Felix found:

We are going to take this game and make the player think a bit more than just trying to figure out a puzzle. We are going to try and make it so the students will have to try and think about what they've learned in class and try to apply it to the game to solve the puzzle.

Felix was also saying that they (the engineers) might even be able to make it so that the level design will be done through text files. This will make it so that once everything is set into place, anyone can design a level for the game and then have a student solve for the problem.

I have to come up with some quick art assets for a concept UI and icons that will represt: a light bulb, a power switch, wire, battery, and a resistor. I will have to get this done by tomorrow night so that we have a mockup ready by Wednesday when we pitch our games.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

First Prototype Finished

So today was when we had to present the prototype that we have been working on for the last two weeks.

It went a lot better than I thought it would, but we still had some feedback that made me reflect on some things.

For example:

• Since this is an internal prototype, we can use existing material and modify it to suit the needs of our game. I tried to make original art, and got "marked down" for it because none of the art was close to finalized.

I had a few more things that I was going to write for my list, but I can't seem to remember them right now.

Also, we were told some details about our next game.

This time around, we are going to make a game for incoming freshman students in the Mechanical Engineering department. The games that we make here will be deployed to students to try and get them interested in Mechanical Engineering and teach them core Mechanical Engineering concepts.

I'm still not sure what the last part means, but we will find out more information on Monday.

I'm already in a new team, and this time the producers were in charged of putting together their own team. The only catch is that everyone in the team hasn't worked together in the last game. So this is an entire new team.

We will be using XNA for the next game, but I'm not too concerned since Felix is the same team I am and he has experience working in XNA.

Other than that, we are not required to but we can do some research over the weekend. I think I might ask a few questions to one of my cousins in California who is now a sophomore mechanical engineer, and see what it is that he had to know before starting and if there is anything that he didn't know, how did he go about learning all the necessary information.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Factory Character With Gun

So I did some tweaking to the factory character that I made, but this time I aded a gun.

I don't know if we are even going to add it, but if we do then we have something to work with.

I also made a really simple factory to place at the end of the level so that people can see where are going to go "next". We just won't have a next level for this prototype.

That's all for now, I will post another entry if there is other stuff I end up working on before the presentation tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Improved Background

So yesterday after the professors went around the room critiquing out games, it was clear that I needed to make some much needed changes to the background. A lot of people couldn't tell that the blue in our background was actually water and not the sky.

So I had to go in and tweak it just a little and I added some islands that I made in illustrator (btw, my skills in Illustrator are definitely getting better) and not it looks way better.

Here is an example:

Compared to how it was before, it looks much more like a beach now.

I still have some stuff I need to do before we present tomorrow. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Factory Character Finished

So I finally finished the last character for our game. I think this one looks much better than my last 2, I can at least say that after this I know Illustrator just a little bit better.

Here is what I did:

I think the first one looks better, but I don't know if people might think that the character has his knee caps really high, so I brought those things down a bit. But I don't know if it helps since he looks a little square now.

I still have to add a gun to the guy to finish him. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Main Character Sprite Sheet Done

So I'm not very good at 2D art as I've mentioned before, but I sure as hell have improved over the last week or so.

After finishing the background, I started to work on our main character and the sprite sheet for the actions.

It's not very complicated, but when you don't really know what you are doing it makes it really hard to get anything done.

So here it is:

I still have to make 2 more sprite sheets, hopefully the next ones won't take me 7 hours to complete. :(

Thanks for reading.

Background Is Done

So I finally finished the background for our first level.

Here is a section of the background I made:

Now that the background is done, I have to create a mask for them and I still have a ton of other stuff I need to work on. Troy is going to help me create assets, but I also have to make sure that these next few days I don't slack and that I try to get as much work done. That probably means that I will have to spend a few hours after work in the MGS lab. :(

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Working on Background

So since Monday, I've been working on the background for our game.

It has been taking me longer that I thought it would, but I can honestly say that my Photoshop skills are improving.

I think that I'm about 75% done with the background, and I hope to finish it today before class is over.

I will try to put the background up once I'm done.

Thanks for reading.

First Week of the MGS

So we just got done with the first week of the MGS program, and it looks like the work is just starting. 

