studio-gameOn

He rode a burning saddle. A tale of a man in a world doing things. Things of awsomeness. Not really much to tell you. Over the last week or so I was making the sound effects for the project. I also did the sound for the FMV (Full Motion Video: despite what others have said) That’s been done except for a bit of fine tuning that might be acceptable in a destruction derby but not on the racetrack (makes sense to me). So what next, a little programming, a little bit of art, maybe some more sound what can I say I am a man of all trades. Granted people might laugh at my work but at least I’m trying. In other news…. nothing. I guess thats it. Stay tuned for the traffic report and my complete lack of interest. Not in you my loving public I’m not much of a blogger that’s all. No really it’s not you , it’s me. I mean I’m practically a hermit. Living in my cave to be gwaked at by others. Well I’ll show them I’ll show them all MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *Cough Cough* where was I oh yes I was ranting. The thing about ranting is that when do you end. At what point can you stop on a note that is acceptable to all peo….

Signed Your Lord and Master Pixel

Igor! THROW THE SWITCH

Okay mashter

*Sound effect of Switch hitting the ground aftyer a long decending arc through the air*

Thank you thank you I’ll be here all week. Try the veal and don’t forget to tip your waiteress.

The art team spent its time making a list of utterly critical art assests that need to be finish. Abbey has completed our final animations, minus any tweaking, and Liam made a big F-ing mess with a can of coke. Cylde spent the day on his lonesome in the render farm that is level 5, making the final score level. Bowman completed the FMV, and worked on the menu screen. I knocked up a concept of the Game title/logo as well as making a template for a team Bio page.

We in the art team were given the deadline of all critical art assessts to be finished by tuesday morning meaning MONDAY NIGHT. The atmosphere has been disturbingly jovial and laid back making me wonder if the lads have completed everything that has to be done. It’s all well and good to get on my high horse and absolve myself of drama by saying “well I’ve completed all of my stuff so balh blah blah none of this mess is my fault” if the proverbial waste matter hits the proverbial rotating air circulator. But we are a team and I will feel horrid if we let the programmers down, so fingers crossed that everyone has done what they said they would…

dear god I dont believe in…get us through this deadline!!

edit: This is Clyde here and I’m gonna put a image of what I’ve been working on!

Cheers, Tobes.

SHOUT OUT: LIAM WANTS YOU TO CHECK OUT http://area5.tv/

This morning, it was all eyes on the programmers!  Today, it was all supposed to come together … all the design, all the art, all the code … all 4 levels … in one massive working game.

It has already been a week of early starts, late finishes (for those without work and urgent family commitments), insomnia and exhaustion in general.  Adding to the frustration is the fact that many others in the studio have so little to contribute now … so while they start playing games other than ours and mingle nearby for chats, we’ve got our eyes glued to the screen and continue to code this game into existence.  It’s not necessarily their fault that they have little to do, and there were others who were still working … I’ll just say that this team could really have benefited from one more programmer and one less designer …  ’nuff said on that …

At these late stages, we could certainly have benefited from Rory being available, but for the most part, he’s been ill or tied up with co-op work commitments, and he has put in an effort to contributed where he can.

On a programming note, Pixel seems to have split away from the design team sometime during this week, and has tried his hand at menu programming as well as putting together many of the audio elements which has been very helpful.

After recent changes were merged, Alex began incorporating the end code into level 2 and Josh polished level three.  Meanwhile, Christina and I began eliminating QA bugs from level 1.  By the afternoon, all serious bugs, and a dozen more superficial ones, had been eliminated, but a few still remained.  During these later stages, Josh and Alex turned their focus to the main menu system and the linking requirements.

I had to leave for a couple of hours that afternoon to deal with other commitments, but when I went back there that night, Alex and Josh, with morale support from studio manager Sheryl, were still at it.  I continued to tinker away on level one while Josh and Alex continued to argue (in a very lighthearted and humorous way) over the compilation of the game.  At around 8:00, Rory arrived and helped resolve the final issues situation.

So, after working at it all day (all 6 weeks in reality) by 9:00, it was time to start putting everything into the game … all three main levels were complete (though bugs existed, particularly in the second) and the tutorial level needed it’s ending code.

