Somewhat Close to Completion

Things seem to be progressing nicely going into the last few weeks, and we now have the game done to a reasonably complete standard. It is playable, but still missing a fair portion of the modes and stuff. The majority of the functionality of the UI is now completed, but there is still quite a bit to do in order to make it more flashy, and I think most of the current screens will change the way they look considerably by the time we reach the final product. Hopefully we'll have enough time to finish all of that, though I think a lot of that will be Jordan's work since he is the one with by far the most art experience from what I can tell.

The Options menu is basically complete, just requiring an upgrade in the textures and how it looks. I think Jordan will do the providing of the art and stuff, I might be responsible for some minor adjustments like maybe a border or something. I'm hoping I can contribute to story mode somehow since that is one semi-major thing we need to do. I can hopefully also give ideas about balancing the game, though I am sure we will all have input on that.

Our demonstration with Luke went as planned which was good, hopefully our external testing next week will go just as well.

New Documentation and Options Screen stuff

This week our group is presenting what we've accomplished to our supervisor (Luke), although he basically already knows since he has been paying attention to what we've been doing both on our blogs and in our weekly meetings with him. Nevertheless, we hope to have some new stuff to show off to him on Thursday.


I myself have been doing some work on updating the UI section of the technical documentation and am working on implementing the interface and functionality of the options screen. I also plan to make some modifications to some various screens based on the updates to the technical documentation and get a few screens up to date with our goals. There had been some various changes in the functionality of certain screens, so I was able to correct that in the documentation.

We seem to be making solid progress going into the last six weeks, so hopefully we will have a polished game by the end of session!

New Main Menu Screen and upcoming stuff

Today I did a redesign of the Main Menu screen to make it look quite similar to how it will look when the final game is done, minus art. Descriptive text for the currently selected button is displayed at the bottom of the screen, and the buttons were repositioned to where they will be located in the final version of our game.

Tomorrow I am planning to make the Character Selection screen work for Story Mode and get the File Select Screen "working" for the AI training mode. Additionally there will be a group meeting tomorrow since we didn't get around to our meeting agenda during the work meeting today.

New Screens Updates

I have begun to work on the UI a bit more during the past few days, and the work amount is only expected to increase once I get assignments from other subjects out of the way. The progress I have made is that I have started to tune up the Character Select Screen and the Title Screen. Soon the Character Select Screen will be very close to its final design, lacking only the final art and containing all necessary functionality.

The main functionality that needs adding to the Character Select Screen is the ability to load an AI to face, and I will need to think carefully about whether having a single class or multiple classes is the best option for the character select screens of different modes, considering that the screens for other modes will have different options to the Quick Fight mode.

The game is progressing along nicely, with Ryan and Vince making a lot of headway on the fighting engine, and Jordan working a lot on the modeler and making sure we are on track. Things are shaping up quite well, though we are a little behind at the moment.

Tuesday W4 Work Meeting

Today, I worked on new screens (the title screen and post match screen), as well as the credits screen. The screens are fully navigable but are not complete yet since they are still pretty plain. Hopefully in the next week or so the screens will go through dramatic aesthetic improvements.


We also had our weekly work meeting where we checked out all of the work that each of us has done during the past week, and reviewed the project plan and our blogs. Some of the major improvements are that the quick fight battles can now be controlled separately, and Jordan's modeller is coming along very nicely.

More work to come soon!

Update

It has been a while since I have posted, but meetings have continued and progress is being made on the fighting engine and Jordan's modeller. I have been tasked with the job of fixing up and implementing the menu interfaces of the game, and I am also paying attention to the way the fighting engine works and how it is being implemented.

Now that I am taking CSCI356, I will be gaining valuable experience in XNA that I previously didn't have, which should enable me to become a much stronger asset on our team. This is great, since I have felt as though I haven't been able to contribute as much as I would have liked.

In the coming weeks, I plan to make significant improvements to the currently lackluster menus, to make them as close as possible to what we have planned for them to look like when the project is complete.

Post-Exam Meeting

We held our first meeting in several weeks a few days ago. We talked about our availability for the rest of the holidays and what we should be doing during them. I chose to continue working on the menus and interfaces to make sure they look as close to what they are supposed to look like as possible. We are going to keep in touch via email and IMs. I have had a semi-busy couple of days but should be able to get my assigned work done sometime soon.

If everything goes to plan, we should be on track according to our schedule.