It's My Birthday And I'll Be Sea-ck If I Want To

What I Did 

With the combination of being sick as a dog and having to do birthday celebrations (including using my birthday as a decoy for someone else's surprise party) I was unable to do much this week. 

I did however come up with an idea, and run it by Jon involving how we can create the illusion of the battlefield being a floating island in the sky. He thought it could work and wants me to put a concept up on slack. (1.5 hour)

What I'm Going To Do

• Particles with Jon
• Concept for island in sky illusion idea
• Other tasks that will come up during the week

Particles....nope no pun...I'm Sea-rious

Accomplishments

Sniper Particles: 2 hours
Kamikaze Particles: 2 hours
Sniper Tower Particles: 1.5 hours
Kamikaze Tower Particles: 1.5 hours
Rush Tower Particles: 1.5 hours
Crippler Tower Particles: 1.5 hours
music and presentation dinner and chat: 1 hour

total: 11 hours

WIP

Presentation and the remainder of particles

Next Steps

work work, and practice.

Debrief

the particles are almost done and the new polyworld assets are getting their kinks worked out. The terrain and environment are still proving troublesome but enough of us are working on it that I'm not concerned.

Going in for the krill

Can we get a whale yeah?

We have one week left to wrap everything up for GDC! Things haven't changed much from the previous two posts (1)(2).We're making significant process on all fronts and we're going to keep plowing ahead! Our T-shirts came in so we'll be distributing those soon!

Whale Brains

Producing Things

• Follow up on Slack--early in the week (0.5)
• Planning tasks (0.5)
• Import animations (0.5)
• Environment models (2)
• Meeting about sound with Alex, Jonathan, and Kai-Lin (1)
• Environment concept (0.5)
• Meeting with Dylan to work on environment (2)
• Feedback on Slack and shader check for Ryan (0.5)
• In-game screen shots to view PolyWorld models (0.5)
• Model check--compare models to finalized orthos (1)

Total: 9

Proof of Progress

Master Asset List

Environment Concept

While I waited for Unity to download on my Macbook Air so I could work with Dylan in the labs, I looked up reference for what we could do with the environment. I asked for the opinion of some friends. Some of the comments were that the color was off and that the environment resembled Minecraft. We also found some sweet rock models inside the package we purchased so I wanted to do something with those. These were some of the images I discussed with Dylan.

I really enjoyed the rocks peeking up from the ground in this image. I also wanted to see how other games delivered the transition from brown to green.

Starcraft has fairly large maps and I know for sure that some of them are green. I wanted to see how they broke up the monotony and dealt with making elevated areas more visually interesting.

I don't remember what search term I used for this but I saw that they created some areas of interest to break up the green. I presented this to Dylan but we were concerned about what our lore actually was (haha).

So someone mentioned Minecraft. Most of the time, players would break up the monotony of the repeating grass cubes by creating elevation. I presented this idea with Dylan and asked if we could make certain areas of the map inaccessible because there were too many changes in elevation.

PolyWorld and Finalized Models

This weekend I needed to make a final check of the models in game. In addition to comparing the models to the finalized orthographics courtesy of Henderson, I needed to see which models had too many polys for PolyWorld to cool-ify. I derped out and won before I could take the screenshot... I also broke the game on the second try...

Augher, Kamikaze, and Crippler need to be reduced while Sniper and Tank are good to go.

Foreseeing the Future

More or less I'm going to be running around getting things done regarding assets, pushing people along, directing the marketing effort, working on the presentation while making sure we get to and come home from GDC safe and sound!

Final push before GDC

Accomplishments

• Edited the Rush unit animations (2 hrs)
• Edited animations and added death animation for Augher (7.5 hrs)
• Checked over animations for all units and jotted down errors that I found (1 hrs)
• Playblast every animation and post it in this post (.5 hrs)

Total hours: 11 hours

Works In Progress?

Making playblasts of the animations for that people can review. This will allow me to do a final edit of animations before Friday before we head to GDC.

