Week #2.6

This week was mostly about making design decisions.  The biggest decision we made was to have toon shading on the art instead of gradients.  There was a great back and forth with this and it was crazy.  Here is an example that Leif made that helped me make the decision:

We also made various decisions about the level.  Here are the notes from our meeting:

10 min levels?
- optimizing in code
- Taylor will build level to determine limits
- sleep things that aren’t on screen

Texture switching based on level
making real world objects transparent/disappear when in shadow mode
Garrett working on making level look like paper

Farm level - tutorial
- Drew needs to make background loopable

Village
- cherry blossom

Mountain
- cave

city
- random peoples houses

Palace
- vertical level

SAME SIZE!!!!
Pushing object
backgrounds
circular light
directional light
platform indicator
shadow monsters/ guards

Week #2.5

This week I was full force designer.  My main thing I did this week was take a level that Leif drew and organize it into art that the programmers could use.  Here are the drawings I did to show my ideas:

Here's what I requested from the artists:

Things that need to be made for level:

*These are the things that are most important to be made for the level on Tuesday*

1. Towers – (bottom of second page) For the towers I specified how tall each level of the tower needs to be (it's an approximation you can make slightly higher if need be. NOTE: not drawn to scale). I had to change that puzzle a bit because I'm not sure if we can do everything on Leif's drawing. So look at the art and let me know if you have any questions. Also, if we can have the middle part of the first tower be more faded (indicating you can jump across to platforms on other side). Then on the second tower have the middle part stand out indicating that player can't walk through.
2. Tall grass – background indicating what shadow is cast on
3. ground block – (used throughout level) for player to walk on the top of (whatever makes sense)

4. special water block – (first page of drawing) water where player needs to use fishing pole to jump across. Needs to be at least 550 pixels across so player can't just jump across. I will include example of water I found that might be cool.

5. Regular water block – (top right corner of first page) blocks we can use to show the flowing of the river

6. fishing pole – (first page of drawing right before the water) at least 250 pixels width-wise

7. Water wheel and flat building – (first page) stand alone water wheel with 250 pixels between each paddle. Building with flat roof.
8. Boat – (second page) big boat that guard walks on.

These items are in order of importance. So if you feel like you don't have enough time please get as much of the top items done before Monday night.

Sprint #2.4

This week I mostly tried to get everything organized design-wise.  The decisions we made are as follows:

1) We need at least 2 themed levels at least drawn out for the professional showcase day.
     - Leif drew out the farm level
     - Alice drew out the city level

2) Collectible hierarchy
    - Shooting for a collectible hierarchy of: statues, paintings, calligraphy, coins (in order from more points -> less)
    - higher point items will be harder to get
    - need to have at least statues and coins

I also helped fix collision categories again because we found a special case we needed.

Sprint #2.3

This week I reorganized all our collision groups so they are more coherent and understandable.  The collision groups are now:

public static Category PhysicalCollisionCategory = Category.Cat1;

public static Category ShadowCollisionCategory = Category.Cat2;

 public static Category GroundCollisionCategory = Category.Cat3;

I had a problem with defining the collideswith on the player and so it took awhile to get everything organized.  Also, I made a directional light for the game.  I didn't have any art for it so I had to improvise, as shown below.

While I was looking up how to do the vertices for the light I came across an algorithm that will calculate a fixture based off of a texture.  I don't know if we'll be able to use it but it sure looks cool.

Sprint #2.2

We didn't actually have anything assigned for this sprint, but I ended up making the level for testing with the Masters students.  This took me a good amount of time.  Mostly I revamped our alpha level to make it more fun and coherent.  It also involved:

• working around the level editor problems that had not yet been resolved
• changing art work so jumps matched up
• changing the "weight" of the barrel
• other little bugs that stood in the way

Here are some pictures from the level:

Sprint #2.1

So this is the very beginning of the semester.  Last semester went pretty good, but I think we really need to kick it into gear this semester.  I was able to do a few things over the break.  The first thing I did was organize the files in our Visual Studio project.  This included code and art.  The only thing I didn't organize was the level editor project because I was too afraid I would mess something up, but maybe we can do that later.  Here is a picture of our newly organize files (Note: I also cleaned up code and commented as much as I could):

The other thing I did was come up with some level ideas.  I didn't come up with a level but I drew out some puzzles.  Here they are:

The above puzzle has the basic logistics of the puzzle written on the paper. Things to take in consideration

1. This may be too easy.  We can make it harder by using the same idea but with multiple platforms.
2. Having "omnishadows"- shadows with ambient light - haven't done those yet. 

The above puzzle I did not write out how to solve the puzzle.  Here are the instructions:

1. Player jumps on the lowest shadow platform and then to the platform to the right of it.  Then they jump up to the upper R switch and switch it so the light travels to the top of R path.
2. Player jumps to platform by P switch and switches it.
3. Player must jump on shadows cast by light traveling along P path.  If they are too slow or don't jump right they must go back to beginning.

Some problems we might encounter:

1. Timing of moving light jumps and height of the platforms casting shadow.  Want to make sure the player can actually get across while still in light.
2. I made the guard have a lantern so that the player can go into shadow and sneak past.  Not something we have talked about before so need to see about that.

I also had one more idea for a puzzle, but didn't draw it.  It's more of a cool aesthetic than a puzzle.  It involves having a whole bunch of platforms casting shadows.  Sometimes you use shadow mode to go to the next platform or just regular mode.  There will also be various paths so the player can get collectibles or avoid enemies.  The reason that I did not draw this out is because I didn't know how the shadows would work with a big overhead light so we will have to try that out.

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.