Tuesday 22 November 2011

Week 9

The group has moved forward in a few areas, specifically the way it has been organized has changed to a much better format. Finally having the various aspects of the development and implementation split across each member. Our group has been arranged into the roles of two designers, two coders and one animator. This is just general roles as there are specifics to each and encompass a few more things than the titles would imply. The designers are doing a level design each as well as designing all the assets and characters. The animator will be creating all the art assets to be implemented in Unity and animating them. The coders (myself being one), will be doing the bulk of the work inside Unity.

The plan is to take one of the level designs and have it implemented to some extent by the end of this semester, in time for the submission for marking. Though if it is lacking then time can be spent working to improve it over the holiday period. Since we don;t start back for the next semester until February. So January can be used to make ground on the first implementation. Leaving us second semester to work on the other and then see what else we can do with it.

We will be seeing the first level design to be implemented tomorrow at the group meeting and will beginning working on something in Unity for the following week. Though it will probably just be something very basic as the assets will need to be created. Need to make sure to balance the work load with the other modules as it is coming into the last four weeks of the semester. A couple of other projects and essays to work on. Though it should be fine.

Once I get some more details of the level design I will do a write up on here of what I think of it and post some initial thoughts on how I think myself and the other coder will go about it. Need to remind the group to post everything up on the Redmine server for easy access and version control. I'll post back in a few days.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Week 5 and 6

In week 5 myself and one other member where unable to attend the group meeting but where able to get in touch with the other group members via mobile and Steam chat. The group had met up and decided that they would assign each member to design one level for the following week.

Moving into week 6 only myself and two other members made it into the meeting so it was unfortunate to have two weeks in a row where various members were unable to make it in. I wanted to clarify a few things with the members that where there though so we were able to make decent ground in some regards. I wasn't a fan of the approach that seemed to be taken where the game design was being chopped up and spread amongst each members. Having made a point of mentioning in the first group meeting (which one other member made as well), I didn't particularly want to be involved in the game design. Instead focusing on the implementation in Unity. I personally feel like it has been a bit of an issue where no one has really taken a leadership role, or not even that but no one has put themselves forward and said I want to do A and B but don't want to be involved in C or D. I'm definitely all for the latter, as I have no interest to get involved in the game design and don't have any skills in art or animation so would much prefer to work on the coding and implementation in Unity. Between the group there's enough of us to spread the roles amongst one another and I don't think it is efficient to be dishing little bits of everything amongst everyone. So I will be bringing this up at the next meeting.

We were able to get a couple of other things done there and then at the last meeting between the three of us. We set up a group work space on Redmine which to be honest was a bit overdue and will be getting implemented for the last 5 weeks or so to try get things on track and the project coming to fruition. We decided we meet as well put a list of our two cents in regards to the game design since we didn't want to full on make a level design each but thought we would just compile some things we thought could be put in. Since the game design is in a way a tribute to the cliches of the FPS genre, we compiled a list of classic FPS games and thought about different key elements of those games which we could somehow reference and put into our gameplay in obscure or sense conflicting way. It didn't take long to compile a decent list with numerous games and some good ideas that could definitely get implemented.

I'll be doing a mid week blog next time since I'm hoping some substantial changes could be coming along at the next meeting that I can post up.