Backlash

After this weeks presentation many things needed to be taking into consideration.The storyboard and level design documents need to have more consistency throughout the group.

So to try and get the team working towards a more consistent final product I've set up a simple template that I've requested them all to use when making any new storyboards.

A quick example is below:

Super simple but super effective (yes the pun was kind of intended).

Also another thing that I had to do this week was contact certain individuals in regards to their levels. There was a lack of consistency throughout the video game and because of this some ideas had to be dropped.

Now instead of taking the smart rout and sending a group email regarding the story board and then contacting individuals about their level, for what ever reason I decided to email everyone one by one about the storyboard and the level as well.

This has caused a terrible blacklash to myself as now it's taking much more longer to send this emails. Meaning less time to work on my own level and story board and also my other projects.

Mental note to myself. If there is something that is universal to the whole group send out a group email and then only contact the people that need to do the minor changes.

Currently listening to Feeder, Buck Rogers

Wrong Move

It is said in Chess to play well you need to predict what the next set of moves will be and make your own move accordingly. After 4 weeks at Southbank I felt that I was able to arrange my time efficiently and also predict what that move should be. I was wrong. I have learned that if you want a project (any project) to work, you can't take a break from it (even if it's only a day or two). I felt that I could get away with the idea that I don't have to focus on 2D Game designs and work on my other units. I thought that this was going to be a good move. It didn't work out as well as I hoped it would. This group work, no this University Course is my game of real life Chess, I made a bad move. A move that resulted with the group having around 3 days where things were happening but not to their fullest potential. I take this responsibly on myself and now know not make that wrong move again. But just like in Chess it is still possible to correct the mistake that was made as long as it didn't lead to a Check Mate .

http://www.simplyzesty.com/blogging/content-king/

Amongst other things that have happened this week there was also a possibility that a member of the group may have left uni. This member of the group was not at any classes and was also not responding to any group emails. After a little while of worrying for the worse, I contacted this member directly and have found out that they have been quite a lot of things that have been going on for their selves and that as soon as it was possible they will send me any group work that needed to be done.

Currently Listening to Analog Fish, Speed.

Project Update 18/10/10

Things done to date:

• Come up with group name (Team)
• Rearrange group (Team)
  
• Set up Group Gmail Address (Myself)
• Finalised game concept and concept story (Team)
  
• Wrote bare bones of a story (Writers)
• Team Members Chosen Level (Team)
• Basic Level Design Documents (Team)

Things to do:

• Liaise with team and team leads

Summary so far
Quite a few things have come to past since my last post based on the project. One example is that we now have a proper group name, Pixelated. We've decided as a group to go with the motto "We See Things Clearer". I've been trying to make sure that everyone feels good in the group and that no feels left out. As a producer I realise that I've got to not only make sure that the video game gets completed but that also no gets left behind. A much more harder task then it sounds. One the ways that I've done to improve the team dynamic is to let everyone have a say on the main aspects of the group and game. In the long run me and Vlad have final say on anything and we will exercise this if time is tight. But while there is some time available I don't see why the team shouldn't have a say in what happens to the team.
We've also acquired some new members to the group. Due to this a change needed to be done to all the roles. The new revise roles are now as follows:

Producer- Vladimir "Vlad" Sivc
Assistant Producer - Jakub "Koobs" Klitenik

Lead Artist- David Ly
Artist- Arkin Buhara
Artist- Craig Fitzgerald
Artist - Ed Wulf-Vanderpuije

Lead Animator- Arron Pommeroy
Animator- Liam Crossan-Maguire

Lead Sound- Gurpal "Grups" Bhogal
Sound- Helen Dunne
Sound- Samantha Stead

Writer- Reese Newton
Writer- Tim Moore

Designer- Ade Thompson
Designer- Anton Korubov

Programmer- Alexander Jones
Programmer- Carlos El-Kaadi

Due to there being so many of us I decided that we needed an easy way to keep in touch with each other. At first I made a Facebook group but this didn't fufill the needs that the everyone could contact each other. Some members in the group don't have Facebook. So it was back to the drawing board. Then I came up with the idea of making a group email address. I decided to go with Gmail. I already have my own personal one so I know how to the basics and also that means I can transfer my contacts that I have for the group into the new group email. Also by having a Gmail account the team can also have access to Google Documents. GDocs (as I will now refer to it) allows the uploading of different documents and is a great way for everyone to share files as well.

Currently Listening to Calvin Harris, I'm Not Alone

Keyboard Shortcuts Actionscript 3.0 , Flash

We all know that time is important so anything that is available to save time should be used and abused (unless it's a living thing, then you need to make sure that you treat it nicely).
Something that will save your self a lot of time in flash are Keyboard Short-cuts. Instead of going to the tool window to change the tool that you are using a single press of a key can do it for you.
Some of the most useful ones.

