Wrapping Up

The buttons graphics, postcard design, custom cursor, Whale House Logo animation, presentation slide designs, and the splash screen are completed, if not in the process of final approval. It's probably been the most work I've had to do for senior project in a while. Everything is wrapping up and coming together, much like our advisor has complimented us on. Our senior presentation is only 2 weeks away!

Accomplishments

• Button Graphics
• Kail
• Augher
• Postcard Design
• 01
• 02
• Custom Cursor Design
• 01
• 02
• 03
• Whale House Logo Animation
• 01
• Presentation Slide Designs
• 01
• 02
• 03
• 04
• Splash Screen Design
• 01

Next Steps

• Keep practicing for presentation

Desiree Ann Lim

Presentation Preps

Accomplishments

• Rendered video for presentation (3 hrs)
• Put together the video (0.5 hr)
• Sniper Superunit issue fixes (1 hr)
• Practiced my part of presentation (1 hr)

Total: 5.5 hours

Next Steps

• Presentation preps
• Animate dance moves for Kail and Augher

Issues

• Forgot why I didn't animate Sniper Superunit. Then I figured out that the rig for the Unit and Superunit is kind of different and the animations from the Unit can be used for the Superunit in unity. So I didn't bother animating Superunit. Problem solved. 

Kai-Lin Chuang

Diabeetus

We puut in the main things into the game. Now, it's all the little things...

Finish Line

• Kail Animation 2nd Passe(2 Hrs)
• Splash Screen (1 Hr)
• Gygan Reign Title (1.5 Hr)
• Victory and Defeat screens (1.5 Hrs) 
• Presentation Video (2.5 Hrs)
• Total -8.5 Hrs

Progress

Splash Screen

• Image

Gygan Reign Title (revamped)

• Image

Victory + Defeat Screens

• Victory
• Defeat

 Presentation Video

• Video 

Battle Plan

• Some extra sweeteners here and there
• Animations

Damage Control

• Doing all the things before project is due!

tl;dr

Now time for practicing presentations!

Sweetening the game

Producing Things

• Pose Augher and Kail (1)
• Presentation material (1)
• DIGM team work session for presentation (3)
• Followed up on sounds (1)
• Splash screen (0.5)
• Housekeeping on Trello and Slack (1)
• Selection screen video for Augher and Kail (5)
• Selection screen image for Augher and Kail (0.5)

Total: 13

Proof of Progress

Foreseeing the Future

• Presentation videos
• Practice presentation
• Render selection screen videos

And Now, For Something Completely Different

Early this week I worked with Dylan to get the animations in order for the Intel Level Up competition. I also kept working on the audio scripts for all units/superunits, towers, and Gygans.

What Got Done:

Unit/SuperUnit/Tower/Gygan Audio (3hrs)
Animation Edits (3hrs)
CS Presentation (6hrs)

What I'm Doing:

CS Presentation
Whatever I'm needed for

Most of the time this week was spent getting the game ready for the Intel Level Up competition.

What Got Done

• Added tutorial sequence for new players.
• Overall polish to fix any issues before submitting to Intel Level Up competition.
• Added background music to all scenes.
• Added a splash screen and new main menu background.
• Polished maps.
• Went to a playtest session with Ryan's residents and made adjustments based on that.
• Bug fixes related to GameStateManager and ending the game.
• Refactor of Entity hierarchy to remove situations where entities would be initialized or die twice.
• Lots of work on the CS presentation.

What's Next

• More work on the CS presentation.
• Preparing the game for IndieCade submission.

Total time:  40 hours

The whale way to Senior Show

We've got our list of sweeteners that we want to achieve for the game. In addition to each DIGM student creating their portion of graphics for the presentation, we are all still working towards making our game the best game at the Digital Media Showcase!

On the other hand, the programmers of our team have wrapped up the documentation due for their senior class. Dylan will be working with the artists to get the sweeteners in while Cory and Ryan will be working on the game in addition to the poster that is required of them.