The first day in our Projects class, we got into groups and we were told to start working on a game idea that would deal with a "serious topic". 

So my group decided to go with helping the environment, something that we would all be able to relate to and have a good understanding of.

I managed to put together a background & a level with some stock footage I found on the internet. After we pitched our game, I started to work on trying to design a level with Troy to see what we should include in the game.

So we now have a level designed, the only thing now is that I now have to create a templete that I can give the programmers to start putting in the level in Power Game Factory. The easiest way that I found to do this is to do it in Illustrator or Photoshop and then later start to work on the background.

The only thing is that my skill in Illustrator or Photoshop are very limited. So I've been spending the weekend looking at a great tutorial site that talks about the basics of Illustrator. Once I get back to the lab on Monday, I think that I should be able to create a level a little bit easier.

That is all for now, thanks for reading.

Back From Spring Break

So I didn't really do much over the break, I actually feel kind of bad because there isn't much for me to blog about anymore. Most of the art stuff is done now, but I did work on some screen capturing over the break.

The only thing, is that Cam Studio sucks. I can either take video that looks really crappy but that everything moves the way it should, or I can use a better codec but nothing moves in the video.

So we are thinking of getting a copy of Fraps to do the screen capturing.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Presentation

So today we had to present our game to some people from EA and other large companies to get some input for our game from professionals in the gaming industry.

Overall they really liked our games, all three of them. They had some really constructive for our game, most of which I can't remember at the moment.

A lot of it has got to do with the Tech side, and very little, if any, with the Art side.

Things have really slowed down for the Art side, we have a few things that we still need to do, but very minor. I haven't posted anything for the last week and a half, mainly because I haven't done anything for the team.

I should've been working on the trailer, but my Machinima class has taken a lot of my time in the last week.

Over the spring break, I hope that I will be able to work on the trailer and so some screen capturing.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading.

Not Much To Report

So as we get near to the finish line of this great project, things are starting to slowdown for the art team. We still need to make a few more assets for the game, but they aren't super important and we don't know if theres going to be time to add them in. So in the meantime I will record shorter bits of gameplay for the trailer, since we will be making two trailers in total.

Charlie was telling me that we will need to make a trailer that will be in-game and one that is the short "promotional" trailer. We still don't know how hard it's going to be to make those two trailers, but we have to get started on them because we don't want the deadline to creep up on us.

We didn't really do much in class today, mostly because about half the group was missing. But we did get to talk about a few things concerning the final boss battle for the game. We got some things worked out, and now Felix just need to talk to the rest of the programmers to see how its going to work.

I will try to review another game since I don't really have much to do for this sprint. We need to have some consistent activity on our App Hub account if we want other people to review our game in the next week or so. So far, not many people have reviewed game (at least not that I know about) so hopefully I will be able to help out the team this way.

One last thing, next Tuesday is the Major Expo at the Union Building and I will be there representing the Film side of our team. We will be showing off our game to people that come to the expo to hopefully get them interested in the EAE program if they haven't already declared a major with the university. I'm not really sure who else is going to be there with me from the Tech side, but hopefully I won't be there alone.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading.

Working on Trailer

So I started to work on the trailer over the weekend. I managed to get visual studio installed on my laptop and I compiled the code to play the game on my laptop. Charlie suggested I use Cam Studio to do some screen capturing of me playing the game.

I started recording some stuff and everything seemed to be working well. But then after 15 minutes of playing, I tried to see how it looked and the file was corrupted and Cam Studio crashed on me.

Now we are thinking about using Fraps instead. One of our teammates has an unrestricted version of fraps and we will probably just use his.

I also reviewed another game last night. I'm trying to get us enough activity so that when we submit our game for play testing next week, we will have enough activity that we won't just be shut down because we don't participate in the community enough.

I'm also done making a few textures for the asteroids and I will give them to Charlie tonight so that he can review them.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Starting The Game Trailer

So Charlie said that it would be a good idea to start working on our game trailer. At the moment I'm playing around with Cam Studio for screen capturing.

But before I can start on the trailer, I need to finish the textures that I made for my asteroids. This is because the way that Mudbox makes textures won't work with what we have in mind.

