Group Development Diary:

Week 1 19th-23rd March

Week 1 marked the beginning of our Production Phase – Stage 4. Both the team and myself are fully aware of what is to come, so will need to keep up to date with production schedules, with the potential of editing it in the future.

I will be formatting each part of the weekly updates not by the order they were completed in, but under multiple different headings to outline what each person has done progress-wise, making it easier to track. The five categories are as follows; Sound, Marketing Planning and Menu Design, 3D Models and Textures, Coding.  

Sound

Within the team, Charlie and Henry are working on sound. This week Charlie has began work on the damage sound effects and space objects,

Henry has began work on the main menu music. He has been given a week to work on this so that everything can be completed as close to the schedule as possible.

I am very pleased with the current progress of these two, as they have hit target for the week. Below are the sounds created by both Charlie and Henry:

-Damage SFX

Audio Player Audio Player

-Space Objects

Audio Player

-Menu Music

Audio Player

Marketing, Planning and Menu Design

During Week 1 Harry was tasked with righting the game bio. This needed to be able to hook the player in, so within the week Harry would need to research other apps and look into how he could make the Game Bio role entice the player to download the game.

 

Here is what he came up with:

Are you ready for this?

Are you ready for the ultimate survival experience? Prepare to step into the shoes of a cargo ship pilot in the outer rim of the Varkis system. The Varkis system is a desolate and dark place. The galactic war has gutted the system and left behind shells of planets and death. You are delivering a shipment of ion disruption charges when your ambushed by the Asukie. The Asukie tribe used to live in the Varkis system and have been left to rot and die, however some survived and have created a system controlled by violence and death. The Asukie are now trying to gain access to your ship. You must defend it with your cannons before their drones consume you and your ship.

Find a way to survive and even team up with a fellow pilot who can cover you back and help you take down the Asukie until your evac arrives.

 

I am very pleased with this as it hooks the reader straight away, making them want to read further and find out what the game is all about. It also explains the premise of the game relatively well, which is a nice addition. Harry is currently on schedule, so I am looking forward to the progress we are going to make as a team.

3D Models and Textures

Sam has finished all of the current 3D Models and Textures, and he is now progressed onto completing the 3D Cannon model. Below is an image of the cannon, which Sam has created in 3DS Max. This has not yet been textured.

In regards to the finished 3D Models and Textures, below are a few examples:

Enemy Pirate Ship:

Enemy Drone:

Player Ship:

 

Cameron has started working on the cockpit for the camera view, and has finished the model. All that is needed is for him to do is texture the model now. Below is the cockpit view, Cameron has also designed this using 3DS Max:

I am pleased with their current progress.

Code

For coding, Tom and I have worked on the same thing. You can find what was completed this week in this blog post from my personal development diary, which outlines our progress for this week.

I am pleased with both mine and Tom’s work this week, and we are all currently on track.

Week 1 Production Schedule

 

Week 2 26th-30th March

The past week has been going really well, and it’s safe to say that both myself and the team are on target.

Sound

This week, Charlie was working on the ‘space echoes’ within the game – a feature to further immerse the player – as well as both the player and pirate ship’s explosions. I am pleased to say that he completed this on time, and that there were no issues in regards to the process when designing the sounds.

Henry has been working on the In-Game Music, and his current progress is great. He has completed the task on time, and we are all pleased with the outcome.

Below are the sounds created by Charlie and Henry:

Space Echo SFX:

Audio Player

Explosion SFX:

Audio Player

In-game Music:

• – – – – – – – – – – –

 

Marketing, Planning and Menu Design

Harry has began work looking into menu concept designs, ready for when he needs to design the menu concepts. This is going really well, and he has put together a PowerPoint showing the different types of menu designs he will base Cosmic Conflict’s around:

 

-Menu concept powerpoint

 

I am very pleased with his progress, and he is currently following the schedule closely.

