FINAL POST

This will be my final post to this blog.  I've enjoyed my semester learning the details of game design and found the process of actually making a game both fun and tiresome.

Below you will find a link to the game document for my game (hosted on Google docs) as well as a link to download the zip file containing the blender file and its dependent files for our game.

Game Document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tScowUwJV6pFH8_8TIFo65nIbEvefitWhc4VBAGNHM4/edit?usp=sharing

Game Files:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Jp7kvUIR0JWDJaOEtxVUZ0WTQ/edit?usp=sharing

Task Assignment: 11/22-END (UPDATED)

1) Create newspaper item that floats to the camera when the user presses a button and float back to the ground when the player presses the same button.
I created the newspaper (with a blank newspaper template, the design of which I leave to my teammates).  The newspaper floats up to the players face (steering actuator) and stays there (parenting actuator) when the player is close to the newspaper (near sensor), facing the newspaper (ray sensor), and presses 'e' .  The player can look up and down the length of the newspaper to read it.  When the player presses 'e' again, the newspaper disappears.

2) Create a main map
I created a main map but since we were not going to use most of the locations on this map, I decided to just connect the areas that we had completed directly.

3) Connect all the areas that have been created together so that the player can move seamlessly throughout the "game".
This was completed.  The main menu leads to a "transition" menu which shows  a quote and plays a car crash sound before transporting you to the forest, at the end of the forest you go to the sanctuary, at the other side of the sanctuary you go to the church, and the end of the church you find survivors and are transport back to the  improved sanctuary.  You can go backwards in all of these areas (go back to the previous "level". 

4) Find a updated dwelling to include in the sanctuary for after people are found in the first level.
Actually just hid the tents from the original sanctuary and only displayed them after the first level rather than  making an entirely new dwelling.

5) Create a basement in the first level out of which a text box will come out indicating that you have found survivors (without actually seeing the survivors).
Done.  Actually a note wrote on the wall in red letters instead of having a text box.  This plays more to the theme of the game and gives some doubt as to whether the survivors actually exists.

6) Create the spawn points for the ghastly character in the main map.
Limited the enemy character to the end of the "1st level" to make it more dramatic.  As you step into the church, the creature appears and starts moving towards you.  If you don't swing and kill it at the right time, it kills you and the game is over.

Task Assignment: 11/15-11/21 (UPDATED!)

For this week I will

1) add logic to the smoke creature to make the creature disappear when it collide with the players weapon.

I was able to get this logic working in my blender file but I found that the smoke monster would collide with the the players weapon and disappear even if the player did not intentionally swing the weapon (since the weapon is always in the scene).  So I added an additional sensor to check if the player has clicked pressed the swing button as well.

2)  add logic to have the smoke creature track the player

Added logic to the smoke monster to have it follow the player.  The smoke monster will spawn at key points in the map when the player gets close enough and follow the player until it attacks the player or the player attacks it.

3) Poster
I created one of the posters that we presented to the class
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Jp7kvUIR0JdXFFblJqTF9VUHM/edit?usp=sharing
and created a concept for a new poster with less words and more of a visual focus which will be in the style of a newspaper.

Task Assignment: 11/8-11/14 (UPDATED!)

By Thursday I will have the following completed:

1) I will add a more randomized spin to the smoke sphere
I added python code to change the spin velocity by a randomized value (positive and negative) and added spin to multiple axes so that the smoke does not create the illusion of leftward movement of the player. (This creates the problem of the player being able to see the poorly mapped texture spots but it is very brief.  I will test with world environment to see if the effect is noticeable (and perhaps switch back to z-rotation only).

2) Attach the weapon swinging animation to the player
I attached the arm swinging animation I made last week to my character.  I physically placed the arm next to the player in the scene and called the animation when the player clicked the left mouse button.  I ran into a problem where after pressing the button several times the games slows down significantly (the profile shows a large spike in 'Physics' but the arm and weapon are set to 'ghost' so they shouldnt be interacting with any other objects.