Next Steps

• Work with Cory to get the animation timing right in game.
• Reimport new Superunit models to the rig and re-weightpaint them. Check if animations from the Units is able to transfer to the Superunits.

Animations

Since there are quite a few animations and I made a side, front and three quarter shot of each animation, it would probably not be the best for me to provide links of videos. Instead, I have made a zip file to download that includes all the animations. 

You can access it with this link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rxk0bcy5rgdmmyc/WhaleHouse_Animations.zip?dl=0

Things to Fix

• Still need to break down the timing for most idle animations for the units.
• There is a pop in the Kamikaze walk cycle that I didn't catch until tonight.  The timing of the walk is not correct in game as well
• Rush unit death is still not good enough. Need to break down the timing a bit more.
• Sniper walk cycle is still a bit inaccurate. The back leg has some timing issues
• Might need to put more weight in the Tank unit for its death cycle
• Augher animations probably need a lot of tweaks

Last Minute Comments

I'll keep it short, I'll be finalizing the animations for GDC by Friday.

Kai-Lin Chuang

WHALE ALMOST THERE.

GDC COMING SOON.

Finish Line

• GUI mockups (4 Hrs)
• GUI assets (4.5 hrs)
• Poster Image (2.5 Hrs)
• Total - 11 Hours

Progress

GUI Mockup:

• Draft 04
• Draft 05

GUI Assets:

• Dropbox

Poster image:

• Draft 02
• Draft 03

Battle Plan

• Work more on Logo and GUI
• Figure out particle effects for towers and units
• Knock out some new sketches for Angu (3rd Gygan)

Damage Control

• Cleaning up some small things for the GUI and Logo
• We won't be able to get the 3rd Gygan done in time for GDC but we'll try to get as much work done for it as possible.

tl;dr

Much work. Very GDC. Wow.

-Henderson

1 Week to Go!

The Rush set is finally complete (I think...). Now my attention is turned back to redesigning Kail and his line of minions, particle concepts, and working on the URBN Display. There's only 1 week left to GDC and my part for GDC isn't much at all now, but I'm doing what I can to support the rest of the team who still has work to do for it.

Accomplishments

• URBN Display (1.5 hour)
• Contacted Paper Chase
• Write up list of possible assets
• Working on the dimensions of the assets
• Looking over the Game Info Sheet Alex started
• Rush Super Unit (2 hours)
• Draft 11
• Ortho 01
• Brigade Unit (1 hour)
• Movement
• Kail (3 hours)
• Draft 06
• Draft 07
• Gatling (2 hours)
• Draft 01
• Draft 02
• Path Particle Concepts (3 hours)
• Concept 01
• Concept 02
• Concept 03

WIP Screenshot

• Concept Art WIP
• Rush 01
• Brigade 01
• Brigade 02
• Kail 01
• Kail 02
• Kail 03
• Gatling 01
• Gatling 02
• Gatling 03
• Particle 01
• Particle 02
• Particle 03

Next Steps

• Particle Concepts
• URBN Display
• Whale Website
• Kail, Gatling, & Brigade

Debrief

There's only 1 week left to go to GDC, so it's crunch time. I think we're moving along well and will be ready for what we wanted accomplish by GDC.

In the mean time, I'm mostly working on completing things for the end of winter term track as most of my responsibilities for GDC have been accomplished. My main priority though, is putting the URBN Display together and redesigning Kail's line. Besides that, I'm also working on particle concepts (which are really hard to draw and animate by hand in photoshop). That has turned out to be the most frustrating and challenging task I think I've had in a while for this project.

I think everything's coming together and most of the team is working really hard right now (most specifically Dylan!). Wish us luck!

Desiree Ann Lim

One week left...

The pressure is on at this point.  We've all been working really hard to get this game presentable for GDC.  Here's what I did over the last week.

What Got Done

• Rebuilt the main menu and lobby with new sprites that Henderson provided.

• I've been reworking the particles to fit more with the new art style.  Here's a few:

• I've also been experimenting with the environment and trying to find something that looks good.  Here's a screenshot of the map from Friday's build:

•  Here is a screenshot from the map that I was working on today.  The ground pieces are no longer placed on a strict 10 x 10 grid, and there are additional ground textures to smooth the transitions.  We also now have a set of prefabs that we will be decorating the map with, but that is not done yet. 

