Week 12 - Game Design & Plan

This is our final development week for 1st half of game development and the last blog entry of this year. Expecting the game development will be continued over the Christmas and New Year breaks. Blogs won't be updated weekly until we begin the second half of the game development which is in January 2nd week.

Today was our team's final presentation. We forced our self to be the first team to do the presentation even though none of us have proper rehearsal. We did managed to deliver it in 20 minutes time slot in such an awful manner also couldn't time to speech the final bit which is the "Future of the game" but at least John is happy on the fact that our prototype is working and it is plenty enough to get a clear concept of the game. Each team individual, especially me, faced the lack of confidence and nervousness. Still we managed to get a nice round of applause for our bravery to do the presentation first. Compared to ours the other two team's presentation was brilliant as they never faced any difficulties that we faced and i think they got the confidence from our brave attempt ;) After all group's presentation we had a chat with John and he congratulated us for doing it first also advised us how to do it more precisely on next time. 

Phewww thanks god that's the end of a tight module. See you in January for the 2nd half.

Wish you all a Happy Christmas :)

From Tuesday (11/12/2012)

I met the team in flash lab afternoon to prepare for the presentation.Andy and Stephen already made a slide note for me based on what i should speak. It's not a biggie talk but felt some fear because i am doing the opening talk. I guess i can do it but let's see in action tomorrow.

Week 11 - Game Design & Plan

As usual we started the class at 10 today and DR. John delivered a special lecture for us that lasted for an hour.  It was very much interesting and the purpose behind it was to make the students aware that how 'to/not to' get a job in game/software industry. He talked about the development kits, future of gaming platform, important graduate skills and strengths, building a portfolio and website by going through a slide show "A survey of dev's". After the lecture our team got the first chance to have a meeting with John. During the one hour slot we discussed our progression and the current risks that could slow down our prototype release. A fair amount of functionality's need to be done within programming sector but it's not a concern yet as we got still a week left. Overall John is happy with the progression me have made so far and he agreed to have a formal prototype presentation for the next week.

We team back in the lab and talked about how we are going to present our prototype for next week. Since Callum decided to modify the sprite sheet, whom also doing the level design and tile sheets, i have been told to produce/search some legal sound effects e.g. door opening and closing, empty gun and reloading, picking up objects etc., which could apply to our prototype. We dropped the idea of recording and editing some sounds live due to lack of time but certainly do that for our complete game. I have produced a first draft slides for our presentation which will be reviewed and updated by Andy or Stephen accordingly. I finished off lab and decided to find out some online sound effects at home. I have offered some help to Callum with the tile sheet and level design but he said he is well in control. I didn't manage to take the tutorial for Melon JS so i couldn't help with the programming part. My main plan for this Christmas holidays is to learn how to code in HTML5 and it might help me to program something for the second half. I will be at work the whole weekends so can't really work on anything until Monday. One more week to present our prototype and the pressure is building up

From Tuesday (04/12/2012)

 

We had a team meeting after the flash class to discuss about the progression. Andy implemented a basic structure for first level but not used any tile sheets also made the character sprites (hero & guards) working. I came to know that last day team decided to substitute a much more impressive sprites than i made. It doesn't look the real top down that i made as been told but technically yes. The one i made in Photoshop was a simple sprite with head and shoulders viewed from the top only but what Callum made a sprite (full figure) in paint that can be viewed from any angle as it rotates. Personally it was the idea i went through in the beginning but team decided not to go with it so i sticked with the simple top down (sprites can be find above and on previous blog) sprites/objects. Now team happy n decided to go with the new sprite sheet Callum made for all the characters. I have been told that to find suitable sound effects for the first level. That's all from today and i see you guys tomorrow in lecture.