Eleventh Week Semester 2

There isn't a ton to really say for this week, like I mentioned in the last blog but I thought I would just put something in anyway. Had to grind out the essay submission all of last week to get that in good enough. I actually quite enjoyed researching the different areas for my essay so hopefully that one comes back with a pass. Haven't  had much of a chance to do anything for the group project, been starting the grind on Flash which goes in at the end of this week. After that goes in though it will be the last bit of work before we submit this modules work. It shouldn't be anything too major though, just packaging everything up properly and submitting our project proposals on the crowd funding sites. I'll post up one last blog next week just before we hand everything in to properly go through what we got done, along with some final thoughts.

Tenth Week Semester 2

Went in to see Dr. John again this week but had to make it a short talk. Just pretty much went over how things were going with the project, letting him know we were on schedule with the project and should  be able to get a number of things on our disk for submission in a couple of weeks. We had put up some stuff on one of the crowd funding sites, to get the ball rolling and see exactly what they were like. It was pretty easy to understand and set up, we didn't publish it since we need to put up some screenshots and videos for the game. At this point we are hoping to have the finished game, design document, project proposal, crowd funding proposals, these blogs, end report, screen & vidcaps, game graphics to be on the disk for submission. If we are able to, maybe put on some extra things if we think of any. Really just to try put as much as we can think of and get finished in for submission.

The next couple of weeks are the hand in's for the other two modules so we probably won't be able to do a ton of work for this module until after the hand in for advanced flash production which is at the end of next week. After that we will come back to this and just tidy and finishing everything off and make ready for the submission when we next go into see Dr. John. I'm personally a bit unhappy with how the actual game has come along, I tried to learn some C# but definitely didn't take to it well enough and have had to rely heavily on tutorials to get working functionality. I'll let Dr. John know when we hand it in, but I think our documentation could be enough to get a pass. I've had to spend quite a bit of time using Flash lately and looking back on it, the project would of been much better if I had my experience using Flash earlier. I found Flash easier to understand and it would of helped me get into C#. Don't really know why but it felt much longer than it did from doing code in second year to coding the projects this semester and I've found it quite tough. Hopefully all goes well though.

Ninth Week Semester 2

This week we had a productive meeting with Dr. John. We talked about the actual submission for the module and some points in that which had changed. The biggest change was the removal of a formal presentation of the project and instead a proposal on a crowd funding site. My initial thoughts were positive, since I was very much not looking forward to a presentation of our project so this suited much better. I hadn't heard of these sites before but after Dr.John explained it to us it wasn't anything worse than I presumed. They are basically sites were people put up projects that require funding. Most of the sites have tools to propose a project nicely by including screenshots or videos and often including offering benefits to contributors. To me it definitely sounded like a good way for going about getting money for a project. Though in our case, we would definitely not be looking to actually get any funding from these kinds of sites since we have no plans of continuing with this project or any game related projects for at least a year or so. We were to include a couple of crowd funding proposals as part of our final submission, so we would look to make them up in the next couple of weeks. To ensure the unexpected doesn't happen we will set up our crowd funding projects fairly late on in the module and as soon as we get word on our marks we will remove the project proposals from the site to make sure nothing bad happens with people giving us money we don't plan to use.

Other than that we just went over a couple of other bits and pieces, we were really just advised to try work on as many different things that we could include in our final submission. So we will try think of as much as possible between the two of us. Our game is definitely quite weak, but we hope that we can make a good effort on the documentation side of things and be able to pass.

Eighth Week Semester 2

After talking to Dr.John last week and moving the group formally to a two man team, me and Scott talked about reorganizing ourselves for the last few weeks. It was definitely better suited that we worked as a group of two, since as mentioned before it was just myself coding (weakly at that.) the project. We talked a bit about the different bits and pieces we could throw together for our documentation, based off of how much of the game was finished at this point. It was mostly finished, it was quite simplistic but considering our time frame and the weak coding ability between the two of us it was pretty much as far along as it would really be getting. We should be going in again next week to see Dr. John so we can go over the different things we need to get done for submission then.

Seventh week Semester 2

Over the last week we were able to get in touch with Dr.John who was back from being ill. We agreed a day to go in and see him regarding our group project which was good since it had been a while since we had been in after the lectures finished for the essay class on Mondays. The first thing we talked about was about our overall group scenario, since we hadn't seen him in a while and there was some strange information we were made aware of. We told Dr.John what had been happening with, that we had made a good start on the project but hadn't heard from our other member Max in a number of weeks. He then let us know that he had actually received a design document for our game at some point. We let him know that we had never seen or been sent anything of the sort. We talked about a bunch of the options for the group, Dr.John suggested letting us use the design document he had produced and continuing separately. Me and Scott thought it would be better for us to just continue as a group of two and we would just make our own documentation. Scott would do the bulk of the documentation and we would split some of the asset creation that was still needed for the game. Personally I felt that since it was just me doing the coding for the game, and considering I'm really weak at it, that two people doing documentation and such for a game being worked on by just me was too many anyway. So myself and Scott will sort out what we should be doing for the last half of the semester.

Sixth week Semester 2

Been making a bit of progress in some areas and none in some others this past week. Got a bunch of assets to use for the game, things like different enemies and some UI components that we can put in. Also been working a bit on getting in different enemies, including some mini boss style ones that will have a health bar attached to them. I got the health bar functionality working in a separate program and will try to incorporate it into the games functionality soon. Haven't heard from Max and at this point things would be simpler if myself and Scott just worked on the project ourselves anyway. The scale of the project would be better suited to a two man team anyway since it is only myself doing the coding for the game. We have just kind of been making the game up as we go along and will probably continue in this style a bit longer but it would be good to get some draft design document stuff done just so we have some more to show for. Haven't been in to talk to Dr. John in a while either but I think he is sick at the moment, but when he gets better myself and Scott will go see him about splitting into a two. I suppose thins are kind of on track, if slightly behind but the sooner we get the group issue sorted then the faster we can get it finished. If it goes to plan and we do just split off into a group of two then we can just churn out a bunch of design stuff to fill out the project and then just add as much as possible into the program. At this point we're both just looking at this as the home straight to finishing University and we don't want any slip ups.

Fifth week Semester 2

Like I wrote at the end of last weeks blog this week was mainly focusing down a submission for a different module. Did spend a little bit of time on a tutorial I had been working on the previous week. Got about half way through the tutorial now and unfortunately hit a wall against an error I can't debug. Spent some time trying to sort it out but couldn't, so I decided to leave it til after this other submission finished. If I still can't sort it then I'll move onto something else and reference the parts I did get to work. Probably move onto one of the tutorials from Scotts College. Got the hand in sent away so I'll be starting the tutorial soon. Haven't heard from Max in a bit and we need to get the design fleshed out a good deal since I want to have a design document produced for submission as well as a couple of other bits and pieces like test logs. Possibly even a technical document. Some sort of storyboards and other similar things need to get done as well so sorting that out is pretty important as we reach the half way point of the module. I'll end this here since there really isn't too much more to say and I'll update again sometime next week.