The programmers made it so that the size and the texture of the asteroid will be random, which means that the texture won't match the other asteroids if they get one of mine. So I have to come up with something else. I will try to have that done over the weekend.

Then I will try to get really good at the game so that I can start recording cool scenes from the game to put in the trailer.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

At Beta

So today is the day that we are suppose to be at Beta. And we are, sort of.

The tech guys say that there is still a few things that need to be tweaked (ex: the capital ship ai). So at this point we are really close, but not really there. But the game is playable at this moment. Some of the stuff might not be there, but it feels like a game now.

Rodger played the game, and he was very happy with how far we have come in just a few weeks. At the beginning of the semester, they actually wanted to cut our game because they didn't think that we could actually take what we had at the end of last semester and turn it into a game.

I also got to play our game for the first time today. I've been able to see some of the tech guys play it before, but never by myself. It felt really cool to actually see it with my own eyes.

Over this last weekend, I worked on a few asteroids to make them look just right. I was trying to add a normal map to each so that we could get some detail, but James told me to not worry about that. That the asteroids aren't really going to be all that important so just do a color texture and thats it.

So I've managed to complete two asteroids, and I'm currently working on another one. Since my Photoshop skills aren't that good, I've had to so the textures using Mudbox. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I think I'm doing a better job now.

Now that I have Maya on my laptop, I'll see if I actually have time to get around to posting renders of all the work that I've done.

That's all, thanks for reading.

More Asteroids

Last class time, Charlie told me of a more efficient way to make asteroids within Maya. So I'm in the process of making different kinds of asteroids for the game. They are going to be different size and shape.

They aren't quite ready yet, so I'm still experimenting with different things in the meantime.

I finally managed to install Maya on my laptop after a week of reformatting my laptop and reinstalling a bunch of stuff. So now I will finally can do a lot more work without being at school.

I couldn't get to class today, but from what I hear there wasn't much to do today anyways.

Charlie told me afterwards that all they did was to go to L130 to see how the game is progressing. Apparently it's looking really good and we should be at Beta by Tuesday.

I'm so excited!

That's all, thanks for reading.

Close To Beta

So we have till the end of this week to finish our game because we need to start Beta testing next week.

Yesterday I finished the first fighter that I made at the beginning of last semester. I tweaked a few things, but overall it looks the same. I also attached a few guns to the ship along with a few locators.

I also made an asteroid. I tried to make one in Maya, but I couldn't get it to look right. So I made it with 3ds Max and exported it in fbx format. Then I brought it into Maya to edit it. And then I ran into a problem.

3ds Max had made the model using only triangles, so I had to spend between 1 and 2 hours deleting edges to make everything quads.

It looks great now, but it's probably too high of a resolution. I don't know if I'll have to make it again or not.

During class, we didn't really do much. We did talk about another of the games that is also in the process of going into beta. But I won't go into that.

We mainly talked about what needs to be done to get to full beta.

In the art side of stuff, we need to finish a few things. We need to tweak some ships, make a tone more asteroids. And some other last minute stuff.

While on the note of asteroids, Charlie told me of a way that is much more effective at creating asteroids than what I did. We are trying to get them to look good, but at the same time stay as low poly as possible. Charlie wants me to stay below 200 faces at all possible.

I will give it a try tomorrow night while I'm in the lab, and see how that goes.

That's it, thanks for reading.

Capital Ship Done

So I finally finished the capital ship that I've been working on for almost 2 weeks.

I emailed the file to Charlie and all I have to do is add a little more geometry since the edges need to be more rounded.

I will try to get the extra geometry in today. If not, then this weekend for sure.

Today, we had to bring our game to class to have Roger play it and critique what we have so far.

Today was the first time that I got to look at our game since the day that we had our "play date". I have to say that it's looking really cool. The models that Jeremy has textured for us are looking great. The game still needs a few tweaks, but overall is looking great.

For this next week, we have to build more enemy fighters, different types of asteroids, different models for the pods, and I can't remember what else.

I will be working in a few things. That's it for now, thanks for reading.

Name Lock Down

So before I get to the name of the name of the game that was decided on, I'm going to first write about what I've been working on.

