My First group game.

Check out my game.

http://www.udderpunch.com/games/shooter/overload/
Let me know if it works.

End of my first group game project.

Alrighty then so I didn’t post a blog every week like I said I would. I didn’t even make it for once a milestone. My bad but other things are much more important like making a great game. Or at least I think it is a great game because I love playing it. It has been an extremely long and hard two months working on this game. I loved and hated every minute of it. I have finally realized how much I love making games, programming, and working with/leading a team.
Ok lets take it back to where I left off (I am not going to post all of the milestone scores because I don’t remember them all) we worked for two weeks on our engines and tools, this was a completely new experience for all of us since we had never made tools before. I ended up spending a lot of extra time tweaking my editor and engine (for the 2d animations) since Kisor would be using it as much (ended up being more) as me. We ran into some problems with communication and integration during that first month but it was all smoothed out.
During the second month I began working on the AI for the enemies in the game and all of the game sounds. It turns out that we had two of Kisors friends want to make our sounds and soundtrack for us so that was super awesome. The AI was a lot of fun to work on and an interesting experience. And the sounds were just super fun. That was our alpha milestone.
Next was our Beta milestone. I had to write up a tutorial level (which meant that we needed to design a level as a team) and make mini games and do anything else that needed done (that ended up being my job a lot in fact the whole group worked on each others stuff all through out the month this helped in the long run).
The tutorial level was a snap and the mini games were just funny I designed them all off of things in day to day life (sorta) 1. is a baby kicking(more like bouncing game) in which you must keep the baby in the air for so long (this was my producers idea) 2. Was based off the song “99 red balloons” you shoot down red balloons. 3. Was a male bathroom etiquette game (more like a quiz on how to act in the restroom).
After that was just bug testing and polish. So another team took our game (now with 4 levels 3 mini games and a boss [I did the AI for that one too]) and played it till they broke it then wrote down all the problems. Meanwhile we did the same for another team. This was pretty fun because we got to play another game and just break it. We were lucky that most of the bugs in our game were easy to fix. Then we had presentations which was awesome except I talked to long because I got really excited. And that’s about it.
I learned a ton this month mostly how to work with others and bring an idea to fruition.
I tried to keep it short and simple.
I’ve been playing System Shock 2 to recover. How did I miss that game o so many years ago.

Grant

PS The game should be up on UdderPunch.com some time soon.

Outline of first group game (origonal post July 21)

Alright so the point of this new blog series is to keep you dear internet (and anyone who stumbles upon it. future employer *crosses fingers) informed on how my new project is going. Ok so now I am in a class called SGP Structures of Game Production and in this class we have 2 months to document plan design and program a group game. My team is Brown Noise Productions with Me, John, Christopher, Jacob and our associate producer Dave Brown (he is our labby/helper).
Our game. We are making a game called Overload: A coding nightmare. I am going to borrow Christopher’s blog here because he says it best. “
We only had a single day to decide a game idea. We first asked our selves “Well who is our audience?”– other programmers of course! Next we decided on a platformer/shooter genre. We started basing our story off an overworked programmer. He has had a working streak for several days and he finally is on his way home. He is sleepless and tired soo what would any programmer do in this situation? Drink Red Bull. The game takes off from there. You try to get the programmer home before the effects of the red bull wear off. This is where it gets crazy. As the effects of the energy drink go down over time, you begin to see things! instead of people on the street you see classic video game characters! You have to fight your way to your nice comfy bed at home.” end Christopher’s section.
I play the role in this group of Project Officer. Basically I’m in charge of keeping the group on task and getting stuff done right and on time. Other duties include the Animation Engine and a tool to for making animations (aka making the guys move) Ai (O yea artificial intelligence I can’t wait. for real I am excited about this) and integration (getting all the code to work together) and Documenting the project’s progress and everything like that. And I also get to make 3 mini games. I get to yell at people and say it’s my job YES.
This week we worked super hard to perfect our game design document_ This document pretty much explains everything in the game from the story to the code, from the weapons to the menus its all in there. We worked about 8 hrs a day some 12 or more. it was a lot of work but because of it we know everything that is going to go into our game and it should make it easier. Today we met with out our teacher who graded our doc and paper prototype (a paper mock up of a level) I got a 147 out of 150 WOOT so almost perfect.
Now we start coding we are took today of to recuperate (and i read the new Harry Potter YAY it took me 1 day baby) then we are starting to work on our engines on Sunday. We have 2 weeks till our next milestone we have to have all of our engines and tools working. So a lot of work to due we have made our schedules and I think we are all working 8hrs a day plus class. So its gonna be crazy.
Well first week down gonna get crazy from here on out.
Laters all
Grant

First Game (origonal post July 20)

Alright once again I have neglected to inform the internet of my movements (Al Gore please forgive me, I will register reports more often). So the only reason I am writting this blog is to update you for my next blog which will be awesome. OK so when we left off I was going into the freaking hardest month yet. Software Archetecture and DirectX. OK so DirectX ended up not being hard even though the test were (DirectX is used to draw graphics on screen to interact with. AKA a real game). Software Archetecture may be one of the most important classes at this school but it is increadibly hard. In the class we learned advanced coding technecs and better was to structure our code and using algorithms and design patterns YAY. We also learned about Agile development, basically a cooler way to program in a company. Anywho it was a super hard class the first few days we learned how to use UML to document code and then we got paired up with a partner to code. All of that wasn’t very hard but the test were super hard. The midterm wasn’t so bad but the Final was the hardest test I have ever taken. ok so i passed both of those YEA.
Next month i had Media and Society online, basically how media and society interact this class was crap and I will not talk about it again it was stupidly easy. The other class was Structures of Game Design in this class we finally got to make games. The first project was a pair project where we made a clone of Space Invaders it was pretty much awesome and me and my partner rocked it. The secound one was simple “Make a game with a hero that shoots. By yourself. In 2 weeks.” HAHA Ok so i ended up really enjoying this and I rocked this class with an A and i got really good grades on all of my projects Tanks in space: But not really.….. Couple of pictures of my game.

Basically you move the tank around and shoot the grey aliens and the Big Green airplane. To get health you shoot the truck. And the Airplanes are your friends. This is the First part of a trilogy the secound part will be Tanks in space For real this time. and the Third Tanks on a Plane.(ps that is all a joke ) welp thats about it for this bunch now to write the cool blog.
Laters
Grant.