Countdown: 3 weeks

Producing Things

• Particle Meeting (1)
• Project planning for competitions (4)--includes meeting with Dylan, Trello board set-up.
• Gatling Superunit and Tower (3)--includes modeling, weight-painting, and exporting for Friday's build
• Follow up (1)
• Tuesday morning meeting with DIGM (1.5)

Total: 10.5

Proof of Progress

Master Asset List can be found here.

Gatling Tower

New Trello Board

Foreseeing the Future

• Superunit particles
• Presentation materials

Whale.

Got work done.

Finish Line

• Kail Concept Art (2 Hr)
• Gatling Unit Animation - 2nd Passe (2 Hrs)
• Buttons (1.5 Hr)
• Presentation (2 Hrs)
• Total -7.5 Hrs

Progress

Kail Concept Art

• Draft 01

Buttons

• 

Battle Plan

• Senior Presentation
• Animations

Damage Control

• Doing all the things before project is due!

tl;dr

ALMOST OUT OF TIMEEEE.

Much Progress ._.

Accomplishments

• Weightpainted Brigade Superunit (3 hrs)
• Rigged and weightpainted Kail (2 hrs)
• Animated rough animation for Kail (2 hrs)
• Edited Brigade and Gatling particles (3 hrs)
• Animated atttack animation for Augher (1.5 hrs)
• Put together assets for the Senior Show presentation (2 hrs)

Total Hours:  13.5 hours

Next Steps

• Finish up all animations
• Prepare for Senior Show
• Edit particles stuff

Issues

• Weightpainting Brigade Superunit was frustrating. Though I found out what I was doing wrong so things ended up well.

Last Minute Comments

Senior show is almost here! Still got quite a few stuff left to do.

Kai-Lin Chuang

[Post Title]

This week I finished up docs with Ryan. I also added scripts to the unit/superunit and tower prefabs for sounds. I also also started updating the CS presentation since it will be reviewed for final presentations tomorrow.

What Got Did:

Finishing DD (5 hrs)

Re-formatting all docs in Word and then exporting pdfs (1hr)

Sound scripts (2hrs)

CS presentation updates (3hrs)

What Gun' Be Did:

Final CS presentation

Whatever I'm needed for

What Got Done

• Added touch support to our game.  The game is now fully functional with touchscreens on Windows.  
• Lots and lots of optimizations to get the game running better on less powerful hardware.  On the graphics side, his included switching to deferred rendering (it cut the amount of tris rendered by almost 50%) and removing some dynamic shadows.  The game rarely even breaks 300 draw calls now which is a decent improvement from before.  On the programming side this included going through the profiler and optimizing any scripts that we causing lag spikes or had high CPU usage.  This resulted in some more optimizations to territory and our unit pooling process.
• Added some art to the game.  This included prefabs for Kail's units and icons for the different units.
• Added the gygan selection screen.
• Kail is now in the game!
• Lots of bug fixes as usual.

What's Next

• Hopefully another playtest session in the next few days so we can address any other issues that come up.
• Preparing the game for submission to the Intel competition on Thursday.

Total time: 43 hours

An OverWhalemingly Positive End

Accomplishments

playtested and revised map: 1 hour
created a 2v2 map: 4 hours
created a 4 player free for all map: 4 hours
unit balances: 15 minutes
test games: 20 minutes
sound review: 1.5 hours
particle updates and movement particles: 2 hours


total: 13 hours

WIP

maps need to be beautified and tested but a playtest session this week should help with a lot of that. Kail units need a crazy amount of balance (which was expected) but they're slowly being worked in.

Next Steps

test, polish, balance, present, ship, retire, buy some ice cream.

Debrief

It's been nearly a year and I still love our game. For that I am thankful.

We're whaley getting there!

The presentation on Tuesday went well last week. We are making strides to get Kail into the game. Brigade is basically ready to go in terms of assets as of the weekend, which means the programming team will be able to implement. Gatling's assets will be finished shortly and we're looking for implementation by the end of this week or early next week. Kail's model is ready to go, which means that the animators can spend all the week making him look as awesome as Augher.