So last week, I was working on a full size capital ship. But I didn't  like the way that it was looking. So I decided to start over from scratch. This is one is looking a lot better in my opinion, and now all I'm waiting on is for Brandon and Charlie to take a look at the file before I keep working on it.

For class today, we had to bring three names that we liked for our game. Then Bob, Roger, & the class gave us some feedback on each. After everything was done, we decided that our name will be:

The Last Pod Fighter

We might change it to just Pod Fighter or something like that.

Thats it, thanks for reading.

Still Working on Capital Ship

So I've had a lot of stuff due in other classes in the last 3 days, so I haven't had that much time to work on the capital ship (or enough sleep) so this is the first time that I haven't been able to finish a task on time. :(

I will get to work this weekend and have it done by Tuesday at the latest.

Today in class we talked mostly about the importance of a name for our game. Rodger pointed out that we don't have the time or money to come up with a brand for our game. So the name for the game is something that is going to be really important when it comes to publishing it.

The name has to be descriptive enough that people will know what the game is just by looking at the title, but not too long either or random just because we want it to sound cool. Rodger gave an example of calling a game "Eclipsia." That name does nothing for the game, or any game for that matter.

The group task is to come up with three really good possible game titles by Tuesday, for that is when we have to lock in our game name. We have a few good names already, but we will find out for sure on Tuesday.

That's it, thanks for reading.

Working On Capital Ship

So my task for this sprint is to work on a full size capital ship. I started working on it, but it's harder than I thought it would be.

Usually I look up pictures from different types of ship on Google, and then try to get bits and pieces from each to come up with a new design. But this time I don't think it's working.

I've noticed that most of the capital ships that I've found on the internet are all either really pointy or really round. I started to work on something resembling the front of this ship for now.

I sent the file to Brandon and Charlie to see if either one of them had any better ideas.

I will finish the capital ship by next class time so that Charlie can work on the UVs.

While in class, we talked a little about the assets and how we are going to use them in the game. Since Brandon is still improving my space station and is probably going to be the model with the highest poly count, we were all talking about how it was going to be used in a boss fight where it's the only capital ship and will spawn the occasional enemy fighter.

That's it, thanks for reading.

Bomber Ship Done

So last time I was absent from class and I didn't get that much stuff done on Tuesday. But yesterday (Wednesday) I managed to get the bomber ship that was assigned to me.

I gave it to Charlie to look it over, and do any modifications as he sees fit. Then he will do the UVs for it. And I'll post some renders over the weekend if I don't forget.

Also, I don't remember if I've posted this already (and I'm too lazy to check right now) but we are actually going to use the space station that I build as a capital ship. So I didn't really know that when I was modeling it, so I build it to be more of a prop that something that was actually going to be in the game.

At the moment, Brandon is redesigning some of the parts of my space station so that we can mount some turrets on it. Hes also trying to make it look more capital ship "like". And from what I saw today, its turning out better than what I had done at the beginning.

For my next assignment, I have to create a full size capital ship. This one is probably going to be the toughest thing that I've had to do so far. I'm not sure how its going to end up, because I don't really plan ahead. I just sit down and start modeling until I model something that I like. For this next design, I have to keep in mind that we are going to also be mounting turrets on the capital ship, so I'll have to be a little careful with the design.

Last thing I want to add, today the art team had a little chat and we came to one conclusion. We didn't really communicate when I was building the space station, so right now a lot of rework has to be put into the model. This could've been avoided if we communicated more often. So what I'm going to do, is that every time I'm done with one little "burst" of modeling, I'm going to email the file to both Brandon and Charlie to have them take a look at it. This way, there will be more input from everyone on how a certain model should look and we won't have to do what we are doing with the space station again.

That's it for today, thanks for reading.

Sick Day

So today I'm was feeling a bit sick and I couldn't make it to class. My first time missing class, including last semester. Hopefully it doesn't affect my grade too much.

Anyways, I emailed everyone to let them know the status of what I'm working on. So here is what I told them.

My current task include modeling a bomber class ship, which is about 50% done. It might need some minor tweaking, but not too much hopefully. Also, I had finished modeling the new space station last week. So over the weekend I had to layout the UVs and let me just say that its a nightmare. So I talked to Charlie later in the day, and he agreed to do the UVs for me.