However, only level 1 made the final cut … for now.  Linking in the other levels as well was just required too much work (and is nowhere near as simple a process as it sounds).  While we would very much like to have been able to have done more, we had started before 9:00 am in the morning after coming off the back of a hectic week) and the midnight (the deadline) loomed menacingly close.

But all hope is not lost, and the programming team can feel very proud of their efforts.  Next week is tweak week, and the ultimate deadline is Friday.  We are certain to have all levels in and well polished by then.  We have been relentless in fulfilling the programming requirements for this game … we’ve put in countless extra hours, we’ve dealt with the ever changing design requirements and we’ve worked very hard, together as a team, to pick up a new language, AS3, to build this game and do justice to the incredible art assets we’ve been provided by five very talented artists.  And when that curtain closes next Friday night, everything will be ready.
Can we build a fully polished game in 6 weeks?  It’s THAT close, it’s unbelievable!  Can we do it in 7 weeks? No doubts here!

On a final note, today was Josh Taylor’s final day in the studio before entering his co-op placement.  I met Josh when we first started this course nearly 2 years ago today, and I have nothing but enormous respect for him.  We have worked together on many occasions together, and regardless of the task, the attitudes of others in the group, or the circumstances, he has always been relentless in getting the job done to the absolute highest standard possible … a standard and attitude he has maintained throughout this project.  He is a pleasure to work with, and a very good friend.  Good luck with co-op, buddy, and thanks for giving it your all!
Colin

While this morning involved lots of tweaking and QA testing, this afternoon was moving back into the Glasshouse.

The dividing wall between the studio area and the conference room was pushed open, so now we’ve got a mega-studio ready for our FINAL week of Studio GameOn.

Not really much more to say for today, but looking forward to next week to cram as much into the game as possible without breaking what’s already there. Wish us luck!

Alex B

International Interest

This week we had a group of dignitaries from Korean Universities come and tour the Studio. With the help of a translator, we managed to explain how Studio-GameOn was established and run. It was fantastic to see such an international interest in our project and we were praised for our professionalism.

MX

We also had a photographer from MX come and take photos of some of the team and showed them around the studio where they meet our talented team. (Look out for the article)

games.on.net

Today we had Tim Campbell from games.on.net and a friend of his Max Vasey come to visit.  Tim will be doing a write up for the games web page, so be on the lookout.  We gave him the full tour and was able to spend quite a bit of time with them and go through all the processes of each of the teams.

It’s weird to think that barely six weeks ago, we ushered in a new year and trudged sleepily into Kelvin Grove on a Monday to face an empty room.  Now we’re like family; joking around, getting mad at each other, working together… and it’s all going to finish soon. It’s a sad thought, but we all have bigger and better things to go on to. Maybe someday we’ll all be back together again, but when this is all over… I know I’m going to miss everyone. There’s been no day when I don’t think about how lucky I am to have been a part of this. I have some great friends that I have made here and I hope to stay in contact with them all.

Now that I’ve my sentimental blubbering, I should tackle today’s events. Today we had a visit from Tim and Matt from Internode Games Network. They toured the studio (while I buzzed around taking happy snaps which you can find on Flickr) and learned more about the project. Meanwhile, Alex and I were working hard on breaking things. Yep, that’s right. Breaking things. We managed to get into Rory’s mini-games and worked on trying to break the builds in the most imaginative ways possible. This may be construed as harsh, but think of it this way: if we break it, chances are other people can too. So better that they find our breakages before the game goes public rather than it being released completely bugged-up.

The board are due in tomorrow (le gasp!), so I had to put all the recording equipment on charge tonight so that they would be ready for tomorrow morning when I arrive. All the programmers (the ever-stressed Rory included) are wringing their hands in despair, but I think… no, I KNOW they’ll come through for us. We have a great team.

And so, in our final days, I say to you this:

Singularly, this has been a blast. I am proud to have been a part of it and hope that the higher-ups decide to run it next year. Because who knows, maybe next year there’ll be a young woman with a background in marketing and a head for design who can have fun and learn so much from her friends.

Just like me.

