Weekly Report (May 3)

Yeah, finals week!

This week I made the FMZs to the main level convex using the python script.  Shea helped get the level into working order afterwards because the zones were reordered, untextured, etc.

Here's a summary of the important things I did this semester (I'm excluding things that I either think are too small, or just plain forgot about; haha, you can go back to look at the old blog posts if you want):

• I implemented a recursive next hop forwarding path generator that automatically took an fbx's contents as input through the content processor using naming conventions.
• I also implemented the convex zone classes and made my own algorithm for checking within the zones; I thought it was pretty clever.  That class was used in vector fields, Portals, and Free Move Zones.
• Made the massive terrain level, portals, and convex zones (didn't add the items to them).
• Modified a Blender 2.4 python script to work with Blender 2.6: it generates convex hulls, but it had been using horribly outdated APIs--I had to sift through the new and old APIs to get it working.
• Added non-player character factions (player enemies vs friends--though it wasn't fully utilized since there are only players and sharks!) and behaviors (such as attacking, retreating, moving to specific zones or places, etc).

Wow, the blog crashed 4+ times while I was trying to make this!  It seems to crash while using Ctrl and the arrow keys to skip over words while going backwards on the bullet list--yep, confirmed; you're welcome Blogger.

Jason out

Weekly Report

This past week I spent a great deal of time in Maya. I created several levels of terrain, that could eventually be used in the game. The part that is taking a lot of time is creating the zones for the levels within the landscape. I've found it is quite difficult to make the zone meshes match up with the terrain. The best method I've found so far is to make the mesh larger than the terrain, and then continually shrink it down until it conforms to the same shape as the landscape. It takes a lot longer than I thought it would.

I've also creating some different objects that can be placed into the scene like different varieties of plants and rocks. I also made a few objects that are meant to be diamonds or gems. They should be able to be collected throughout the level. The idea is that these objects can be sold at the store in exchange for useful items to put on the ship.

Weekly report

This week I worked on globably intergrating the water current to the levels. I had a couple problems with the normals and the direction but now it's working. We are also going to add current to the puzzle in the game.

Weekly Report (April 28)

The convexity of the FMZ's is problematic; I couldn't get the convexity script to delete the extra vertices, but I realized how I can get rid of them--if I use Blender's face select, then I can just copy all of the faces into a new object in the scene, and then the vertices without faces will be left behind!

I can do this after my Monday final(s)--a two part final for one class.

So, this week, I discovered that the game sometimes crashed on exit.  At first, I thought it had something to do with the sound files, but I turned them off, temporarily, and was still able to reproduce the crash.  So, then I checked the exit function.  It was still going through all of the Draw and Update code after "game.exit()" was called.  I figured that it was releasing some data asynchronously, and then causing the memory errors.  So, I set a quitting variable to true, allowed the game to run through its final frame, and then quit at the start of the next frame in both draw and update.  Not sure if it has totally been solved, it seems like there could still be cases when it goes horribly wrong.

The sharks had some movement adjustments--I was playing with their speed because they are so little threat to the player.  If you set their maxSpeed, you can make them faster or slower.  I had it double what we were using at the end of Friday, and I think that may be sufficient.

Weekly Report

Last and this week mainly thought about how the current would be use in the puzzle, at first i wasn't sure what could be done. But now i have a clearer idea of how we could put current in the puzzle Mathew is working on, possibly on the sides that way the player would have to find a way to get to it.

Weekly Report (April 21)

Well, that went well.

I added smoother controls to the sub and diver to make full use of the xbox controllers.

Other than that, I've been finding and fixing small breaks in the NPC code; for instance, the sharks would appear to get stuck whenever their movement curve's length had to be approximated--although, they were just moving really slowly--for that, I simply improved the approximation for their curve's length.

I've also been trying to change the shark's movement--I don't think I had the weighted location picker working correctly, and I need to test my new version before I know it is working correctly.

Jason

Andrew Harmon - Weekly Report

This past week or so I've been focusing on the music and soundeffects for the project. On top of composing the different musical scores, I also was able to load them into the project, and get the music to play when the game begins.

This is a link to a great article I used to get the music or sound effects to play in the project. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb195053.aspx

The main steps are to declare a sound effect or song. Then the sound file must be loaded into the project. And then you must have a place in your code where you type mySoundEffect.play().