• V: The Selection Tool
• R: Rectangle Tool
• O: Oval Tool
• K: Paint Bucket Tool
• J: Object Drawing
• Ctrl + Enter: Render the scene

Over time I will extend this list. Also I when it will be possible I'll also attach a screen shot so it is easier to see what I am talking about.

Currently Listening to The Automatic, Steve McQueen

Important things to remember for Actionscript 3.0, Flash

Learned
How to use Actionscript 3.0 to animate a movieclip without the use of Tweening.

Key things to remember

• Spelling is super important. Just having one letter out of place can spell disaster (like what I did?) to any programming you do.
• When labelling anything use camelCase. Basically if you take and put words together the first word is has a lower case for the first letter while all the over words have a Capital letter for the first one. aBitLikeThis.
• Actionscript is added to a frame. To make life easy and to find the coding easily put it on it's own layer and lock the layer (remember the padlock symbol).
• When ending any line of coding in Actionscript (and most programming languages) use ";".
• To leave any comments in Actionscript use "//". Always, always, ALWAYS leave comments. Even if you do that line of code all the time. All it takes is a break of a couple of weeks and you'll forget what it meant. Also if you are doing group work another person may not know what you were doing.
• The co-ordinates in Flash are slightly different to what they are from Maths in secondary school. The X axis remains the same but the Y axis instead of going up, goes down.
• When you convert an item to a symbol take note of where the Registration is. That black square is consider the centre of the symbol. So if you where to rotate it, it would rotate around the black square is meant to be. Most of the time you will have it in the middle.

Now to understand Flash you need to be logical. If you're not then you may find it hard to do. But have no fear. Logic is easy to train. My personal preference for training is Sudoku. You don't need maths skills (well you need to be able to count from 1 to 10 so that's a little lie) and it's easy to learn.

Extra Points

• There is a super handy thing that Flash CS5 can do for you. Predictive coding. Just like Predictive Text on you're mobile phone Predictive coding tries to guess what property you are writing and also other things to. There is a slight catch however. You have to set it up first for it to work. It's easy to set up just type in the following line of code

[ var instanceName :MovieClip;]

• Whenever I'm typing any coding to make sure it sticks out from normal text I'll enclose it in []. These block heads are not part of the coding. Also anything in italic is a name that will depends on what you as the programer will chose. Once I have Flash and can take screen shots it will be easier to understand what I'm doing.
• Many people would say that it's not worth the effort to do the above coding just to get a little bit of Predictive Coding but one VERY important factor that it does cover is spelling. As mentioned eariler one single spelling mistake can cause a mass of issues for yourself. So play it safe and do the above line of code in any bit of programing you do.

Currently Listening to Marron 5, Not Falling Apart

Project Update 29/10/2010

So time for my first Project Post. As I stated in earlier posts there isn't a set format yet, but that may change the more I do as there might be a regular pattern that starts to show up. But in the mean time, it's all done freestyle.

Things done to date

• Arrange team and assigned roles. Full list below (Team)
• Made temporary Time Line with most important dates filled in. To see go here (Myself)

Things to do

• Come up with a group name. I just don't feel that Group Z is good enough.
• Come up with a Game Concept.
• Meet with whole group and set clear expectations.

Summary so far
For our final product we need to make something that is based around the game Flowers Vs Zombies. Please note how I said BASED ON. While I do believe we will get a pass for a clone of FVsZ (Short hand for Flowers Vs Zombies from now on) we will lose marks for originality.
FvsZ is a Tower Defence game where you need to protect your house from a onslaught of Zombies. The weapons at your disposal for different types of plants ranging from the Pea Shooter (fires a pea in a straight line at the on coming Zombie and has a strong resemblance to Bellsprout) to Wall-Nuts that slow down the oncoming assault. The way that plants are deployed is by "Planting" them on your front lawn using a grid system. The picture below demonstrate how the grid system works.

Picture from http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/05/plants-vs-zombies/

Some games that follow the same concept as PvsZ are as follows:
Space Invaders. You control a space ship that is trying to stop aliens from reaching earth (or in case of the game the bottom of the screen).

Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Many people are probably going "WTF" at the moment but take a moment to think about it for a second. The overall aim of both of these games is to preform to a crowd. You achieve this by playing "Notes" that come down the screen. Miss a "Note" and the crowd become unhappy but if you hit one then the crowd becomes happy. Just think of the "Notes" as the Zombies and it should start making more sense.

Frogger. Again I can visualise a lot of people with very confused looks. One concept of PvsZ is to prevent the Zombies getting from one side to the other. Why can't that concept be turned on it's head and be made that the aim is to help them get to the other side. Frogger demonstrates this by getting the player to control frogs that need to cross a road and then a river, all of which have various obstacles and hazards.