Homework 14: State

 This first state diagram describes the state of the player's health bar, smoke protection sphere, and heart rate while in the world map.  You can see that initially, the players health is at full and their heart rate (indicated by an audible heart beat) is nonexistant.  Since the size of the sphere is directly proportional to the health remaining, the sphere radius is at its maximum at this point.  Once the player enters the world map, the health, sphere size, and heart rate are set to particular values.  The health (and sphere) will decrease at a constant rate as the smoke creeps in on the player (increasing the heart rate) or if the player is attacked.  The health can be raised (increaing the size of the sphere and decreasing the heart rate) if the player finds a "health booster".  Once the health reaches a minimum threshold, the sphere collapses, the player is consumed by the smoke and thus their heart rate stops.  The palyer is dead and the game is over.  All attributes are reset once the game is restarted.  There could also be the possibility of reviving, in which case the attributes would return to some level.

This state diagram describes the movement and sound attributes of the smoke monster which attacks the player when they are in the world map.  The smoke monster (seen in my previous post) starts silent and hidden until it is time to appear.  At this point it begins moaning and circling around the player's protective sphere.  When it is time to attack, it begins screaming and enters the sphere, heading towards the player.  If it hits the player, then it starts laughing and exits the protective sphere.  If it is instead hit by the player, it begins crying and slowly disappears.  Either way, the creature then disappears and reenters the initial state of silent and hidden.

Task Assignment: Week of 10/31 - 11/7 (UPDATED!)

By Thursday (11/7)  I will have completed the following:

1)  Create a menu system for our game.

11/2 - I tried getting screencasting to work for this example but my computer wasn't cooperating.  I created a simple menu system to test out a few scenes that we have created for our game.  When you mouse over the box in each menu item, the box and text get larger to indicate that this item will be executed if you click the left mouse button.  Moving your mouse out of the box returns the sizes to normal.  The main menu has one option "Start game" which results in changing the scene to the submenu (pictured below).

Choosing these items takes you to the scene indicated by the name of the button.  You can move around in the first two of these scenes. The third demonstrates how the smoke will function in the world map.

2)  Create a 'enemy' fog creature

11/3- I made this smoke creature using two smoke texture that I created in GIMP on a uv sphere (body) and plane (ambient smoke).  The UV spheres that represent the eyes will glow but I can't figure out how to do.  I'm also having trouble getting the plane smoke to mesh with the sphere smoke (hence the visible orb).  I'm not certain if I will address this or leave it as a "corporal force" of the creature.

3)  Create animation for weapon swinging and picking up objects.

Task Assignment: Week of 10/24-10/31 (UPDATED!)

For this week I will/have accomplish/ed the following tasks by Thursday (10/31).  I will update this post as I complete tasks.

1. Add movement functionality to the character using the script included in mouselook.py 

As of 10/30-  Was able to get dynamic movement working with MouseMove.py's provided demo (except crouch feature doesnt work).  However, when I to replicate this on my own character it does not work.  This might be due to the increased complexity of my character. I will try making a simpler character and see if that works.

2. Combine parts 2&3 of last week's tasks (sphere size changing and sphere smoke)

10/30-Combined sphere size changing scripts and smoke textures from last week's tasks.  Ran into some problems because sphere size was not reset to 1 (ctrl-A), but works great.  Added a cube to the scene to demonstrate that you can see through the smoke.  The video above shows the sphere sizer script in action (the sphere changes sizes in accordance with the current value of the 'size' property seen in the debug window).

3. Make another attempt at a more cohesive smoke texture.

10/29- Used a tutorial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUYbj4x4OxY) to make a seamless smoke image. The image on the left of the texture meshes with the image on the right (same with top and bottom).  I also had to adjust the uv map to have a more square layout so that it takes advantage of the textures seamlessness.  The result only shows slight distortion at top and bottom of the sphere (and the bottom will never be visible).