3D Models and Textures

I am pleased to say that both Sam and Cameron are on task and following the production schedule, Sam having now completed the Cannon model’s textures, and Cameron now being 50% of the way through his Cockpit.

Cameron is currently further ahead of schedule as he has lee-way to complete the Cockpit model to the best of his ability. All that is left to do now for it is the texturing of the model.

Below is the textured 3D Cannon that Sam has made:

Coding

For coding, Tom and I have worked on the same thing. You can find what was completed this week in this blog post from my personal development diary, which outlines our progress for this week.

Both Tom and myself are currently on track for the production schedule and I am pleased with our progress.

Week 2 Production Schedule

 

Week 3 2nd-6th April

HALF TERM.

 

Week 4 9th-13th April

Similar to last week, this week was currently half term. Fortunately some work was completed, but for the main part we remained dormant in our progress.

3D Models and Textures

Cameron was the only person to complete any work towards the game in the half term in the form of the cockpit. As of now, he has finished the textures for the cockpit. As a team, we are all happy with the result, as the cockpit is a big part of the game which will constantly be seen by the player. Below is the textured version of the cockpit viewed in 3ds Max:

 

Week 4 Production Schedule

 

Week 5 16th-20th April

After not completing any work other the previous 2 weeks, this week was a big one for the team. As a team, we let our progress slip and this is unacceptable. Luckily, we held a brief team meeting, and Harry was able to work with everyone and adjust the production schedule accordingly. We discussed what essentials the game needed, as well as what we could make after the team get back from E3.

Sound

Following the team meeting, we discussed a possibility that some sounds could be changed, if they didn’t quite fit the games look and feel. We concluded from this meeting that Charlie would need to create another spaceship ambience sound, as both himself and the team weren’t satisfied with the original. He was also tasked to complete the shooting sound effect for the end of this week, both of which he completed. Both the team and myself were pleased with the outcome.

Henry set to work on the loading music, which turned out to be a great fit for the game, and had the added bonus that it was completed on time. Within the meeting we had discussed the the drone sound (previously set as the task for Week 4) was not needed for the game in its current state, so would not need to be done. This has been reflected as “N/A” in this weeks production schedule.

Below are the sounds created in this week:

Spaceship Ambience:

Audio Player

Shooting sound:

Audio Player

Loading Screen:

• – – – – – – — – – – –

 

Marketing, Planning and Menu Design

During Week 5, Harry was still researching the menu concepts, and is making good progress in planning out the design that he will start to concept in the next week.

3D Models and Textures

In Week 5, both Sam and Cameron began work on the Planets, 3D Models and Textures. This included a skybox for the game, which Cameron began work on. This left Sam to begin work on the planet 3d models, which keeps them both on task.

Below is an image of Cameron’s start on the skybox:

Code

For coding, Tom and I have worked on the same thing. You can find what was completed this week in this blog post from my personal development diary, which outlines our progress for this week.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of work over weeks 3 and 4, we had to play catch up, which I am dissapointed with. I go over this in more detail in my personal blog.

 

Week 5 Production Schedule

 

Week 6 23rd-27th April

By Week 6, the team and I have begun to work really efficiently. Having to play catch up over the previous few weeks, I feel that this week has gone really well. With the deadline just weeks away, we are really beginning to gain traction, and are nearly back on track to complete the game in time.

Sound

This week Charlie was tasked with creating the pirate sounds for the game, and Henry worked on the tutorial sounds. Similar to last week, we had another meeting to quickly discuss our progress, and concluded that we did not need a hit marker sound to be included in the current build of the game, putting Henry back on track. This has been amended on this weeks production schedule, now saying “N/A”.