• Lots of bug fixes over the past week.  The Google Analytics data from playtesting on Friday showed no errors!
• I've been monitoring the profiler closely to see what the causes are of any slowdown and making adjustments accordingly.  I also optimized the mini-map and gygan cam to render a lot less.  A decent sized game on the map above is only about 200 draw calls.

What's Next

• Whatever needs to get done for GDC.

Total time:  47 hours

Learning 'bout dat TNet

This week was spent doing the usual. Design doc diagrams and Spectator mode. I worked with Dylan who showed me how to work with some TNet stuff and am just about "finished" with the SpectatorObject class.

Aaaaaand that's pretty much it.

What I've Done:

Building SpectatorObject class (3hrs)
Learning TNet (4hrs)
Design Doc diagrams (3hrs)

What I'm Doing:

Finishing Spectator class

More Design doc diagrams and words

Right in our Whale House

Things are rolling! In light of some new information, here are the different tracks we are currently working on.

• Gygan Reign, the game (short term) - With GDC only weeks away, we are polishing the game by completing remaining assets; iterating on animations; and putting some extra sweeteners on things that are already done!
• Gygan Reign, the game (long term) - We are still a part of the senior project sequence. While immediate tasks are waiting on feedback, there is plenty to work on for the end of Spring
• Gygan Reign, marketing (medium... term?) - GDC is an opportunity to really get people hyped about our game! Not only do we need to make sure we have the proper merch, protocols, etc. for GDC, the decisions should also benefit for afterwards.
• Gygan Reign, sounds (long term) - We're focusing on completing important sounds for GDC but the list encompasses long term
• Gygan Reign, the display in URBN (short term) - We have a display going up in the building that houses the College of Media Arts and Design. Desiree and Alex are taking the reins on this and making sure that we also make a positive impact on our peers
• Gygan Reign and Intel (short term) - While we work on the actual product, I (Anna) am coordinating with Intel to make sure the event runs smoothly

Building the Whale House

Producing Things

•  Check ins on Slack and follow ups (1.5)
• Import assets (2.5)
• Remodel, re-UV, and texture environment pieces (2.5)
• Task distribution (1)
• Music sources for Alex (0.5)
• Model Sniper Tower (1)
• Model Crippler Superunit (2.5)
• Model environment pieces (2.5)

Total: 14

Proof of Progress

• Link: Master Asset List 

 

Task Distribution

Sniper Tower

Crippler Superunit

Foreseeing the Future

Moving forward I will be helping Dylan with getting assets into the project and re-modeling assets as the come through. We're focusing on wrapping up the units, superunits, and towers for GDC while polishing the look and feel of our game. I'll be moving more towards overseeing the progress of the team shortly so that we are developing on our multiple tracks at a reasonable pace. At this point, most long-term planning has been halted and we're moving as issues come up or as needs arise.

Whale of a week

With only 2 weeks left to GDC we are all putting in a lot of extra effort so we can show something that we are proud of.

What Got Done

• Health bars.  We got rid of the NGUI health bars that were ugly and barely worked.  Now we have sweet radial health bars that form a ring around each unit/tower/base.  I'm also using something similar to show how long a tower has before it unearths.
• In game UI.  I converted the in game UI to uGUI and added the minimap and gygan cam features that we wanted.  Still got a few things left to do on this based on feedback later in the week.
• Networked some more stuff (like the player's camera) to help Cory with spectator mode.
• Earlier in the week we had planned to use a more cartoon art style.  I went through the process of converting our pipeline to support the new toon shader.  It looked ok but it still didn't solve the issues we were having with art direction.  This functionality was removed by the end of the week (although Friday's build still has it if you are interested).
• We decided to incorporate the use of the PolyWorld asset to help us with an art style.  I spent most of the weekend converting all of our existing assets to this style.  With this asset we don't have to make textures but all of the color information comes from image based lighting, so I've been experimenting with different cubemaps to see what works.  I just got some new environment models and here's what it looks like so far.

