I've really fallen behind here. I'm actually kind of upset to realize that I've only been sprinkling on what I've done for this semester, when I know I've been pounding out features pretty consistently. More and more I realize that I don't like to write, so writing out what I've done always weighs pretty heavily on me, and so avoiding it has been easier than trying to find the time. I do want something that I can go back and look at and be proud to see my progress of things, as well as future employeers(probably more important actually), so I'm going to try to recap previous progress:

Since February, the biggest thing that has gotten done is the level selector. As briefly mentioned in the previous post, I was rewriting this and got something that looked and worked well, but there was still some confusion with the system, as it isn't fully apparent to the user that there is more worlds available. Because of this, for the 3rd time, we are going to rewrite it, but this time I don't think it will take a full rewrite(thank goodness). We are going to move all the worlds onto one page and have their levels in their own personal sections. Here's a picture to demonstrate:



I think this is a very good move, as it keeps everything available and utilizes the free space very well.

Also, we've made a trailer of our game which me and Nate worked on together. This can be found here:



I've worked on some audio that has become the official sounds effects. I've also created a program that made creating a level list easy. The loading and saving of the game has become more graceful, but still needs work(Some levels lock for a second before loading which is against the rules). We've been working on a lot of problems that are required to work to be released on xbox live, which I was involved in fixing some of them. Mostly, at this point, there has just been a lot of tuning. According to the App Hub forum, we are doing very well. There is about 8 people who have posted after playtesting, with mostly positive and good feedback. We look forward to getting our game out on the actual market.

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We are making sound progress. I've been implementing a new level select this week that is based on a world system, and realized really quick, that we've really hurt our design by keeping in temporary code. Since this is a whole new system, I've had to rework all of this, which is just a beast. I feel like I've been doing it as intellegently as I can so that its open to changes we might need, but we'll see.

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I've done some pretty cool stuff since the last post...most generally, I've worked on menu stuff. Our main menu implements our gameplay as interface. I've got this for the main menu and the options menu. I also worked on the credits screen. It now scrolls and presents our names under specific titles. Lastly, I also created a new xbox project that is now in our repo. This should help us to keep the xbox project up to date

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As of Tuesday, i havent had time to get anything done. instead I've been focused on my other classes which have taken priority in the last couple days. I will, however have some new features added by tomorrow, and expect to see some big progress in the next couple days, so i will update once that happens(if i remember :-))

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Ok, since the 19th, I have added:

-Progressing levels(You can move to the next level after beating the level without having to go to the selection menu)
-Unlocking levels after you beat the level before
-Prepared the code for future high scores and other planned details
-Modded with the level editor for easier level creation(also fixed some small bugs in the code)
-Got the game on the Xbox...This took a long time, due to some conflicts with certain files in the code I guess. Anyway, it works after making a new project and copying the files over and modifying specific preferences. I went through our code and made some changes to help the transition between the 2 easier, code-wise(things like casting lists of objects from a child class to its parent class is not allowed on Xbox but allowed on the PC). I might figure out a way to throw the Xbox stuff on a separate branch in Git. Anyway, it worked without any speed hiccups but had some layout and audio issues that we are working to resolve.
-Worked on the physics engine with curtis. We talked about a way to prioritize collisions so that immediate action collisions don't disregard sound rules like, rails should always stay on their track. We didn't write much code on it, but I wrote out what I think is a pretty decent algorithm and he was supposed to implement it. We'll see how that goes.

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Oh boy, back to the blogs that I always lose track of :S

Anyway, here's a recap of what happened over the break(that I did during the first week I think)

-Matrix collisions, which basically is a continuously updating grid to allow for easy testing for collisions, because only the surrounding tiles have to be checked for collisions rather than the entire set of game objects

-Wall objects, which basically links touching static objects together so if we have a long stretch of wall of 100 tiles, this is only 1 object in the collision list.

-Thumbnail image saving in the level editor. This has since been modified to shrink the image to a 300x300 image before saving.

-Reorginization of the code. The layout is like this now
--Game contains Load, Update, and Draw and based on the game state, will run the Level, or any of the menus. Each of the menus and the level have an Load, Update, and Draw which updates its individual states when running. They are also able to change the game state using a pointer to the one handled by the game.

Since the break, I've added a LevelSelect menu that uses a page system. It divides all the levels defined into 12 groups called pages(no real division when it comes to the place they are stored, but it seems like this to the user) and the user can flip through the 12 on screen or use the arrows to pan through the pages. I've also went through and fixed some bugs that have shown up in the last couple days. Currently I'm looking into making the level selection work world wide. This way we can unlock levels when beating the previous level, and move to the next level after beating the level. Should be easy but we'll see how it goes

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RThis week was another busy week for all my other classes but I did find time to add some new features. First, I fixed some small bugs here and there in the level editor. I also added the ability to use triggers and to translate them and run them correctly. The trigger I made, adds a force to any item that is within the defined range(changeable from the level editor) with a force that is changable from the level editor. The trigger can also be a square or a circle collision. I also spent some time completely rebasing GameObject construction through all its children. This passes the translated entity info to the object so each one can translate itself however it wants. I also fixed the camera, which looks tons better than it did.

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