Take care,

~@ Phantomess_Jekyll (Gemma)

We asked the designers to put a QA check-list for issues that are yet to be fixed in the gameplay for each object/section of the levels. Today we fixed some of these issues, added more player states (hopefully the last ones) and animation to the game. We also tried to finish Level 1, 2 and 3, in particular the starting and ending part of the game. Alex has been fixing the camera, Josh has been polishing the mine level making sure it works properly, I have been adding Map Two By One state and polishing the other states to get them work properly with the game levels’ objects while Colin has been fixing the player movement for the crates in the train level. Tomorrow we will be working further on the gameplay issues, linking the game levels with each other, and hopefully touching some of the tweaking parts prior to next week.

~Christina

We’re getting close to our deadline and most of us are either staying back at the studio or taking back a lot of homework. The game seems to be shaping up fairly well, though it does give the programmers a couple of small random bugs.

With all the major art assets for the game complete, the art team has been working on the final touch-ups for the game this entire week. Toby has been colouring in his overlays for the game, Liam got the overlays and the score screen animated, Bowman has been working in the final FMV in collaboration with Pixel (audio), Clyde has been working on this uber real end-game scene, and I spent the entire week bringing our stuntman to life.

Here are some of the overlays Tobes has done.

Abbey

Back on track, refocused and non-sleep deprived sure feels good. The team has certainly responded to their emails and now while the pressure of the deadline is on, I’m glad I made the opportunity then. At least now there is a strong foundation of support.
Coming into Uni at 6.15am has proven to be worthwhile. I get a chance to do all my management work with no interruptions, which allows me to spend time with the team during the day. Then if signs of tempers or frustration begin to show, I can deal with it straight away and not allow it to build and disrupt the progress of the game or the team unity.
I am really enjoying spending time with the team. They all are amazing.
As to the deadlines, we are staying on top, however our perfectionism and pride of our work means that it is not submitted to the board until the very last minute. Our next big deadline is Friday. Today we hope to construct the basic layout of the game. This will be where we finally start to see all the work we have been working on in parallel timelines, start to be incorporated into one. This is a huge task, but it will be absolutely fantastic to see it all come together. Knowing the quality of all these parts, it is really hard not to get excited about the project and I can’t wait to share this with everyone.

It’s difficult to nail down the atmosphere in the studio at present.  On the one hand their is excitement and laughter, an air of camaraderie and the scent of impending victory as the project completion date draws near.  On the other, there is the frantic click of the keyboard and groans of frustration as weary squinted eyes search reams of code and carefully crafted artwork to ensure that every proverbial ‘i’ is proverbially dotted and every proverbial ‘t’ is proverbially crossed before the looming final deadline.

While stress was relatively evenly distributed among each individual in the team at the start of the project, it has now shifted from the design team so that the bulk of it is on the artists and programmers.  Producer Rory’s absence for most of last and this week has compounded things, particularly as he has the final say in many important design decisions.

So now, the programmers are scrambling to implement as many features as possible, and complete the four levels we’re working on before Friday.

Christina, being absent today and yesterday, due to her part time status, will be back tomorrow, so she will relieve some of the pressure on debugging the state system and developing the final action types, such as when the player straddles objects of specific sizes.  This will pick up from her and Alex’s work earlier this week.

Alex today implemented a lot of the business end code into level 1, such as the cut scenes at the level’s commencement and conclusion, and the scoring effects built off Josh’s efforts in the last few days.  He is on the verge of finally completing that level, and anticipates that, aside from a few state related bugs, by around lunch time tomorrow, level 1 will be done.

Josh again tangled with the massive level 3, no small task, particularly as there are several game modes built into that one.  It almost feels like a separate mini-game was tagged onto the end of it, and it may well have been easier if that section of the game was a separate mini-game.  This week also marks the final week of Josh’s contribution, as he will commence his co-op placement next week.

As for me, today I incorporated new features into both the introductory level and level 2, and I merged a lot of the code … something that was quite urgently required since so much work has been done but not shared since early this week.  Now it’s all about incorporating all those changes into all levels.

Tomorrow, I hope to work on the player state system, debug it and add the very final states so that these levels can be tested properly.  There is still so much to do, and so much to fix … the workload is massive, but our team is determined and competent, and rather than focus on the fact we have deadlines, we will continue to focus on getting the job done.

Colin