July 2006

June 2006

May 2006

April 2006

Our Profile

Our Staff

3D Tic Tac Toe

Candy Bar

Screen Shots

Gamedev

Igda

Gamasutra

Siggraph

Send an E-mail

Monday, July 31, 2006

Hansel Finally we have come to a point that we can say that we have completed our basic game play, it have been a tough and long project that we ever handed and indeed it is different from the past projects that we managed. More effort and team work are need to handle a long duration project. I am very glad that i have this team of people for this project and very gald that we have come so far.

Now that we will be moving on to further develop the game during the semester project, more challanges will he ahead. Things that I will be improving will be the centralize the reading of informations from text files, and adding more information to the text files like position of main character and more, building of levels, loading and saving of games.

Nigel I have managed to finish the second step of my path-finding. After many pages of mathematics, I have managed to deduce the problem which stopped me for a long time. The order of the vertices for the walls was taken in in the wrong order due to some minor inconsistencies. Now the monster shall disengage when the player goes behind a wall, when the line of sight is blocked.

Conclusion:
Today we presented the game in class. As such this is an end to the module and the work. However this close is insignificant as the same project is now for the 3-weeks holiday project, and there is no change whatsoever. We have planned what enhancements to do for the 3-weeks, and thus the project stays same, in development.

Ren Hao I find that this is a great learning experience to get a better idea of developing a game. Though this game dev module is coming to an end, we will still continue to develop this game for the studio project. For the studio project, we can add in more levels, improve the game play and etc. This will make our game more fun! However this means a lot of hard work will be needed. Well...I'll be looking forward to the studio project then.

Melissa Finally the basic gameplay is done! Can relax abit til the studio project... Hehe.. Doubt so...

Tasks for the 3 weeks project:
1.) animate hero and monster
2.) improve menu and gameworld textures
3.) Elemental monsters and gems to enhance gameplay
4.) Different expression of monster

Attached the following document in:
Game_Design_Document_GDD.pdf (245KB)
Technical_Design_Document_TDD.pdf (93KB)
some screen shots of game

New version of the game Dungeon Revival will be on another website. click here to view it!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Hansel think of what can be done during the semester project week.

Nigel Solved the referencing of the 3D array from dodo class which increases efficency as there is no need to remake a brand new similar array for the monster class.

Implemented an OrientateMonster function to make the monster face the player through use of vectors. However at certain angles the arc cosine returns a wrong value which i couldnt solve. The problem is that arc cosine in cmath do not take into account the sign of the value.

Now the code is also able to deduce whether the monster can see the player, implemented in IsVisible function which takes in only the player's position. However there is still many problems as the implementation is not 100% correct and the line of sight still most of the time passes through walls.

Ren Hao will be changing the colour of the gem effect to make it more visible and do a feedback to the user when the player is hit by the monster. He will also continue to search for appropriate background music for the main game.

Melissa Splitted instructions screen into 2 pages, with working buttons to menu and next/back pages. Corrected monster's eyes and mouth. Added shadows to the the monster by using alpha channel. Currently adding shadows to hero model, and also splitting models up so that I can animate it. Also adding elemental monsters to the game. Want to add expression of the monster in game when it encounters hero, gem, and coin.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Hansel completed the mtl loading problems and now materials are correctly loaded on to the model. lights are been setup on model like coins, gems and etc..

Also modifed the map designer so now that monster model file, position and other informations are all stored in the text file of the map and any settings that needs to be done can be edited from the text file.

More information will need to be stored together in the text file like main chracter's model and position etc.. so that in future when save and load game function are implemented, all this informations will be written or read from text file.

Nigel Done up a basic path-finding for the monster, which now moves towards the target from the current position, PathFinding(vector currentPos, vector targetPos). Right now only A.I. state 'chase player' calls this function.

Now currently implementing the 3D array from the game level and looking into the advanced path-finding around obstructions.

Ren Hao did the special effect when the player kills the monster.

Melissa Finished Game Dev Doc. Finished initial instruction screen. Splitting it into 2 "pages" to make it look less messy.Added weapon to monster.

Created Scoreboard with win/lose splash screen. Scoreboard records the number of coins and gems in status.cpp. Added button for all 3 screens.

Added 'limbs' for Uru-chan (main character). Created a 'face' for the monster by drawing a quad and texturing it with its right eye, left eye and mouth.

Inserted a blank instructions screen with working buton. currently working on fixing the screen to 800x600 for convenience purposes.
Currently updating Game Dev Doc.

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

Hansel futher improve on the collision of the game therefore reduce the possiblity of character passing through the wall. Disabled the collision detection box after the monster had died. Slove the problem when recieve damage from monster, it will now reduce 1 health instead of 2 of 3 at a time, as well as sloving the prob that it could not deduct health on the 1st time character come in contact with monster.

Started on the state of the monster, where there is chase player state, escape from player state, player within range state, other that are not implemented will be loot coin state which will then need the reviece the location of the coin before state can be set.

Sorted out the problem of mtl can't be loaded, it is found out to be that the directory of the mtl was wrong. Initialy mtl and obj files are at the same level of the project files but after the mtl and obj was moved to the folder, problem are faced due to the directory problem, it is slove by editing the code in mesh.cpp, therefore now is able to load the mtl, but there are still problems and is supected to be lighting settings if not flow of the program.

Nigel Solved the jerkiness of the character, the movement is now time-based, integrated the game project. Started on planning on the algorithm for the monster path-finding. Finite state machine of the A.I. is going to be done up by hansel, therefore the next part of it will be the path finding. As the grid has already been implemented since the basic stages, now will be fully focusing on path-finding functions for the enemies.

Listed below is the plan for the path-finding class:

Thus using the A* algo as well as using intersecting paths in the path-finding will actually help solve the
silly behavious of sticking strictly to the grid.

Ren Hao Last week renhao did the minimap for the game. The minimap almost done now showing the position of the character and the wall. He also implemented the turning on and off of the minimap. Now he is improving on the minimap by trying to show the direction of the character on the map.

This week renhao has completed the minimap with the direction of the character shown. He has added sound when collecting coins and gems in the game. He also added the time limit of the gem effect. Now he is working on the special effect when the player possesses the gem.

Melissa Did Credit. Added Animation and 'Back' button. Didn't enable button to change position when screen is resized, taken a long time to draw quads because of various minor errors.

The first error was because didn't set the camera when changed the gamestate.

The second error was because quads are not drawn in the correct direction (clockwise instead of anti-clockwise). Then added the animation by drawing another quad with words on it, and then translate it upwards, repeating it again after it exceed an area The back button was added, but it only works in the normal screen. I hvn't implement changes to allow the detection of the button to change when resize.