Yesterday, we presented and it really well. Thd EA guys gave us a handful of suggestions, including not going to extreme with messing with the enviromental variables, and to be sure to convey this to the player in a very clear message. They also said that we should ditch any thoughts on a story, stating that we would end up dragging down the experience. The also said that the gravity change should apply to other objects that make the experience a little more challenging, without stepping out of the realm of reality.

I fully agree what with what they said and feel it is very doable with the system I have already implemented. I'm very excited to see the results on thursday

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Pitch presentation today.

Here's the videos we have prepared for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoAxkSiLdV8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17Hh148VNpc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRMOvt0EKoo

And here's our pitch document:

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1sz73S4LqAzh7yqZn1cMQaIPqM69wIPiJqzefQ-EvxaE&hl=en&authkey=COnKsBQ

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Yesterday, our presentation went very well, and seemd to be very well received. We were asked to do a simpler level because watching our more complicated level is too overwhelming to allow the watcher to really catch the gimmick. There is only a minimal number of changes we need to make including the art(wasnt all quite as themed as we want for the panel). we expect to have 2 demos available for the panel to test, which i feel will add to our brownie points with the board.

So far i have added a new level to the game, and have recorded it, though i think I will have to rerecorded once I get our final art

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Today, we are pitching our game.

This is the video of what we got:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcyNMpq_gKg

Since this video, I fixed a couple things, including the collision, some sprites, and some level design.

I also have prepared a demonstration with my more flexible physics engine. It allows the player to change all the physics environment settings on the fly, and actually feel the difference as they play. This prototype reports the values on screen so the player can actually compare whats going on. I want this to mostly be demo...something people will have to experience to fully understand.

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I spent some time on a couple things: First and most important was the addition of levels that fully scroll around. This means we are no longer restricted to having a level that is just constructed for what is initially on the screen. This includes parallax scrolling as well, for a 2.5D feel. I also added a gravity direction HUD, that replaced our big background arrow that we had. This is something we talked about yesterday, so I'm glad it went in so easily.

I also worked on my physics engine(the one we aren't using) and it is working now. It doesn't respond correctly to the ground, but the physics in the air is much better than the one we are using and is easily customizable. I tested some changes like higher gravity magnitude in certain direction or all directions, changes in terminal speeds, and changes in gravity erosion factors. This is still a proof of concept, so I won't put a ton of time in it, but we may be able to use some of the concepts for our final pitch.

I plan on making a new type of tile called "Deadly" so that we can add traps into our maps, allowing us to create challenges for the player, making it a true prototype of what we want to make.

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Not much to report today. Curtis also worked on a physics engine that used the platformer starter kit as the base. Mine still is in the process of getting to work, where as his works and is ready to improve. I'm thinking that once we get passed the prototype stage(its so obvious we will :D), we could replace this "prebuilt" setup with mine, which actually will have a lot more options and flexability.

We talked about an art style, which we have concluded that a stencil like environment would feel very inviting, and promote the simplicity aspect to it. We want to use colored stencils so that things don't blend together like they usually do on sketch art games, but the hand drawn feel is the aspect we want to capture. We also decided that we really only need to add a scrollable camera to make the games strong points really shine. We've also discussed what we might do to create these levels, simply. I was thinking it wouldn't be too hard to make a tile creator that visually let you drop down the tiles and parses it into the required text. This would also just be a temporary solution so we would get through the prototype, with plans of something more resourceful later.

Last thing I did was update Curtis' game so that no matter what direction you are, ground is ground and reacts as such. Not much but it feels more realistic now, which I like :)

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I started writing the physics engine for the game, on Saturday, which was stemmed by a seeing a XNA 3.1 Physics engine that I thought about actually using. I began thinking of things a little more abstractly than I was before and procured a clear shot idea for how a specific engine might work.

The design aspects is pretty simple and go like this:

-A physics object in the realm of a gravity induced location is required to:
--A) Load itself
--B) Draw itself
--C) Update itself
I felt this was mainly required for an object that exists in a XNA game in general
To be a "physical" object it must have certain attributes:
--A) Velocity
--B) Directional Gravity Force
--C) Terminal speed(To limit velocity in any direction)
--D) Ability to check for collisions(against the world and other physics objects)

This is still a work in progress and I have yet to test if it works, but the code is very clean(something I've been stressing to myself). The class is abstract and is planned to be extended for things like Player, or Enemy(if we decide for some), or ForegroundObject(if we decide for some).

I also wrote a control scheme for the game as an interface. No matter that control scheme that is used(gamepad or keyboard), they should be tied in to the general controls of the game. From these I made two classes that implement the scheme(KeyboardScheme, GamepadScheme) that define the controls for those schemes. This should make it easy for us to support the different input devices for the player, depending on his medium for playing.

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Our brainstorm and discussion can be found here:

We will be continuing on the topic over the weekend.

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On Tuesday, I proposed an idea of how we could easily create a full level quickly(maybe multiple levels), by programming a way to scan an image file with color codes, to define the collisions that the player may experience. I found a tutorial that did just this at: http://www.xnadevelopment.com/tutorials.shtml in which I have modified so that you can plug in new maps easily(I made 3 but its extremely easy to add more), the ability to pick levels, and have inserted some new color codes: Blue is player starting point(which the initial scan is something I added), Red is deadly spots(kills the player), White is walkable land, and Black is unwalkable. It works perfect and could easily be implemented towards the actual prototype that we will be working on.

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The "Per-Game" teams have been decided, and Gravity Shift(the game I pitched) has been picked as one of these games. My game recieved the highest number of votes out of all 31 games that were pitched.

We are now required to get in our teams and discuss what we want to do with the prototype(which is due in 2.5 weeks). In our discussion, we went over the document and decided what was really weak or really strong about it and what needs to change(which wasnt much). We came to the conclusion that most of these things would be fairly clear once we developed the prototype.

My task before Thursday is to set up and invite everyone to a google groups account and email the tasks to everyone. The CS students are to find things that can be ported into the prototype easily so that we can get something that works really quick and the film students are tasked with deciding on some themes to define the visual element of the game. I plan on also requesting that everyone come up with some ideas with a level...things that would be fun and challenging for the player so that we can come up with a clear idea with a prototype level.

I plan on looking up a way to read in a picture and based on the pixel color, decide if it is walkable, deadly, or unwalkable. This way we don't have to hard code the levels, we would just need to define what each pixel color represents.

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So it was a beautiful thing, sitting around at work spit-balling some "not-so-genuine" ideas, when BLAMMM, it hit me like a jackhammer. I came up with a delicious(Yes, this is the right word for this) idea for a XBOX360 Indie game. Here's the pitch I wrote up:

CLICK THIS LINK TO READ THE PITCH

I pitched it in front of class on Tuesday, so its no guarantee that it will actually be picked up, but I thought it went fairly well and it did stem some interest from the other students.

Yesterday I voted for 10 games that were pitched, including my own. I went based directly on how much work was put into their presentation, and if I didn't remember their presentation, how well thought out their document was. I am extremely hopeful that everyone realized my enthusiasm for my game, but I think all the games were good and should be an extremely valuable experience no matter what is selected.

Stay tuned to find out the Top 10 next week :)

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