• I also spent a good amount of time reworking how we did mesh combining with MeshBaker to work with these new models.  Since they don't use any textures it was actually a bit of a challenge to get MeshBaker to even work with them.  We can now batch all of our skinned mesh renderers just like we had before.

What's Next

• Updating UI based on suggestions, maybe putting new sprites in.
• Adding new models as I get them from artists.
• Working with Jonathan on particles.

Total time:  51 hours

Tweaking and reanimating

Accomplishments

• Looked at bugs from Starship Troopers for animation references (1 hr)
• Reanimated the walk cycle for Kamikaze unit (4 hrs)
• Edited the self-destruct animation for Kamikaze unit (1 hr)
• Edited and tweaked animations for Sniper and Tank unit (1.5 hrs)
• Edited animations for Crippler (3.5 hrs)
• Put rigs onto the new Superunit Models and test if animations will work (Will work on it tonight as well, so I'll leave out the hours for now) 

Total hours: 11 hrs (for now)

Works In Progress?

Get Augher animations down

Next Steps

• Edit animations

Issues

• Animating a walk cycle for a bug is some tough stuff

Last Minute Comments

I've spent wayyyyy too much on the walk cycle for Kamikaze haha. I couldn't get the timing right and it would look very weird. But I managed somehow and I am satisfied with what I did for now. I didn't really get a chance to fix Augher animations. So I'll be focusing on that for the next week.

Kai-Lin Chuang

Poly-Whale

Accomplishments

New Particle direction research: 2 hours
Art Direction with Dylan: 1 hour
Particle work I eventually got rid of due to change: 3 hours
Tank Particles: 3 hours
Rush Particles: 2 hours
Crippler Particles: 2 hours
total: 13 hours

WIP

mo particles. Should be finished up with the units soon, and on to the towers/environment.

Next Steps

work work, and practice.

Debrief

the low-poly look is cool and helps us out with nearly every area of art direction and implementation. Kudos to Dylan on this one.

Whale Shop.

GDC COMING SOON.

Finish Line

• Concept Art (2.5 Hrs)
• GUI design (3 hrs)
• Logo design (2 Hrs) 
• Research art for Angu (.5 hr) 
• Poster Art for Augher(.5)
• Total - 8.5 Hours

Progress

Crippler Superunit CA and Orthos:

• Draft 04
• Orthographics

Sniper Tower Orthos:

• Draft 05
• Orthographics v1
• Orthographics v2

GUI design:

• Draft 01
• Draft 02
• Draft 03

Logo design

• Draft 01
• Draft 02

Battle Plan

• Work on Logo and GUI
• Figure out particle effects for towers and units
• Knock out some new sketches for Angu (3rd Gygan)
• Finish poster image 

Damage Control

• Still in the process of figuring out a GUI. We need to finalize it so that we have it in time for GDC.
• Creating the 3rd Gygan might pose some interesting challenges

tl;dr

Much work to be done before GDC. Still.

-Henderson

Waiting on Feedback

A lot of work this week I could get through swiftly, but have to wait a while to receive feedback or try to squeeze feedback out of people so I could move forward. I don't think I reached the recommended 12 hours of work for this week again partly because of that. However, I did touch on more work this week to keep on track for GDC and for the end of Winter Term.

Accomplishments

• URBN Display Mockup (2 hours)
• Mock 01
• Mock 02
• Mock 03
• Mock 04
• Content Research (.5 hours)
• Useful Site
• Rush Super Unit (5 hours)
• Draft 07
• Draft 08
• Draft 09
• Draft 10
• Brigade Unit (1 hour)
• Draft 06
• Kail (1 hour)
• Draft 05
• Layout Idea (.5 hours)
• Layout

WIP Screenshot

• Concept Art WIP
• Display 01
• Display 02
• Display 03
• Display 04
• Display 05
• Rush SU 01
• Rush SU 02
• Brigade U 01
• Kail 01

Next Steps

• Rush SU
• Particle Concepts
• URBN Display
• Whale Website
• Brigade & Kail when I have time

Debrief

Our team will have the front of the first display in URBN and I have an idea that I really want to push through with that shows off the new aesthetic we're implementing. We can have one huge poster, or a bunch of posters that are attached together with possible 3D pieces to make our display appear like it's part of the environment of our game. I'll be working with Alex to come up with the content that will be added to the posters too. He sent me the site listed above to help generate content ideas.

