End of Term [Finally]

This last week had me tinkering with the save/load interfaces and thinking about exactly how the code can be streamlined. Over break I'll be working on said save/load interfaces, refactoring/commenting the HUD code, and creating a website for the game.

On a different note: This term my job could [again] be summarized as HUD stuff, with the added job titles of menu creator and bug killer.

The HUD was redesigned and all of its parts that could be connected were connected. Currently, the HUD only responds to keyboard input, that will change after break.

The Main Menu and Game Over Screens joined the ranks of the Game Screens. Both functional.

Lately, as stated last week, the game pauses. The big, white rectangle in the upper center of the screen will turn into a progress journal during break.

B Term Wrap-up: Art

So over the course of B Term, all the character abilities were animated and the Dire wolf was finished. Over the upcoming break, my goals are to start recoloring sprites for the enemies and to create a Game Logo and Team Logo, for us so that we can get T-shirts made.

Done with B-term

Alright, so we are finished with B-term.  This past week, I was bad, and worked on almost no tech, instead focusing on preparing for the end of term, next term, updating documents, and finalizing tasks over break.  I also did some bug catching, opening up the game and playing around to find bugs.  I'll probably continue that throughout break, as well as implementing placeholder sounds.  I already figured out how to do this, I just need to figure out where to put stuff now.

Here's a list of what we completed this term:

Tech:

• Text
• Health
• Stamina
• HUD
• Keybindings
• Interactable NPCs
• Items
• Dropped by enemies
• Picked up by player
• Used by player
• Able to change between characters
• Warrior abilities
• Mage abilities
• rogue abilities
• character death and revival
• Main Menu
• Game over
• Pause

Art:

• Warrior potion
• warrior pain
• warrior dying
• warrior dead
• warrior reviving
• mage run
• mage idle
• mage ability 1
• mage ability 2
• mage ability 3
• mage projectile
• explosion
• mage potion
• mage pain
• mage dying
• mage dead
• mage reviving
• rogue run
• rogue idle
• rogue ability 1
• rogue ability 2
• rogue ability 3
• arrow
• rogue potion
• rogue pain
• rogue dyng
• rogue dead
• rogue reviving
• dire wolf idle
• dire wolf attack

For C-term, we will finish saving and loading, finish rough for all the art, probably by hiring a new artist, and start adding final sounds. I am taking a digital sound class next term, so I will hopefully be able to work on that stuff in class.

We will also focus a lot of the beginning of the term on AI. Hopefully we will get at least a beta of one 'section' by the end of the term.

Emily

End of B Term!

Hey everyone!  End of B term, and we've gotten a lot farther on our game.  Most of it is mentioned in the video, in particular I'm really happy with how we revised the abilities, three per character.

Something that didn't get mentioned in the video is our state machine.  We have an idle state from which the character can decide to either attack or seek from.  We'll be putting a lot of time into improving it during C Term, when we plan to flesh out the AI for the game.

Personally, I've worked on a little of everything, most prominently the abilities.  I've also worked on the NPCS/dialogue class, ensuring the health and stamina work as they should, and working in the enemy class.

I hope everyone enjoys break, happy holidays!

This is an end-of-term post, basically summarizing everything that I've worked on.

To start off, I helped finalize the abilities that we wanted our characters to be able to use. We divided them into three groups: attack, defend, and special. Each character has one of each. The warrior can slash with his sword, defend with his shield, and taunt enemies. The mage can summon fireballs, defend with an energy shield, and heal allies. The rogue can shoot arrows, hide from enemies, and drop bombs.

All of these abilities were implemented this term. I worked on warrior attack, rogue attack, mage attack,  warrior defend, and mage defend.

I also designed our current state machine that is used for AI. The AI is really basic right now, so I have every expectation that the design will change in the future.

The ability for the player to switch between characters is another important part of our game that was completed.

There is now some basic saving and loading functionality in the game as well. The game auto-saves at the beginning of each level. For a while I had it so the game automatically loaded the last save at the start of the game, but this is rather limiting. So for now loading is disabled until we can get a full menu for it.

To finish up the term, we focused on fixing minor bugs instead of introducing new features.

So overall we made quite a bit of progress. We'll continue doing small stuff over break, and then we'll be back to focus on AI during C-term!

- Jordan

New Forest Background

Sam asked me to post her new forest background, due to her computer being... her computer.

Pause

Time can now be stopped at will [within the game at least]. Stopping time will open a menu which gives the option to resume time, quit, retry the level, or enter the so-far nonexistent options menu. Existent, but not yet fully implemented is the progress journal, which I will go into detail about when it's finished.

Video

Hey guys!  Here's a video of our current progress with our game!

Main Menu and Game Over

Our game now has a main menu. It's fairly standard...a giant, dark red rectangle where the game logo will be and three buttons, two of which are just shells. The background is the result of letting a programmer near the air brush tool.
When all three characters die, the game over screen now pops up. It gives you the option to retry the scene you were on or quitting the game.

Art Art Art

Rogue:

Mage:

Hey all,

    Emily here.  Just a heads up here about where we are in the term.  We're still on schedule, but we have had a few stumbles along the way that pushed tasks back a week.  Currently we're caught up though.  I am gathering notes from the group about our last presentation, hoping to put on an awesome one this week.  Art is on much better schedule this week, thanks Sam, you're amazing.  We've had less problems with libgdx too, which is good.
    We had a few major re-hauls of the abilities of the characters, but we finally settled on one that allows easy control of the player-controlled character, while allowing them to easily order their allies around.
    The goal by the end of this term is to have most of the functionality of the game finished, so next term we can focus on creating the story and the AI of the characters.
    We will also begin testing user interactions either at the end of this term or the beginning of next.

The Rogue Sneaks!

We have our Rogue's abilities in!  That rounds out the abilities for our characters, next up is getting the enemies to have some more functionality, which should be up in a couple days.

Warrior defend is now directional. You can only block damage that hits your shield. If the attack comes from the side or from behind, it still hits you and you take damage.

So Rogue Attack works now. When controlling the Rogue, you can click with the mouse or touchpad and an arrow will be loosed in the direction of the click.

Also, there is now a pretty explosion animation when the Mage attacks.

- Jordan