Game Prototype Presentation Critique Part 1&2

I didnt get around to posting for the first set of presentations yet, so I figured Id merge both.

"Mizu", the game based around the water droplet character, had in my opinion the best designed presentation of all I have seen on either day. This perhaps isnt the most critical thing in regards to making the game, but I do think it says something about what we can expect from the final game. The concept seemed interesting as well. Bringing it into 2D also makes the scope more manageable. Like many presentations though, I did wonder if they spent too much time on explaining their concept and not elaborating on how their testing went.

For the game based on Ants, I have to say I think they gave up on the RTS idea too easily. I think they would have found Warcraft 3 to meet their needs perfectly and would have allowed them to create a strong game quickly.

The last game I remember from the first day I believe was called "Fins of Fury", and was based around a fish growing up. When I was hearing about the concept I really thought of spore, and so I have to wonder if they have a good plan on how to implement what seems like a rather large scope to me.

Today started off with an RPG, 3rd Cloud. RPGs happen to be my favorite genre so I could help but personally be interested in this idea. I really liked though what they managed to get through testing. They seemed to have very good results from the prototype and personally I think this was due to the fact they got an electronic version up and running. Didnt quite understand where they were going with the battle system though.

"Food Fight" seemed to me to be a game based on plans that didnt seem as well thought out as I would expect. Nevermind as was brought up in the lecture that fog of war makes little sense in a cafeteria, how the heck would you make that look appropriate in a classroom setting? I personally would like to have seen a better mockup of what the final screen organization will be, but then I guess this is something I havent seen any team do. This team would just draw more from it. Their testing didnt seem too valid in face of this to me.

"Drive Thru Tycoon" is of the simulation genre which I never could personally get interested in really. There is a chance in the humor though. If they can bring out more in the sounds and text it might be able to succeed in that vein. I didnt understand how they were testing this when they stated that it worked in real time, mayhap they had an electronic version ready for the test as well, but I didnt hear that clearly.

"Circular Strife" was the most interesting idea of all the presentations so far. A 3D flight game like what they are describing could be quite incredible. I do wonder about how hard it will be to make such a game in the time left though. The prototype test sounded quite fun, other then walking around attaching the bombs =). I do kinda think that bringing in such a unique dynamic for a prototype kinda draws away from the ability to learn about how the final game, but I cant deny that it was an interesting choice all the same.

Weekly Assessment 24-30

Collision detection has been quite a trial to implement for my engine. I have been spending substantial amounts of time attempting to implement this crucial system. At this point I believe I have just about accomplished the goal- there are gaps for which the system is missing, but otherwise it seems to be working. If I can just figure out where in my algorithm is causing that flaw I will have it. At that point I will be in a very good position given our time constraints.
If I do manage to make it work, it will be quite an accomplishment to me- it is the most mathematically complex problem I have tried to solve in any program.
I am a little worried about the fact that I have not seen anything from the art side ready from my teammates, but Im sure that will start coming soon.
Im hoping to meet my teammates before the lab on thursday.

Weekly Assessment (October 16-23)

This week I have continued to work on the engine that is going to be running our game. In particular one thing I finished was the basics for the importing and rendering of wavefront objects. This was important as models can now be directly exported from maya then rendered in game. I have yet to finish this however, textures for example still do not carry over. I have much of the structure in place to solve this though.

I have also worked on collision detection. I was hoping due to the structure of the terrain that I came up with this would be simpler, but no such luck. I made a basic structure that accomplishes this, but it has several flaws. This is one of the primary things I am going to work on in the next while, as I move to a per-polygon collision system. I believe I can do this given the structure I have quite efficiently though there is great potential for me to mess up something small in the math for it... >< lol...

Thats a brief statement on the topics ive been covering. I think I would need to post daily to cover all the different areas in the engine Im working on though lol...

As far as team meetings we are having one tommorow at 2:00, and had one last thursday at 4:30 if I remember correctly.

Until later.

Alex