Fourth week Semester 2

Not a ton to report in this past week, mostly just working on a couple of C# XNA tutorials to prepare for the project. I've not used C# before but did use C++ visual studio for the first two years of uni so the similar interface is making the transition easier which is a plus. The previous C++ and Java experience is definitely helping a lot since C# feels like a bit of a cross roads between the two. So far I feel this was definitely the best idea for starting over this semester. Unity went badly last semester and I don't think it would of ended much differently this time round either. Found quite a few different tutorials for a bunch of different game types in C#. I think there had recently been an update to XNA C# since a bunch of sites have had to update their tutorials. From what I gather though it isn't a huge update and the bulk of code in an older tutorial would still be useful. The main tutorial I'm working on just now is for an asteroids style game which I think is a good place to start since it has a few of the fundamental things we would look to do. I did an asteroids game in Java SE about a year ago so it's familiar territory and really just feeling out some differences in C#. I haven't looked into purchasing a book for C# but the level of the tutorials is quite good thus far so I might not need to get one. On top of the online tutorials there is the C# tutorials from Scotts College course which cover a bunch of different game types and he recommends. Though I think they are from the older version of C# so might need converted to the new version. We didn't have a meet up this week since there was no lecture on the Monday so we'll need to get in contact with Max sooner rather than later. The game design needs a lot of fleshing out as well still. Got a hand in for next week for a different module so will probably focus that down next week and pick this back up after that.

Third week Semester 2

Following on from the previous week, we mostly went away to have a think about what the design of our game was actually going to be. I have always been pretty impartial to what the game designs for projects have been since I normally do coding and have always been happy with what is suggested. The previous semesters game plan was to develop a platformer so we discussed sticking with a platformer and we all agreed we would be happy to make one but thought we should at least explore some of our other options. Whilst thinking about what game to make during the week I talked a bit to my brother about what type of game we definitely did not want to do. The one that we definitely didn't want to do was a fighting game, since we had previously attempted one in a previous project and found it to be quite a difficult style of game to implement that wouldn't be realistic in our time frame. Also making a fighting game would need a lot of sprites which nobody in the group excels at so that would make things much harder as well. Other than a fighting game the only other type of game I would prefer not to make was an FPS since I've never looked into making one before and would prefer to do it on something were I'll have a bit of a background on.

During the next meeting we shared our thoughts on the game design and I basically made the points I previously explained about not developing a fighting or FPS game. Both the other guys were fine with that and agreed we wouldn't do those two. Much like the previous week, the general consensus was that nobody was very opinionated about what we should make more that we just agreed we needed to do something. Scott suggested working on a top down bullet hell game which appealed to all of us, it was something a little different and myself and Max hadn't thought of that. After a bit of discussion we decided that though it was an interesting idea, nobody really had any idea how to go about making the complicated patterns and sprite management that would be required. So we worked it back a little to what we could handle and agreed that a top down wave defense style space shooter would be doable. Since we weren't considering anything else and agreed we should just get started on something we agreed to work on this idea as the game project. We didn't really set any specific goals for the following week, I said I would look into C# tutorials and maybe look for some that would help us with some of the techniques we would need to implement for our game.

Second week Semester 2

This week we had a group meeting after the lecture to primarily decide on what platform we where going to develop our project on for this semester. Max said since myself and Scott would be doing the bulk of the coding for the project that the platform was mostly up to us and he was easy on what we would pick. Over the last few days we looked mostly into C# XNA studio for our development environment. It checked a lot of boxes for us and came out as the strongest candidate. It was fairly familiar to Scott, who has previous projects and a bunch of resources from College that we could use to start from. I personally thought it looked ideal and fairly similar to C++ so I will hopefully get to grips with it to some degree fairly quickly. As for the other possible candidates I personally don't like Java and am happy to not touch it again for some time. HTML5 and Android where the other two and even though I've heard quite a bit about them as being the up and coming platforms that would be worth while getting into. Myself and Scott are not looking to pursue a career in programming and having to put in more work to learn a completely new platform this late in the game is not something we want to do or see as being worth while. So C# comes as something fairly new but familiar enough that we won't have to spend a long time just learning how it works and instead just make the project on the fly.

Having decided on our platform we began to talk about what type of game we would actually develop for the project. Myself and Scott are of the position that neither of us are particularly bothered about what kind of game we make. Since we have only ever really done programming, and game design doesn't particularly interest us. So we let Max know that the game design was pretty much up to him, the only prerequisite being that it isn't something crazy ambitious considering our timescale. He didn't really jump to the chance for designing an entire game and he is also very easy going in terms of what we make. So I suppose our only real problem is that nobody is actually bothered about what we make. We talked about some very unspecific game ideas but never got anything really solid. So we agreed to come up with something each for the following week and would work on just getting familiar with C# XNA over the week.

First week Semester 2

After the Christmas break and starting back the second semester our group split into two due to the way things went in the previous weeks. Myself, Scott and Max are now in a three man group which at this point hasn't been named and are going to work on a fresh project this semester. We had a brief catchup with Max and had a conversation with Dr John about the plans for this semester. After briefly talking about the problems from the last semester we began discussing options for the project this semester. We agreed that the Unity platform that was promoted quite a lot the previous semester and was originally the target platform was not best suited for our time scale. As well as being a little bit to hands on for what we would realistically be looking to implement. We talked about some alternative platforms and development tools to use. A bunch of options were brought up and we were to have a think about what we would use for the following week. The main options being C# XNA, HTML5, Java SE/ME, or possibly something with Android. There were mixed incentives to use each, ranging from having experience in some (Java, and limited experience in C#) to up and coming platforms like HTML5 that could be useful to learn about. We talked a bit about each and decided we would look into each of them for the following week and then agree on which to use. As well as thinking up some ideas for exactly what to develop.

Personally I see C# being our best option. I personally have never used it but Scott used it for a few projects in college and recommended it. I remember seeing a few of the projects he and some of others in his class made and it looks ideal for what we could make in a semester. I did C++ for my first two years in University and Java the past two years so C# should be fairly in my comfort zone to some degree so I'm not to worried about using it as a coding language. Between myself and Scott I think we will have the code side of the project fairly well covered. Max is going to take more of a design role for the project but we will discuss this a bit more extensively over the next couple of weeks. For now it's just finding some ground to get started on.