Moving on

Now past the vertical slice we are heading onto the next milestones ahead of us, one of which is the Alpha presentation. We have been told that it's not a strick hand in we just need to show how far we've gotton with the game and what work has been done ect...

It feels good to have finnaly have a texture in our game even though it's distorted, which we have to find a way to fix!

now we need to get the levels designed and built and then programmed... ONLY.

Vertical Slice / Update

We had a milestone upcoming which was called the vertical slice which is where we have a slice of our game that is meant to really put across our idea and the feel of gameplay. 

For once... we did well!! The feel of the game with the new stats for jumping went down really well, LADDERS WORK. So many little but really significant buggs were fixed thanks to our glorious programmer Darren. David really helped out with the programming as well and did well with design too!! 

A texture was finally made for it as well... last second which was better than ever before. Although visually this is the best we've ever achieved it still isn't good enough. The texture our Arstist did was awesome! I loved it but I need to keep asking for things which is difficult for deadlines ect. 

But we got a great response from out tutor Ben and I feel for once we were pretty much on top for where out game is with that presentation at least... we have a long way to go still. 

Now we just need to build the game. 

Rezzed

Rezzed!! It was pretty damn awesome... My first game expo I have been too and I got to play my beloved Total War: Rome II and I experienced virtual reality on my tutors game Ether One. It was really something to see so many indie games being shown off under one roof and also some less indie games... 

This was a long awaited thing, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game. Unfortunately we could only play one battle but you could pick either Rome or Egypt of which I tried both. Rome was the more challenging of the two and I just left my navy to die after forgetting about them but out played the defending Egyptians on land so I won the battle anyway. Then playing as Egypt I felt like the game played me... I couldn't set my army out in a formation I was comfortable with so I got a displeasing set up and then to top it off spent half the battle trying to figure out how to deploy these really cool fire ball things and by the time I had figured it out, the Romans were engaging me. Least to say I thought "Well shit." but alas even out positioned because I was trying to figure shit out they were losing and I had nothing tactically to do... I was just winning from the word go. This wasn't satisfying as I was not earning this victory and it felt like I'd just pushed an old guy down the stairs. I couldn't feel proud of this victory. I can just hope that was on easy battle difficulty. 

Then I played the Ocolus Rift (VIRTUAL REALITY SHIT) and it was incredibly. The game is my tutors game which I am personally excited for but as a device this was one of the coolest things I have experienced.  It helped that the environment was stunning as I was walking through trees, looking down a cliff and across a town but to be inside of a game was incredible!! I can only wait for what the future holds for this stuff because it's heading in the perfect direction. 

After an awesome day we went to rest our heads at a hotel we booked... 

Least to say... we checked in for an hour and then left to stay somewhere else... All in all a great weekend! 

Tasks

So we have had a lesson with "an hour of fun" from our tutor which is where we all just play each others games for constructive crit.

It has been really interesting to hear new ideas and problems they encountered although most of them we already knew of and were very obvious. Now we need to solidify our controls and make the game playable, take a new approach and just get a small textured level with a working player controller.

This is the direction we're heading in now and I need to manage to get my artist to texture which will be a challenge.

Its getting tiresome and frustrating being responsible for people not hitting deadlines and such and being unable to get some to do work.

PLANNING!

Planning... 

Spent a lot of time managing our schedules (estimated) on clockingit but it is really giving me a sense of direction for our project! We will be making a level per week and the art hopefully the week after for that level created but we'll have to see how much time what consumes.

I do not know much about how long any of the programming takes which means I need the wonderful Darren to take care of opening and closing his tasks and setting his date markers. This should help me get a better grasp in the future so I can get a good insight into programming schedules and time estimates on tasks. 

In terms of managing I was hoping I could get people to write a blog every Friday but alas it seems to be a task difficult to motivate. Had the most success the first Friday but now it's going down and I just worry about if I am not showing good enough leadership qualities and I don't want to have to bitch and moan about such a small task in others eyes. 

Holiday!!

As far as holidays go, this is pretty much the only one I feel we'll get since it's the week after hand in so all we had to sort out was planning stuff. This means that we can relax! yeah! Obviously not much has gone down, but I do plan to get some level design done tomorrow so I can be ahead of the curve if you will.

But no matter how long the break it never feels enough for me and Uni work starts Monday properly as much as I love it, I am also dreading the worry of doing enough work.

The Rise To Power!

It's been... too long me thinks. So over the time I have forgotten to write my blog, much has happened obviously.

For starters I got voted into power by my group...

Nothing can go wrong here...

We did a lot better for this hand in compared to the last one. Got all our work done early, to a high standard.  Our prototype level was awesome even with bugs in it I could really see how much it had advanced.

The GDD was actually fun to put together and write as 5,500 words came together, it felt very satisfying to finish it!!

Previous to the hand in, all I was doing was procrastinating and attempting to write more in depth for all sections in the doc. At first it was a challenge but once I got going it felt easier and easier to write.

I feel our team is a lot more organised than before but I still feel we could do much better in terms of how much work we can produce.

I am kinda obligated now to do my blog every friday since I am the group leader I have to almost set an example, I can't just go... "you guys, do work." while relaxing in my chair. Or could I?