Calendar September 26, 2011 17:38

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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.

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Calendar September 21, 2011 19:38

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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.

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Calendar September 21, 2011 01:53

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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.

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Calendar September 19, 2011 23:16

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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.

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Calendar September 14, 2011 18:02

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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.

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Calendar September 13, 2011 23:11

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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.

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Calendar September 13, 2011 10:54

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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.

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Calendar September 12, 2011 15:07

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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.

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Calendar September 5, 2011 18:44

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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.

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Calendar August 31, 2011 22:04

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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.

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Calendar August 31, 2011 15:06

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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.

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Calendar August 28, 2011 23:20

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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.

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Calendar March 29, 2011 23:06

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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.

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Calendar March 18, 2011 00:26

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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.

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Calendar March 4, 2011 00:15

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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.

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