Friday, October 25, 2013

Sprint 3 - Time for UI

So, with the start of the third sprint, I finally have the code that our project owner wants me to use for the UI. It isn't really anything special, but it appears to be at least solid enough for the time being. My current job is just to get the various states working for the game, which include an options screen and a game over screen. I will probably implement something close to the mock-ups I made for the first sprint in regards to both. I'm also going to have to change the code slightly so that it actually has a background to display since it doesn't currently have anything for it period.

Something that really wasn't part of my job was I changed around the code so that the game actually does exit upon hitting the escape key. I only did it because it was kinda bugging me that it hadn't been done yet.

It seems we are drawing close to the end and I'm unsure of us actually getting all of our goals completed and I'm not entirely sure what happened along the way that makes me feel this way. Oh well, onwards towards the 4th sprint I suppose.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Second Sprint for Leap of Faith Update

I really don't know what to say for this sprint as I still haven't gotten the chance to do anything. I started looking into either using the old menu system I had used in the GSD3 game I worked on, but my friend suggested I also look into using a Finite State Machine. While I was looking into this, our Project Owner came up and asked if I would like to use the Menu system that he had made for the game beforehand, and I could just re-skin the UI so it fit our project. I wanted to get a look at the system to see how it looked before doing anything. This was on Tuesday of last week. I have still yet to see this code. I'm not sure I'm going to before the presentation on Thursday either.

Monday, October 7, 2013

First Sprint: Leap of Faith User Interface

So the group work begins and I am the head of the UI section....which consists of me. Work is split rather thin for this project. Hopefully it will get better as we continue through the game. Either way, I don't have anything to implement a screen system on, and I would rather add that to an existing system rather than trying to work the other way. I did that once before for my GSD3 class and that was many nights spent bug fixing. Without any actual programming work to do, I got to make some mock-ups of what the screens would look like.

I really like the lantern personally

This is our Options screen. The idea I've been working with is that our PC, I shall call him Lucius (or Lucy if female, I'm not picky), is that he is carrying a lantern around which generates the light for him to jump around to. I fully admit I'm not an artist, but I like the aesthetic that I managed to make.


The lantern is tipped over, alone
This would be the game over screen. It was pointed out that the player will always "fail" the game. I find it more inspiring if we don't just point out that it's impossible, regardless of the player knowing or not.

The Start Screen, in media res
The title screen basically shows off what the player does in the game. There really much variety wise with the game outside of just straight playing it, as befitting the scope the game is trying to fill.


There is a pause screen as well, but it is basically a transparency over the game screen itself. I also had to make a power up that refills the lantern, but it's just a can of oil.

Will-o-Wisp
I honestly don't know if this will be used, and even if it matches what we are working with. That said, I didn't have much work to do and I liked the idea of the floating light ball helping the player. We don't have an overwhelming amount of work to do so we may have this in game after all.


Leap of Faith Update

Well, with the start of the second sprint coming up, I may actually get to do some work this time. My job on the team has been UI design and implementation, but up until now, there hasn't really been a framework to work with. Considering the rest of the game, I don't think the UI is going to be very complicated. This is due in large to the lack of needing a HUD of any sort since it would be a little intrusive to the experience.

This leaves me with just having the different screens to implement which will basically just be 4 objects which get cycled through in an array. One for Title, one for the game loop, one for pausing, and one for the Options screen. I had to do the exact same work for my GSD3 project back in freshmen year. Honestly, this entire project has felt rather slow. I haven't had any real work to do, but hopefully that will change now.

This does leave me wondering what the programming core is going to do. It is unlikely that they won't finish polishing the "engine" during this sprint, but what will they do after? All I know is that after week 10, I don't really know what any of us will be working on.

P.S. I'm sorry for the lack of updates on Leap of Faith, but I don't generally have much to report.