Project 2 - Week 1

September 17, 2012

New week, new teams, new clients.. new game! Exciting !

There were multiple clients for this month's prototyping. There was the mechanical department, wanting the students to make a game using their tread-port for patients. And there were other departments, like the mechanical department which wanted a gamified version of a thermodynamics textbook.

I was very excited to work on the tread-port as I want to work on virtual reality and related stuff, but it was not to be. But I was appointed to work on the thermodynamics one. It's ok. Makes you realise that you dont get to work on the games you want even in the industry.

I was with Brianne, Triston and Jake this time. We brainstormed ideas on what could be done with the game and also had a talk with the Professor (Bob Roemer). He basically wanted a game which could be given to students as homework, through which they could understand thermodynamics better. There would be problems presented graphically, and the student is supposed to solve it using a calculator and type in the answer in a text box.

Well.. the fun part is thrown out of the window at this point. So, we got together and tried to think up ways which would help put in some sort of interactivity in the game. I could not help too much as I remember almost nothing of thermodynamics.

Spetember 19, 2012

Based on our discussions, Brianne gave the presentation to the professor. He likes it and we gear up to start working.

We broke up the game into tasks and all of us picked up one. I picked the hint mechanism.

Worked on XNA the whole week and got the hint mechanism up and running.

Project 1 - Week 4 & POST-MORTEM

Monday - Sep 10
Finally, the day for the dry pitches arrived. The game was pretty much finished, except for the timer and the end game splash screen. The pitch went fine. Roger and Bob gave some useful feed back to better the pitch. Have to work on that.

Wednesday - Sep 12
Zeph did a very good job of incorporating the advise given for the pitch. This time around, he gave his best presentation yet. Not sure if Kate liked the game, but when she later came to play the game, she was pretty excited. She was of the opinion that the bees could be bigger and also raised concern of how the game would look on an iPhone.
Anyways, we gave her the game and the associated materials on a DVD. Before she left, she gave us some of her company's cheese again! Yummy!

The Game Pitch

The Game Video

POST-MORTEM

Now, it was back to business. Robert explained the post-mortem process and how to go about it. The team got together and had a constructive and honest discussion about the development process and experience.
It started with how we went about discussing the game ideas, how the 1st pitch sucked, the confusion after the game idea was changed by the faculty, our initial struggles with MOAI, how we got things finally working  one step at a time.
We found that one of the biggest challenges was to manage the work load. Having an engineer of Jon's stature had its advantages. I was able to learn a lot by interacting with him. But it also meant that he was much faster at grasping stuff than AB and me. I did my best to contribute by doing all the animations and contributing with some Box2D stuff. But I wanted to do much more. Maybe next time. The learning was worth it.
Hopefully, the whole process will enable everyone to work better next time.

Thursday - Sep 13
The producers were supposed to give the same pitch presentation to the capstone undergrad kids the next day. As he could not go, I jumped in and took the opportunity.
Reached the venue at WEB on time. Was a bit nervous at first, but I was looking forward to it so much, that it all went away. Helped the others with the presentation and distribution of flyers.
Finally it was my turn. My first presentation on US soil! Wooohoo!
I must say it went much much better than I expected. Robert and Roger too appreciated my effort and it made my day! :)
Got to interact with the kids after the presentations were over. It was interesting to listen to their ideas. I tried to help them with their queries. Hope it helped them. Its not like I am John Carmack.

Anyways, next week its a new client and we get to work on a new tech - XNA! Looking forward to it. :)

Project 1 - Week 3

MOAI's more or less demystified. I am now able to work much quicker now. I integrated the animations into the main code and helped Jon with clearing out some bugs. I also made the startup screens and an animation where the bees stay highlighted till they reach the cow. But that idea was scrapped. Now the bees just get highlighted at the moment its clicked on.
Made a video of our game and gave it to Zeph for the dry - run pitch on Monday. Excited to see what happens on  Monday.

Project 1 - Week 2

Its been a busy week. Things are definitely starting to heat up.

On Monday, the team got together and we were still getting to grips with MOAI. A lot of work is going in that direction. We were struggling with the technology instead of concentrating on gameplay. Have to sort that out quickly. I helped Jon with overlaying the sprite over the Box2D object.

On Wednesday, It was a much better picture. We divided our tasks. Jon had already made a skeleton on which AB and me could work on. I took up the work of animating the sprites. Zeph would work on the sprite sheet and give it to me. Initially it was tough, but then finally got it right on Saturday. Now I have to integrate the code with Jon's.