Final post before presentations

This will most likely be the last post before the presentations begin next week. It's been a long journey, spanning 15 weeks, (12 uni weeks and 3 weeks for the easter break) but at the end, the result is something we should be proud of. And while getting it on Steam is going to be nearly impossable at this point in time, seeing as that was one of the things we were thinking about, there are other possibilities, like Facebook and Kongregate - although to get it on there, we would have to convert the project from C++ to Flash. Or we could try and do what Mojang did with Minecraft, and sell it ourselves - but doing that will be tough, and may not work out in our favour. There may have been more that we could have done, especally myself, but in the end you have to try your best, and see how things turn out from there.

Day T - 17

We ha another meeting today, where we discussed what we would be doing for our presentation on Thursday. Also, due to the dubious nature of the current SFX, I'll have to go and look online to find SFX which are 100% royality free, or only require a little bit of money to be used for commircal reasons.

Day T - 22

Today, we had another Skype meeting to duscuss things. The first thing we discussed was what the name of the game would be. At first, we desided to come up with a name which someone would possibly given it in the 90s - that is a cheesy name, but not TOO cheesy. While we were thinking about that, Niall announced that, game-wise, all that's left to do for now is the boss and the background, and Reece also told us that the pitch document and the presentation are going along well, and that he'll upload the current draft of the presentation up on Dropbox. Niall then said that he'll upload the newest version of the game once Phil supplies the background. We then got back to talking about names. 'Purge' was suggested, but after a bit of digging, I found out that there was already a game called Purge, released in 2003 by Freeform Interactive. 'Merits for a Mercenary' was also suggested, as well as 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking (Something)' - the latter I took and transformed into 'Bolt, Capital and Two Smoking Chimpanzees,' which got a few laughs and a 'It's so ridiculous it could work' from Niall. (One of the weapons in the game is known as the Chimpanzee, and is a duel-wieldable pistol) And then, we called it a day for the meeting - but, if any of us come up with any more ideas, we'll post them on our Facebook page.

Day T - 24

Man, it's been too long since I've updated this blog. I've been meaning to, but with all the other things, I've just haven't found the time. Anyway, on Day 15, I drafted the Damage Calculations, which Niall then implemented, although he had to make some edits to get it to work. And then, on the 29/3/2012, I finished working on sorting the Scores out, but again, edits were needed for it to work. Finally, on Day T- 27, I finished work on surting most of the boss attack functions. I still need to finish one of them off, and another Niall will sort out, but the others are finished. And then, today, we got together on Skype to discuss stuff regarding the project. From it, we managed to figure out that there's not much else needed to be done before the game itself is completed.

9/2/2012 - Day 8

A week has gone past since the project started, and we are making some progress. We've been tossing ideas around as to both what the demo will be (both the artstyle and the gameplay) and what we could do if we took it to the next step, as well as getting more information to prep us for the project. I've also designed the HUD during the session, adding some arcade elements (like the score) to it.

7/2/2012 - Day 6

Today, we had our first meeting as a team to show what we had done so far. And, at the time, I hadn't really done much - and they did chew me out about it for a while. However, now I'm refocused on the task at hand - I know what they want from the questionnaire, and I've done some research into the type of game we are making - which wasn't exactly what I was expecting in the first place. I thought it was more of the flying ship shmup, not a run 'n' gun shmup. Still, at least I know now. Plus, I've also got an idea as to what the HUD may look like - especially if we do make it a 2-player game. Haven't drawn it yet, though. And finally, I found a possible site for getting the music for the demo - which will end with a boss, and, if we carry on with this afterwards, would be the boss level of one of the worlds.

2/2/2012 - Day 1

Today marks the start of the Introduction to Art and Programming in Games (INTROG) unit. In this, each and every student on the unit is put into a group, and we are given the brief of creating a technical demo of a game, which we have to pitch at the end of the unit. I've been put into Group 7 with four other people: Phil Duce, the 2D Animator of the group; Lewy Husbands, who is the 3D Animator of the group; Niall Weedon, who's the programmer of the group; and Reece Heyworth, who's the Games Designer of the group. I'm taking the role as the Producer of the group - I may not be the de facto leader of the team, but for now, my job is to do some research and draw up a draft of a questionnaire.

Straight off of the bat, we were quickly able to decide what we were going to make. We talked about making a shooter, and (thanks to my experience with making side-scrolling shooters) I suggested about making it a side-scroller, which the rest of the team agreed on. I then suggested a few ideas that I had from a flash project of mine, which was a side-scroller itself - which was met with moderate approval from the rest of the team. And, after chatting, we decided to work on different things - Niall, who had already had coded a map editor of sorts that could work, will be working on the map editor demonstration and rendering; Reece will be working on more ideas and the mechanics and conception of the game; Phil will be designing preliminary tiles and graphics; Lewy will be designing the preliminary 3D models of the powerups and so forth, and my task is to do some market research and draw up a draft of a questionnaire.