Just thinking of these games alone should be enough to get a rough idea of a good game concept.

Also while writing this post I've arranged a meeting with the whole group tomorrow (30/09/10) hopefully we'll be able to get this boat a sailing.


Quick list of the team and roles are as follows.

Executive Producer- Vladimir Sivc
Assistant Producer Jakub "Kuba" Klitenik (That's me in case you didn't know)

Lead Artist- Arron Pommeroy
Artist - Ed Wulf-Vanderpuije
Artist- Arkin Buhara
Artist- Liam Crossan-Maguire
Artist- Craig Fitzgerald

Sound- Sam Stead
Sound- Helen Dunne

Writer- Reese Newton
Writer- Tim Moore

Designer- Anton Korubov

Programmer- carlos el-kaadi
Programmer- Alexander Jones

Currently Listening to Bloc Party, The Prayer (Hadouken! Remix)

Motion Tween, Flash

Learned
Basic Animation in Flash. How to use the Motion Tween.

Key Points to remember:

• Every sprite that is to be animated needs to have it's own layer.
• Layers work the same way as they do in Photoshop (the layer at the bottom will be behind the layer at the top).
• Key point in the animation are marked with "Key Frames". (Say there is a change in direction then a Key Frame will show where it happens)
• Any item that you would like to Tween needs to be a "Symbol". This is easily done by selecting the item and pressing the "F8" key.
• Label every thing. You can easily lose yourself amongst all the Key Frames, Layers and Sprites. Meaningful labels/names make life easier for you.

The Motion Tween feature is a very powerful tool in flash. You can use it not just to move Sprites, but also to change it size over time, rotate it on the spot, to fade in and out (like a ghost) or even a combination of all of these things.

How to do a Motion Tween:

• Select the item you want to Tween. It can be anything as long as it's a symbol (remember the key point above?)
• Now right click it and select "Create Motion Tween"
• Move the item to where you would like it to travel.
  
• If it worked then you should notice the following.

1. There should be Green Line on the screen that starts where the Item was and end where you placed the item.
2. On the time line you'll be at the frame number that is based on your frame rate (Normally 24fps)
3. Also in the frame you're in there should be a black diamond symbol (this for all extents and purposes is your Key Frame)

• Did it work? Good. Now to see your work in motion just press the "Enter" key. Or press the button combo of "Ctrl+Enter". The latter is more preferable as it will show you what your audience will see.

Extra Points

• To start a new Flash File, open Flash and then select "Actionscript 3.0". This will take you to a blank stage for you to tinkle with.
• When making Sprites make sure you draw it at the size it is intended to be used at. While you can draw one and then shrink it using the free-form tool it will still retain the original data size, which means longer processing time (not fun for any one). Remember you got the Zoom tool. Use it.
• If you're using a Mac you zoom in on any area on the screen (this applies to anything outside of flash to like Firefox). To do this just hover the Mouse over where you like to zoom to, then hold "Ctrl" and roll in using the roller ball on the mouse. This is handy to show people certain areas that are needed.
• Say you want to extend a layer so that it can be seen through out the whole animation but you don't want to tween it (e.g back ground). Well this is easily done by selecting the frame in the layer you would it to appear till and then press "F5". You should have a blank Rectangle appear.
• Just as "F5" adds a normal frame, "F6" adds an extra Key Frame. This is handy to add a little stop gap between an animation that has to processes going on. Let's give an example. You have a fish growing and moving across the screen. But when it reaches the middle you want it to stop growing but keep moving. But after it's past the middle it starts growing again. You'll need an extra Key Frame to handle that. (BTW the fish needed to stop growing to get past the bollards).
• There are 3 Symbols in the layers box that can become your best friends if you use them properly.

1. The eye. This makes that Layer invisible or visible.
2. The Padlock. This locks or locks the layer. Great to avoid unintended movement of Sprites.
3. The Coloured Box. Super Handy if you learn how to use it properly. When the box has colour in it everything in that layer has it proper fill colour. However when the box just has it's outline then all the items on the layer also only show their outlines. Useful if you want to move something in relation to a sprite on a higher layer. To change the outline colour you just need to double click on the Box.

And that's it for today's lesson. David also recommended to read "Animation With Scripting For Adobe Flash Professional CS5 Studio Techniques". Try and say that after a shot or two. It gives you great tips for Flash animation but remeber that we're on a games design course, so if your money is tight or you not to interested in animation you might want to think about it.
Oh and if you are looking for it check out Amazon here. However when I was on there last they were sold out of first hand ones.

Currently Listening to Fall Out Boy, Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes