New blog location

Hello,

My new blogs can be found here.

Thanks!

Last week of this semester update

So the past couple of weeks have been relatively light in terms of workload.  The team discussed some potential changes to our level progression but we decided to postpone the work until next semester and specifically, after all the presentations.  After all, we didn't want to show off a potentially broken build.  Most of my work focused mainly on more work with the main menu.   The trap store in particular has been redesigned once again.  Previously, we planned for a character system and the players chose the character they want in addition to a list of purchaseable traps associated with the character.  However, we've decided to throw away the character system and so, the screen space is solely used by the trap store.  The major change is instead of a button for each trap which encompasses the trap name, the trap icon, the trap cost, the trap description, we simply have a button which shows the icon, the name, and the amount the user has of a particular type of trap.  A space is allocated on the left hand side which will show the trap cost, the trap description, and an in game image of the trap when the user hovers over the trap button.  This helped make the ui feel less cluttered since the screen is no longer filled with paragraphs of text constantly.

The next thing I also put in was a simple hint system that cycles during the loading screen to help out players.
I made a string table in Unity's editor so Troy and I can manually update the text fields without the need of going into code to change everything.  The file is saved out into a xml and loaded back in on startup.

Update before thanks giving.

Since IGF submission, we haven't done much in terms of development for Dodos.  We met with engineers from the Air Force a couple weeks back and this past week, we attended the prototype presentation for the other cohort.  I did make some adjustments to our camera controls again after Troy, Charlie and I talked about making the left button perform all camera controls.  The problem arose when we tried to pan while we had a trap selected and placing a trap and panning are mapped to the same button.  So instead, we decided to imitate Starcraft's camera control.  To pan, you now move the mouse towards the edge of the screen you want to scroll towards.  This upcoming week, there're a few bugs I plan to fix.

Progress after fallbreak + IGF

So for the past few weeks I've been polishing the game up and readying it for IGF submission.
I've been mostly working on UI and adding new art to it as I receive them.  I redid the end game summary screens to work with EZGui and the new UI layout.  I remade our camera controls to make the game easier to play.  Holding right click and moving the mouse or pressing down on the arrow keys now allows the player to pan around, and the mouse wheel and the plus/minus keys allow you to zoom in and out.  Another thing I added was an animation script that allows the trap to play an animation when a dodo collides with it.
IGF submission is Monday and so I don't have any set tasks but we're at the state of "Get whatever we can into the game."

Update time! Revising features.

This past week we showed the progress of our game and decided to change some of our current mechanics after some discussion with Roger.  There will now be a meta game based around currency and so levels will take money to unlock.  The trap system will also be modified to deal with input output so that aiming and chaining traps to create combos will be easier.

The past week I've been finalizing the profile system and will continue to change the system to deal with the new meta game.  The profile system needs to keep track of the levels that are unlocked and I will need to create the UI to handle that.  I need to edit the level information to store the cost of unlocking a level as well.

9/17 Update.

Hey guys.  It's been several weeks since the start of fall semester and I've been quite busy.  For the past few weeks, I've been working on a pretty big feature addition into our game.  The overall theme of the feature is customization.  The first major addition is a game store.  For each level, we give you an initial set of traps to get you started.  During the game however, you can use the points you have accumulated to purchase additional traps.  Because the score acts as a currency system, whatever is left over is transferred to your overall profile.  This brings me to the next feature I implemented.  The game loads up a profile data file for the player and it keeps track of the total score accumulated, levels that a player has beaten, and the characters he has unlocked.  The profile is saved out into a binary data and is read back in at the start of the game.  The levels unlocked information is also vital to the traps in our game.  Traps are unlocked as you beat certain levels so we can slowly ease the player into our game.  Presenting the player with so many traps all at once causes too steep of a learning curve.
To help facilitate this major feature, I've created two tools to help the designer improve their productivity.  The first tool I created is the GlobalItemsDefinition tool.  This tool bundles up all the important information into a single gui window so they're easily changeable.  For example, the designer could simply add a new trap to the global list by clicking on the "Add" button and change the name of the trap in a textfield.  There are information for store prices, the level at which a player unlocks the trap, and even the models of the trap is adjustable in this tool.  Instead of looking for prefabs and going through code everywhere, the designer simply drag and drop the model they want onto the prefab location in the tool and the tool will automatically set up the connection.  All of this information is then saved onto an xml file and read in when a game begins.
The second tool is a level specific editor which will allow the designer to select the starting traps for each particular level.  They are also able to alter the number of a certain trap type a player gets.  This information is also saved to an xml file and read in when a level needs that information.  These two tools help consolidate several different systems that all uses traps such as the inventory, store, and the state manager.
Currently, I am working on the outside game store that will allow the user to purchase traps before the game starts but at a higher cost.

Ai dilemma and sprint 3

So initially we were going for an implementation where additional King Dodos would be created once a group of dodos branches off. However, after talking with Kamron over the weekend and then with Troy and Bob during class, we've decided to do a single King Dodo implementation instead. Due to the short development time we have until alpha, we are going to move multiple King Dodos into the beta if need be.

For this next sprint, I am creating the single King dodo implementation as well as an EMP "forget" trap which causes the king dodo to forget everything it has learned. I will also be reworking the inventory system a little bit after discussions of traps. We observed that each trap is more of a category as opposed to a single trap. For example, a projectile trap category would contain a cannon trap and a cannon + trigger trap. Both are accessible as a dropdown tab after selecting the category of trap. So I will need to alter my code and add an additional layer of complexity to my inventory system