Below are Charlie and Henry’s sounds for this week:

Pirate sound:

Audio Player

Tutorial Sound:

Audio Player

Marketing, Planning and Menu Design

This week Harry designed the main menu concept. Unfortunately, the computer crashed when he went to save the work, which corrupted the file. This meant that the weeks work was lost, so in an attempt to give Cameron and Sam something to work with, Harry created a couple concepts very roughly. Of course, the concepts below are not in a great amount of detail as the original copies were corrupted:

In Harry’s defense, he did get an A* in Art.

3D Models and Textures

Cameron has now completed the skybox, having made a net for a cube, which will help massively in week 8 for Harry, as it can be directly imported into unity.

Sam on the other hand has now finished the 3D models for the exploding planet, as well as an animation of the planet exploding to accompany it.

Below are the images and models created by Cameron and Sam for this week:

The Skybox:

3D Exploding Planet:

Code

For coding, Tom and I have worked on the same thing. You can find what was completed this week in this blog post from my personal development diary, which outlines our progress for this week.

 

Week 6 Production Schedule

 

Week 7 30th April-4th May

This week was very important as it was the penultimate week, before we tested the game on the Sony Dev Kit with the assets imported. I am happy to say that currently the team are on schedule, having completed everything that was needed at the end of this week.

Sound

For Sound, Charlie and Henry were on track so were given this week to catch up, or alter any sounds needed ready to import them next week. They began work on the Splash Screen music but did not complete anything. This meant that they were on track to complete everything next week when it came to importing to the sounds.

Marketing, Planning and Menu Design

During this week Harry completed the Menu button design, ready to hand everything to Sam and Cameron to build next week after the menu has been completed. This put Harry on target for the deadline, and I am very pleased with the current progress.

3D Models and Textures

Cameron began work on the game menu this week, altering the skybox images to work as a menu background, and is now exploring options that Harry has given him with fonts. He has really put a lot of thought into the style of the menu, and this is shown by the Game Title he has created to go onto the main menu background. He will be adding the menu buttons in next week:

Sam has gone very in depth with the design of the exploding planet, having now finished the textures. He has gone the extra mile by creating a texture for both the inside and outside of the planet. This along with the animation looks really good:

Inside planet:

Outside planet:

Textured exploding planet:

Code

For coding, Tom and I have worked on the same thing. You can find what was completed this week in this blog post from my personal development diary, which outlines our progress for this week.

 

Week 7 Production Schedule

 

Week 8 7-11th May

This week marked the final part of stage four. This meant that the majority of things had been completed. To make sure everything is clear, any changes to assets we have made this week will be listed below, and the usual headings will not be used to categorise what everyone has done, as we are all now working on putting everything into the game. I am very pleased with the current outcome of the game, and seeing everything come together was very satisfying. This also helped us see the game as a whole for the first time, and has allowed the team to make tweaks to certain parts that we would not have previously seen. After everything was imported, Tom and myself finished the point/score system for the game, ready to be included in the build for E3/Stage 4.

 

Changes

-splash menu sound

Audio Player

Charlies sound – Fire101 used for main menu, replaces henrys from week 1

Audio Player

Henrys main menu moved to credit music

Henrys low sounds replacing charlies

Audio Player Audio Player

 

-delayed leaderboard to after LA

 

Week 8 Production Schedule

 

 

 

Individual Blogs

To make things easier to follow, I have copied my blog posts into this page. I will also be linking each week to the original blog post, but please note each week will read the exact same on this page compared to the posts.

 

Week 1 , 19-23rd March

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.

 

Week 2, 26th – 30th March

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”.

Object pooling is a system which can be implemented into a game to optimise it and avoid unnecessary lag and/or ram usage.

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.

 

Week 3, 2nd – 6th April

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.

 

Week 4, 9th – 13th April

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:

 

Week 5, 16th – 20th April

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.

 

Week 6, 23rd – 27th April

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.

 

Week 7, 30th April – 4th May

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.

 

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:

 

Individual Content

For my individual content I worked with Tom to write the code for the game in the game engine called Unity. All of the code written is shown above and I have explained parts within each individual blog.