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Week 8 7-11th May

This week Tom and I developed the points/score system for the game, which allows the player to see how many points they have got/how many enemies they have killed. This allowed us to get all of the basic mechanics on lock down ready to put the game onto the Sony Dev Kit to test it. Below is the finalised enemy points/score code:

As the Dev Kit is slightly different to running the game on the PC, Tom had to remap the ps4 controls, showing me how to do so in the process. This made it so the game worked really well on the PlayStation 4 ready for E3 next month. However, on our second time running the game on the Dev Kit, due to a software update our game broke. To solve this Tom and I worked with Chris to resolve the issue. The root of the problem was a set of errors which prevented the Main Menu/Loading scenes to switch to the game scene.

Here are some photos of inside the game:

These issues prompted me to discuss with Harry a solution for both the leader board and the enemy counter (the enemy counter would be different to the score system, a feature we had planned to implement to show the player how many enemies were in the game at one time). The solution we arrived at was to delay both of these features until after E3, and spent the time leading up to the event making the game run as smooth as possible, as well as making it more visually appealing. This is reflected on the amended production schedule shown below:

This week put myself back on schedule completely, being the penultimate week, I made sure the death screen was completed with Tom. As shown below, I can say that we have succeeded:

After discussing pieces of the production schedule with Harry, we decided that implementing the radar into the game before E3 was a bigger ask than originally thought. To make sure we kept the game on schedule and to keep everything working like clockwork for the deadline, we have altered the production schedule, pushing the radar to after E3, or more accurately, labelling it a feature that’s “planned for the future”. This allows a little extra time to add improvements to the game and also keeps the game at the highest quality it can be – without rushing anything.

As shown above, we are all on schedule. I am happy that we have been able to tackle issues quickly and adapt to anything we stumble across. This is very good progress from both myself and the team, and I am very proud with how we are handling the situation.

This week Tom and I began to get back on track. After reshuffling the production schedule, all we needed to complete was the Advanced AI and death screen, before we handed the game to Harry to implement the assets. There were no issues with the advanced AI as any potential speed pumps had been identified by myself when I made the pooling for both the normal enemy and the projectiles. This was good because it allowed me to finish the code for the advanced AI a lot quicker, without bumping into any issues. Below you can see some of the code used:

In regards to the death screen, Tom and I finished the asthetics for it quite quickly. Implementing it into the game will be relatively easy as the ship damage/health had already been made, which can be done next week. Below is what the death screen currently looks from in game (which is of course temporary, and waiting to be skinned):

Tom and I also began to re position information in the cockpit, so it was easier to view. This look was based off my research into flight simulators, as the positioning of information could be transferred to Cosmic Conflict.

In regards to the production schedule, the we are all on track, as shown below:

I am very pleased with my progress and I am looking forward to watching the game get pieced together in the next couple weeks.

This week was a massive step up for myself. We began to make a lot of progress with the game, having to catch up with the previous work we’d missed.

Personally, I have sorted out the ship health and damage with Tom, as well as working on the advanced AI together.

Coding the health bar did not take too much time. All we need to do was add a canvas into the game scene for the health bar, and set it so that every time an enemy hit the ship, a certain amount of health was deducted. You can see the code used for the ship health/damage below:

As the ship health bar did not take too long to make, that gave Tom and I more time to work on the Advanced AI. originally we had given ourselves 2 weeks to complete it, but due to the previous two weeks I had to reduce this down to just under that, which gave us the end of this week and the start of next week to complete it.

I am happy that we were able to make this work, and you can find the code for the Advanced AI below:

To adjust the production schedule further, and keep on track, we decided to postpone the radar and enemy counter, now listing them as ‘N/A’ on the production schedule. This gave Tom and I more time to sort things out. I am happy with the outcome currently as it allows me more time to focus on the necessary parts to the game, and gives me a window to add more features to the game at a later date. This also helped us to streamline the game so that only the important parts were there, and it allowed us to guarantee a working game for the deadline.

The movement of the Advanced AI was a reference to my research on Elite Dangerous and the film Gravity. Looking at how the movement in both of these sources were in space, I was able to transfer these across to the game, creating a similar feel in the code.

Similar to last week, as we were not in college, I could not get any work done. This meant that nothing was done, putting me behind again. I am dissapointed to say that I am behind schedule, but I am ready for next week to both catch up and change certain parts of the production schedule with Harry to optimise my workflow.

To make sure I was being productive at at least something, I created a Trello board for the company to make sure people were planning everything  correctly, and made activities easier to monitor. Below are some examples of the board I made:

Unfortunately, this week was Half Term. This meant that I did not get anything done. This included the team, as we were all to busy, and did not have the software readily available at home. Therefore we have fallen slightly behind. The production schedule still remains the same as last weeks.

However, I have made use of the week to set up certain aspects of the company we are forming together. This consisted of setting up all of the company emails, and assigning them to each user. Below is an image of the dashboard.

This will help set up important aspects of the company, and help streamline work.

This week, Tom ad I began to work on adapting spawning code for the bullet and the enemies. This involved implementing a system called “Object Pooling”.

To make sure we took the right approach with the enemy pooling, we tried multiple different ways to spawn the enemies. This included simply creating an object and then deleting it when it was shot. This would be a good method to use on a small scale, however when increased it puts a lot of unnecessary load onto the RAM. Pooling eliminates this load, preventing the game from lagging as both the enemies and the projectiles only need to be loaded in once. The system allows you to recycle the same objects from a pool, meaning that nothing extra needs to be added into the game as all you now need to do is change whether or not the object is visible. Below is the code I made for the pooling:

This first piece spawns in the enemies from the pool:

This piece of code is the object pooler script, which creates a pool of 20 enemies, which the game can then pick from, and then recycle:

Issues

When testing the pooling, I came across an issue regarding the enemies and projectiles going off in random directions when respawning into the game. This was a quick fix, but it took a while to locate the heart of the issue. Luckily, we are still on schedule, as shown on the production schedule below.

As shown above, we are all currently on track. I am very pleased with both myself and the teams progress so far.

This Week I needed to make sure the turrets were aligned properly in the game. As shown in the image below the turrets are now aligned. We just wanted to spend a bit more time on this part so there would be less work needed in the future.

To get ahead of schedule, I also worked with Tom to get ahead of schedule, making sure projectiles worked, as shown below:

Looking into the production schedule, we are on track to hit the deadlines set. I am currently very pleased with both myself and Tom’s progress.