Sprint #7

Task: Figure out collision categories and make lights bigger

My first task was to figure out collision categories so that shadows will only collide with shadows and real-world things will only collide with real-world things.  This can be accomplished by assigning the fixtures of the shadows to a certain category (I chose 2) and everything else to another (I chose 1).  Then you just say that Cat2's only collide with Cat2's and so on.  My other task was to make the light bigger which was mostly making the texture bigger and making sure the collision code matched up.

This picture shows the bigger light and that even though the shadows on the boxes have fixtures the character is not colliding with them.

Sprint #6

Task: Come up with alpha level incorporating features so far/ that should be finished.


So I came up with some drawings of what the first level can be.  I haven't implemented it yet because 1) some of the features aren't done completely or I don't know how best to use them 2) I want to approve it with my team so that everyone is happy with the outcome.

Here are the drawings:

Sprint #5

Task: Figure out how to fake the shadows effectively, or a way to do them dynamically


Ok this has been super hard.  I've been going over tutorials that I found online and trying to see if I cvould modify them to fit our game.  The problem can be seen in this picture:

As you can see the shadows are highly distorted and don't really work in our game in that they no longer retain their shape in shadow form.  So I found this other shadow tutorial http://www.riemers.net/eng/Tutorials/XNA/Csharp/Series3/Pixel_shader.php which is in 3D but we might be able to port it to 2D.  Garrett is also helping me with this and he has an idea using translation matrices which seems to work somewhat effectively.  Here are some things that we might be able to improve on Garrett's in order to make it work:

1) When the player is vertically aligned with the light, the shadow completely disappears which I don't think should happen.  I think it might be rotating at some point which causes the problem.
2) Make it so the translation isn't too far away, right now it seems to be going further than it needs to.
3) We some how need to let the shadow know not to go through the ground as show below.

Sprint #4

Task: Help Garrett with converting the pixel units to sim units throughout the game.

To do this I helped Garrett to solve problems with the camera when the units were converted.  I think that was the biggest problem.  Now the player can move!

Sprint #3

Tasks: Make the collisions with the blocks actually be on the blocks.  Put lights in game and make trigger so know when player is in the light.

So the collisions were fixed in class thanks to Garrett and Rielly.  I added a lot to the project this week.
Here's what I did (short and concise so easy to read):

• Added light from prototype and made it so the actual lantern could be collided with but the light part was just a trigger.
• Put in the first art of the player and made a mock shadow.
• Made it so when player is in light shadow appears and player can go into shadow mode
• Once player is out of light, shadow disappears and can no longer go into shadow.

Here are some pictures:

Player in light with shadow

Player in shadow mode

Player out of light and no longer has shadow

Sprint #2

New Objective: Help Taylor with what ever he needs for the Level Editor.  The Level Editor is when of the most important parts of our game so we need to get it done!

So while I was doing this I found a big problem and that was that collisions are not working correctly.  For some reason the collision boxes are completely off from where the sprite is.  I worked all weekend on this, and am only slightly to a solution.  Still trying though!

See some collisions are working but they don't work in general

Sprint #1

For this sprint I was in charge of:

General Environment/World which entailed Basic World that adheres to the laws of physics.


I didn't know how much to do with this but I made a block class that can be used to as building blocks for a level.  They are bodies in the FarSeer engine so hopefully they have physics to them.  Here is a picture of the level I made.

Note: I do not know what the symbols on the blocks are.  I just searched for one on
the internet and this is what it came up with.

It doesn't look like much, but it should be enough that people can test basic mechanics.  In fact, I have to put in something that represents the player to test everything still.  If I have time I will also implement a death zone which could either be implicit   (falling off screen) or just making some sort of trigger.  A good future sprint for this would be implementing the rope across the gap.

2D Dynamic Shadow casting

So I looked up some XNA Dynamic Shadow Casting and this is what I found:

I first found this blog
http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/34665.aspx

which based his code off of this blog:
http://www.catalinzima.com/2010/07/my-technique-for-the-shader-based-dynamic-2d-shadows/

but the first blog is trying to optimize the second one.  This person (I don't know if it's a boy or a girl) also went off of this article:
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/dynamic-2d-soft-shadows-r2032

Just in case we want to get something going for the next sprint here is just some shadow advice:
http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/154/Drawing-2D-Shadows-in-XNA.aspx

One more:
http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/74436/453356.aspx

Oh heres my search:
http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=dynamic+shadows#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=dynamic+shadows+XNA+2D&pbx=1&oq=dynamic+shadows+XNA+2D&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2537l3459l0l3698l3l3l0l0l0l0l418l826l4-2l2l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=a7d5b7030ebfa2c5&biw=2304&bih=1174

Week #7

Listened to the EA Recruiter on Tuesday.  Set up a Google calendar for the group to show free times for everyone.