The Rush SU is sort of coming together with more tweaks that just keep getting added on. Hopefully it will be done soon.

I started thinking about how to proceed with the Brigade Unit and possible redesign of Kail also. The Brigade U had good reviews last time without any really guidance on what to improve so I drew up different views of the options that were liked to help get the feedback flowing again. As for Kail, I began incorporating more of the coral look that we wanted to go with after we completed Augher.

Desiree Ann Lim

Seamless Whale Puns Are Somewhat Seamless

Spent most of this last half of the week in ZBrush and Photoshop to produce some results in terms of textures and put my animation cap back on as I critiqued some of Kai-Lin's animations.

What I Did

To start I explored the toon shader more. I did not like the flatness of the armor and wanted a way to make the armor less flat from a moderate distance.  So I went into photoshop and made a makeshift cracked stone texture and used it in ZBrush spotlight to create a stone like armor with cracks, and when placed next to a flat armored unit in Unity it looks much nicer. (3.5 hours)

My makeshift stone texture
that I made from
scratch in Photoshop...pretty dang proud

Unit on left has the texture on while the one on the right does not, It's subtle at this distance, but the light is not blinding with the stone texture

I modeled and UVed the environment pieces for the game (.5 hour)

Critiqued the animations for the tank unit (the trunk movement specifically) the sniper unit ( the weight of the front legs when walking) and the walk cycle of the Kamikaze (.5 hour)

I textured (using a combination of photoshop and ZBrush) the ground pieces using both a grassy style and dirt style. I currently have two iterations in Unity pretty seamless and have a third iteration still in the works that will look like a simpler version of the cracked dry dirt and weedy grass images below (4.5 hours) 

3rd sand iteration

3rd grass iteration

Total Time: 9 Hours

What I'm Going To Do

I'm going to have the textures of the remaining two iterations in by tonight, and fix the environment with any feedback given.

I will also continue the armor texture if the group likes the sample

Test out the toon shader on some modeled rocks that were conceptualized by Desiree

Keep swimming

We are all more or less chugging along towards GDC at this point, revisiting some of the assets and having everyone work on two tracks for the game.

GDC Track

The primary track (and the one that is currently demanding most of our time and cognitive load) is the GDC Track. This track basically entails making our game the most aesthetically pleasing and functional as possible for the time given for GDC. This means making the battles look cool through particles and sound, creating a cohesive aesthetic, fleshing out the GUI, etc. We'll be putting most effort on the parts of the game that will be shown during our presentation. In addition to game development-related tasks, we will continue with our marketing efforts. Now that all the promotional items have been ordered, we will be working on the website, the presentation, etc.

Senior Project Track

While we would like to focus most of our attention on the GDC Track, we have to also dedicate hours to the Senior Project Track. This track involves satisfying the requirements of the course (so we can all graduate?). Beyond the build for GDC, we are looking to include another Gygan since we narrow down the amount of shared towers the player has access to. We also need to continue updating the necessary documents as well as other materials our professor requests. The concept artists (Henderson and Desiree) have work on this track that they are completing so that after GDC the rest of the pipeline can start building new assets.

Floating in the sea

Producing Things

• Logo (1.5)
• Business cards (2.5)
• Feedback with Henderson and Desiree (1)
• Book flight with Daphney (0.5)
• GUI meeting (1)
• Task distribution (1.5)
• Model Crippler Tower (1.5)
• Slack check ins and reminders (1)

Total: 10.5

Works In Progress

• Link: Master Asset List

 

Business Card mock (not the final)

Task distribution

Crippler Tower

Foreseeing the Future

I'm looking forward to modeling the remaining assets in the game. The team wants me to kind of develop task lists for them so I'll be doing that moving forward. We're still in the process of arranging our travel plans. Overall we're more or less sailing through the work while keeping in mind the long run. We'll be hitting some important milestones for the actual senior project class so I will also be addressing those deliverables as well.

