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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