Week #6

Got game ready for pitch:
Worked on prototype (got a squirrel and squirrel mechanic and use card mechanic)
made powerpoint better

Got put on Shadow Thief and did an interview for the marketing guy

Week #5

We are getting everything done for the practice pitch.  I worked on getting the card inventory working for both players.  Made the slideshow for pitch.  Worked with John on how to set up board.  Made it so both players move with d-pad.

Week #4

This week was mostly geared toward deciding exactly what we are going to for the prototype.  We decided to do:

1) Top-down game board view to show the basic mechanics of whats going on.  We will show the idea of how players will plan paths and get items. (Possibly having some basic fight play and how to find weapon).
2) Have different aspects of Tom's art in the prototype as well as just having slides of ideas.
.
I put these ideas on our wiki as well.

Here are some ideas we came up with while playing this week.

Tunnel

-          Two “dice” rolled, must beat tunnel roll in order to get through the tunnel.  Player must beat tunnel in order to get through. (Carnival)

Areas.  Each area of the board will have a theme to it:

           

CARNIVAL		INDUSTRIAL
	KINGDOM
FLYING MACHINE		SHERLOCK HOLMES

Things I read that might be useful

1) In Game Class:
   
     Properties

• ClientBounds -> returns the dimensions of the window or screen.
• IsActive -> Indicates whether the game is currently the active application.
• IsFixedTimeStep -> Gets or sets a value indicating whether to use fixed time steps.
• TargetElapsedTime -> Gets or sets the target time between calls to Update when IsFixedTimeStep is true
• IsMouseVisible -> Gets or sets a value indicating whether to mouse cursor should be visible

2) Game1 resolutions

//set the desired resolutions

Vector2 screen = new Vector2(640, 480);

if (Use720HD)

screen = new Vector2(1280, 720);

graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = (int)screen.X;

graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = (int)screen.Y;

graphics.ApplyChanges();

//usable TV resolution is about 90 %

int bx = (int)(screen.X * 0.05);

int by = (int)(screen.Y * 0.05);

workBounds = new Rectangle(bx, by,

(int)screen.X - bx, (int)screen.Y - by);


3) To convert angles in degrees to radians, use the MathHelper.ToRadians method.


4) Layers: value between 0.0f and 1.0f with 1.0f  "on top" and 0.0f is "on bottom".


5) Origin parameter: the point around which the rotation occurs. (i.e. for center would be new Vector2(texture.Width/2, texture.Height/2))

Week #3 The work begins!

We have started setting up stuff for "King of Steam." We worked on basic ideas and layouts which can be seen in John's blog at thecrushinator.blogspot.com.  We also created a wiki https://kingofsteam.wikidot.com/ but it is view private so if you want to view it let us know.  We also set up a SVN repository.  I will be working on getting used to XNA again and updates will become available!

Week #2: Game Pitches!

Here is the game pitch for my game!

KING OF THE STEAM

By

Sarah Ripley

A turn-based search for the ultimate steam-punk weapon to defeat your opponents at the top of the city!

Basic Idea:

• 
  This game is somewhat formatted as a board game. But don’t let this turn you off!

• Players choose their character who start out with their own simple weapon.

• Players take turns rolling dice (or some similar mechanic) to determine how many spaces they can move.

• A player can choose the paths they want to go on to get to the certain squares on the board (described below).

• Be careful! Cross the path of another player and a fight will ensue where the victor gets their opponents supplies.

Ultimate goal:

• Collect a useful weapon and all the gear you need while still trying to get to the end of the board before the other players.

• The first player to reach the top can set up defenses in preparation for the other players.

• Once all players reach the top the ultimate fight happens to determine who will win the game!

Spaces:

• collect items that help/ repair weapons (oil, etc.)
• objects that will help with defense at top (gates, landmines, etc.)
• go back a certain amount of spaces
• take away weapon (can be fight against AI to determine)
• chance to search for a weapon (have to choose a random box and hope there's a good weapon in it)
  
  

I didn't put this information in my game design doc, but I had more ideas!:

Weapons:

Good weapons:

• machine gun
• poison dispenser
• pistol
• dog attack
• sword

Not so good weapons:

• handkerchief dispenser
• top-hat tipper
• pet bird
• butter knife

Inspiration

One of my teachers from high school put this on Facebook.  When I saw it it made me even more excited for this class and this year! So I thought I'd share it.