Animations! Whale... What else do you think I am doing?

Accomplishments

• Met with Professor Jeremy Fernsler to get critiqued on the animations (1 hr)

• Looked at reference videos of cow/bull walking (. 5hr)
• Edited Sniper Unit animations (4.5 hrs)
• Edited Tank Unit animations (4 hrs)
• Worked on Kamikaze walking animation (1.5 hr)
• Watched reference videos of bugs from Starship Troopers (.5 hrs)

Total hours: 12 hrs

Works In Progress?

Working on the third animation pass.

Next Steps

• Edit animations

Issues

• I have a lot of things that I can improve upon for the animations. Some of the stuff I really need reference videos so I've been spending some time looking for them. There are timing issues in the animations which I'll have to fix as well.

Last Minute Comments

I could have spent more time on animations this week, but some personal issue of deciding whether or not I should drop the Masters program got a bit in the way. However, I got it all figured out and I will be spending more time on Senior Project next week. I got a lot of good critique and feedback from Jeremy. Most of the things he suggested are weight shifting issues, a bit of timing issues and whether or not the animations look natural.  So for the next week or two, I will continually be editing the animations and helping team members with whatever they would need.

Kai-Lin Chuang

It's a Whale Struggle

It's been a pretty weird week of kind of being out of it and figuring out what needs to get done at the same time. It was a bit of a blur so I had to really go back into slack to check what did I accomplish this week. 

Accomplishments

• Rush Super Unit (1 hours)
• 
  
• GUI Mockups (2.5 hours)
• GUI Mockup 01
• GUI Mockup 02
• Rock Concept Art (2 hours)
• Rock Concept 01
• Website Mockup (1 hour)
• Website Mockup 01
• Logo Drafts (2.5 hours)
• Logo
• Updated Personal Stuff (many more hours that don't count here)
• Site

WIP Screenshot

• Concept Art WIP
• GUI Mockup 01
• GUI Mockup 02
• Rock CA
• Website Mock
• Logo 01
• Logo 02
• Logo 03
• Logo 04
• Logo 05
• Logo 06

Next Steps

• Rush SU 
• Environment/UI
• Whale Website
• Brigade U & Kail when I have time

Debrief

We spent a lot of time going over GUI to get that to be a better, sleeker, and more intuitive design. We pulled inspiration from GUI that's already out there to help figure out how to bring all the different elements together into something with a more cohesive aesthetic. Henderson and I tackled trying to make the GUI sci-fi but not with a machine or too technological kind of sci-fi feel.

With a bunch of branding stuff going on too, I tried to point out that I see a huge nose and a clapping seal in our logo with the smoke and offered some other design possibilities to explore but those were shut down. Once I saw it like one of the psychological images, it could not be unseen. Oh well.

Anna and I will also be taking on creating a webpage for people to sign up to a mailing list for Gygan Reign which they should receive the URL from on the business cards the team has ordered for GDC.

Lastly, I also sketched up rock concept art for Miguel to pull reference from on what they should like to fit into the environment and with all our units.

Also, my laptop is really fighting with me. It's gotten absurdly slow. Hopefully it does not die before graduation or at least the end of this quarter.

Desiree Ann Lim

Hi! My name is... (what?) My name is... (who?) My name is... [whale noises] Slim Shady

I spoke with Ryan this past week about the issue I raised to Dylan about the user classes, and he agreed that it would be smart to split them up.

To Summarize:
When a user starts the application, the player is created as a PlayerObject. This class holds the methods that check for FirstTimePlayed (where the user sets their username if it is the users first time using the application), and similar methods.

However, this class also controls methods and variables for controlling resources. Since the Spectator object should not have these methods, I brought up separating these methods out into  a PlayerObject class and having the other methods placed in a UserObject class.

