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