Also, I think that we are going to stick to a pipeline workflow from now. I will keep doing models, and Charlie will do the UVs. I will try to do the UVs when I can, and let Charlie takeover when it gets too overwhelming.

That's it for me, thanks for reading.

End of First Sprint

So today is the end of our first sprint for the semester. I can't say that I got too much work done, but at least I'm trying. :P

The one thing that I would like to mention that I actually started to work on my space station again. I didn't really like that way that the other one looks, so I decided to hunt down pictures of other space stations and I found a few that I really liked.

So what I did is that I kept my original design, but I'm actually expanding it. My original design was kind of lame, so now I'm making look something more like this. It's not exactly the same, but I liked the way that it looks so I'm going to shoot for something similar.

Also, I volunteered to review one game this sprint. This is so that it looks like we are active in the Indie Community, so when the time comes to submit our game we won't be turned down just because we didn't contribute enough.

I haven't gotten any of those two things done, so I'll post some renders when I'm done with the new space station and I'll post my review when I'm done with it tomorrow night.

Also, for my next sprint I'll have to work on making a mid size bomber type ship. So far, most of the ships that I've made have been sort of "disc shaped", but this next one has to look a little more narrow and long.

One more thing, last time was our presentation to the Master students. I wasn't there because I had a class at the exact same time that we had to do the presentation, but it from what I heard I think it went ok. We got a lot of good feedback which will ultimately make our game that much better. Based on what we got from the survey forms that James & Brandon collected, we will do some adjustments to the game to get it polished.

Thanks for reading.

Presentation Tonight

So we are suppose to present our game to the Master students tonight to show how far we've gone in the development of our game. Everyone in the group really worked hard this weekend to have something better to present, since we got a lot of good feedback from our "play day."

My main task this weekend was to get a mid size enemy ship modeled and UVed. I managed to get something done, but I didn't get a chance to do the UVs for it. So Charlie will be able to take care of that for me.

Here are a few renders of the ship that I modeled:

I used the Corellian Corvette as inspiration for the front of the ship and then I used the wings from the ship that Charlie created not too long ago. Then I added the wings on the top since it looked a little too plain. And finally, rocket boosters on the back of the ship. Like I said, Charlie will UV it.

We didn't really do much in class today. We got a little time to work on our stuff and to get organized for the presentation tonight. I'm not going to be able to go to the presentation because I have a class at that time. I was really looking forward to going, but maybe next time (if there is a next time).

Now I'm just waiting for my next assignment. Thanks for reading.

New Scrum Master

So today was our "game day", this is where we got to play the games of the other teams and give them some feedback.

I didn't play any of the other games, but it looked like it was a good experience for everyone. This gave us a chance to see how the other groups are doing, and maybe even get ideas from testing the games.

We did get a lot of good feedback for our game, mainly saying that our controls are too confusing and we need to work a lot on game balancing because it is really hard to kill the enemies. A lot of people also complained about the radar, so I don't know what the programmers are going to do about that.

We are planning on working really hard over the weekend to get something that looks more like a game by Tuesday night when we have to present the game to the Master students that to have them critique it.

I talked to Charlie, and I have to designed a new mid size ship for Tuesday. I don't really know where to start, all I know is that it has to be big enough to have a small crew but not to bulky that it looks like a capital ship. :(

Also, at the end of class James told us that he need to split up his role in the group. So from now on, Felix is going to be Scrum Master and James will be the Technical Director.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading.

New Semester

So yesterday was the start of the new semester.

I didn't really do anything during the break, I was thinking about polishing my models and making new ones. But that didn't go too well.

Our group did meet over the break to talk about what we would do for the rest of the semester as far as polishing our game to make it "fun".

Since today was the first day of class, we didn't really do much. We got an introduction to what we are going to do this semester. We also had to talk about where we are in our game since we presented in class last semester.

We finally pined down a lot of the stuff that we are going to do to finally get our game on its way. We are going to start our sprints in the next few days because have to have something better to show for our "play day" where we get to test the other team's game.

That's it, thanks for reading.