This would allow us to create a Spectator Object class, where all of the spectator methods (controlling camera, path views, etc) could be placed. This would make the project neater and also my life easier, which I am a big fan of.

What I Did:
Reading Vectrosity docs (2hrs)
Started building SpectatorObject class (2hr)
Going through new Tower path management with Ryan (1hr)
Design Doc diagrams (3hrs)

Whale UI

What Got Done

• I spent almost all of my time this week working on switching from NGUI to Unity 4.6 UI.  I underestimated just how long this would take to manually rebuild all of the UI elements and then fix the code to work with those elements.  There are also a few widgets that are missing in Unity 4.6 UI, like drop down lists, so I had to get creative and use something else.  As of now the Main Menu, Lobby and Map Editor have all been switched over to 4.6 UI so now we just have to go replace some sprites with the UI assets are done.

• I also refactored how we handle resources.  Instead of having resources controlled by the player class, it has been moved into its own manager.  The amount of resources granted every wave is now set on the GoogleFu spreadsheet.  You can also set a constant, linear or logarithmic increase of resources every wave.

What's Next

• With only a few weeks left until GDC, I will be moving away from new features and towards anything that helps our game shine in the few minutes that we have to show it.

Total time:  19 hours

Whale down.... whale down....

Got sick. Got work done. 

Finish Line

• Concept Art (3 Hrs)
• GUI design (4 hrs)
• Logo design (2.5 Hrs) 
• Review Crippler Animation and gave feedback to Kai-Lin (.5 hr)
• Total - 9 Hours

Progress

Crippler Superunit CA:

• Draft 02
• Draft 03

Sniper Tower CA:

• Draft 05

GUI design:

• Draft 01
• Draft 02
• Draft 03 

Logo design:

 

• Draft 01 

Battle Plan

• Finish up Crippler Superunit and Sniper Tower
• Figure out particle effects for towers and units
• Knock out some new sketches for Angu (3rd Gygan)
• Finalize GUI look so that we can implement it into the game ASAP 

Damage Control

• Getting a good idea of what the GUI looks like
• Creating the 3rd Gygan might pose some interesting challenges

tl;dr

Much work to be done before GDC.

-Henderson

Making a Splash at GDC

Accomplishments

Trying to fix broken project: 1 hr
redoing lost work after inevitable project reset: 1 hr
learning coroutines and how to create particle playground systems with delays and dynamic
forces over time: 5 hours
met with Kenneth (Chen) for programming assistance: 2 hours
total: 9 hours

WIP

The same particle system as last week is still in progress until the environment gets it's version two up I won't know how to make the broken shards of earth look.

all the particles

trying to fit the presentation into a 5 minute window

Next Steps

Gonna meet with Miguel to get him started making particles, there is a lot of room for making some significant changes to the look of the game through particles.

Debrief

I have faith that this thing will be up and ready to go by GDC, however we will likely have a lot of things to return to afterwards. In the end the experience will be awesome and our project will have dramatically improved for having to undergo this mid winter term push.

Whale, we spent so long on naming our game

Naming our game...

... was the longest process that our team had to go through. We spent over 10 hours working on naming our game so that we can move onto promotional items for GDC. Overall we've been working towards solutions that will make the game as polished for GDC. Some things include:

• Branding, when we talk to others while not at the Intel Showcase, this includes promotional items and logos
• Texturing and overall aesthetic direction (kudos to Miguel for continuing the technical initiative on this!)
• Particles
• Animations
• Programming fixes for the future

The team has been working hard on taking on tasks as the designers and I think of them and responding to feedback. We hope that this momentum will continue moving forward towards the beginning of March. While all these technical things happen, we are planning our trip and making most of of the generous funding that the Digital Media Department has provided us. Everyone on the team is hoping to go including our amazing advisor Stefan Rank!

There are so many whales and houses

Producing Things

• Extended marketing meeting on Tuesday (3)
• Edits to the logo (2.5)
• Game title creation in Illustrator (1)
• Booking hotel rooms with Daphney (1.5)
• Master Asset List review (1)
• Business card design (1)

Works in Progress

• Master Asset List

 Translating Henderson's game title design in Illustrator

After multiple iterations of the logo, the middle is close to what we want. Desiree is making additional changes to it!

Foreseeing the Future

I started working with Daphney for booking the hotel we would need for our stay during GDC. I'll be working out the details on how we want to use our funds as well as reaching out to other places to see if we can secure funding for our team. In the meantime, I will be working with Ryan on marketing materials that we need to order prior to leaving for San Francisco. Kai-Lin and I will be tackling the models and animations for the game, working with Dylan to put them in the game. I've been giving feedback to other members of the team and hope to continue doing so for the coming week. We're operating on an even more "agile" like basis where things come up and we work on the tasks as they relate to making our game the best for GDC. While that happens, Ryan and I will be thinking of things that artists need to work on in parallel to satisfy the needs of the senior project course for graduation.

Toon in for more Whale Puns

It may not seem like much, but after spending a lot of time learning how it worked, and pointing out my reasons for wanting to use it, I got the ok from the team to use the toon shader for texturing the units. I textured the sniper unit in two different ways and applied it to the shader and the team decided to go with the more minimal texture, which I also feel was the best looking choice.

What I Did

• Researched and tested out the toon shader on the sniper unit (6 hours)
• Textured the gray parts of the sniper and tank units (2 hours)

What I'm Going To Do

• Texture the gray bodies for the remaining units
• Texture the armor for the units
• Begin planning textures for the environment

SPOOOOOOOOOOOOORTS

This week I've been poking around the classes and reading up on Vectrosity to get started on Spectator mode! I also spent some time badgering Dylan about methods/variables I thought need to be moved around, which we've decided to look into later. (Yes, Dylan. We did decide this.)

I also made some more diagrams for the design doc because I'm a glutton for punishment.

What I did:

Staring into the abyss/contemplating life/looking through classes (5hrs)
Taking screenshots of the game for SRS and Anna (1hr)
Updating SRS (1hr)
Design doc diagrams (2hrs)

What I'm doing:

More Spectator mode
More diagrams

Superunit and Branding

So much to get done to be ready for GDC while also keeping track of what needs to get done by the end of Winter Term. This week I had to wait a little to know what should be the next steps for the environment, worked on the Rush SU, and a bunch of branding stuff. When I wasn't sure what to do I updated my resume, website, and designed business cards.

Accomplishments

• Rush Super Unit (1 hours)
• Draft 06
• Sniper/Environment Mockup (1.5 hours)
• Mockup 01
• Mockup 02
• Whale House Business Card (4.5 hours)
• Card 01 CMYK
• Card 01 RGB
• Card 02 CMYK
• Card 03 CMYK
• Card 04 RGB
• Gygan Reign Title (3.5 hours)
• Title 01
• Title 02
• Updated Personal Stuff (many hours that don't count here haha)
• Site
• Resume
• MiniCards

WIP Screenshot

• Concept Art WIP
• Rush SU 01
• Rush SU 02
• Mockup 01
• Mockup 02
• Title 01
• Title 02

Next Steps

• Rush SU
• Environment/UI
• Branding Materials
• Brigade U & Kail when I have time

Debrief

We have a lot to cover and get done. Right now marketing/branding is taking a lot of time because we spent about 4-5 hours trying to come up with a better name than Gygan Reign as a group [not including our Slack chats], but decided on keeping the name. With that, we also needed to hurry and get the logo, the gygan reign title font, and so on done too so we can business cards, shirts, etcetera to arrive in time before we leave for GDC.

Everyone's doing a great job of keeping themselves up-to-date with the Slack updates and giving input since Friday after our meeting. I think we're all pretty pumped and are really taking the time to analyze the designs because we want them to be awesome.

Kudos to Miguel this week for doing some fast RnD on texturing to match the style I mocked up in Photoshop for him to use for reference. With that, I hope the units look epic and stand out more from the environment while still keeping a cohesive aesthetic.

Kudos to Anna too for putting in so much time and design effort with all the branding stuff on top of everything else she does for the team.

Desiree Ann Lim