The recent hours of the team has significantly slowed down, causing concern. Time will have to be taken this week to find the source of the problem and properly address it. We're in the final stretch but there's still much to do, such as getting our promo items together, putting all the particles in the game, sounds, etc. These may be smaller things but they add so much to the game. In addition to the final touches of the game, we also have the presentation to work on. We really want to show our best for the show!

Modeling models

Producing Things

• Kail (4)
• Brigade Tower (2)
• Brigade Superunit (2)
• Particles and particles meeting (3)
• Presentation (1)
• Follow up (1)

Total: 13

Proof of Progress

Kail

Brigade Superunit

Brigade Tower

Foreseeing the Future

• Gatling Superunit
• Gatling Tower
• Draft presentation
• Attack particles for Shared Superunits

Whalp...

Accomplishments

playtested and revised map: 1 hour
unit balances: 15 minutes
iterated and partially unit walking particles: 2 hours
playtested and took notes: 2.5 hours
met with Steve to discuss sound / reviewed and gave feedback to audio iterations: 2 hours
reduced particle count in spawn particles: 45 minutes

total: 8.5 hours

WIP

finalizing particles and sound, playtesting tweaks.

Next Steps

balancing Kail's units once they make it into the game.

Whale Market

Moving on to the marketing side of senior show, I'm in charge of creating graphics for things such as postcards, buttons, stickers, and possibly helping out revamp the website. I've also got some ideas for a teaser trailer to show at the presentation.

Accomplishments

• Brainstorming ideas for graphics and trailer (1 hour)
• will be working on sketching out the concepts and then moving on to design itersations

Next Steps

• Marketing graphics continues

Desiree Ann Lim

Almost Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (Willy)

This week should be the last major changes to the CS docs! Hoorrrrraaaaaaaaay!

Overall I didn't have a ton to do this week. Ryan and myself are mostly just double checking docs at this point.

What I did:

Design Doc Diagrams + Words (5hrs)

What I'm Doing:

TBD?

ALMOST HERE

Got work done.

Finish Line

• Gatling Tower orthos (1 Hr)
• Brigade Unit Animation (1.5 Hrs) 
• Gatling Unit Animation (4 Hrs)
• Icons (.5 Hr)
• Total -7 Hrs

Progress

Gatling Tower CA:

• Orthos

Icons

• Draft 02

Battle Plan

• GUI
• Animations

Damage Control

• Doing all the things before project is due!

tl;dr

Got more work done... few more weeeks...

Little Progress

Accomplishments

• Finished up rig for Gatling (2 hrs)
• Weight Painted Gatling (2 hrs) 

Total Hours:  4 hours

Next Steps

• Rig and animate Kail
• Finalize animations for Gatling and Brigade
• Work on particles

Issues

• Weightpainting Gatling was annoying

Last Minute Comments

Yup, I know I didn't work much this week. 

Kai-Lin Chuang

What Got Done

• This week started out with a presentation on Tuesday so I spent a good amount of time making sure we got as much into the build as possible and then making sure it worked well.  This included a lot of little fixes from recent playtests and tweaks to make sure the game continued to perform well.  This also included a new map that I worked on with Jonathan for the presentation. 
• The day after the presentation was a playtesting session with Ryan's residents.  We had 8 players which was especially useful to see how the game performed with that many people playing at once.  We also got a ton of useful player feedback.  
• I spent most of my time this week working on territory.  After noticing huge lag spikes in the profiler when placing and removing towers I decided to actually time how long those operations actually took.  Placing a tower took about 0.2 seconds and removing a tower took an entire second!  I had known this section of code was inefficient but I hadn't realized quite how bad.  So after some heavy refactoring, the operations for adding and removing territory each only take about 0.02 seconds (essentially negligible and it won't change with map size).  After the playtesting session on Wednesday we realized our current design of territory wasn't going to work.  A possible alternative that we are looking to test is contested territory.  
  
• With contested territory you can no longer just drill a hole to your opponent's base and spam towers.  Now when two opposing towers share territory, no one will be able to place new towers in the contested territory until one of the towers is destroyed.  This also puts more emphasis on units for territory control.
• Refactor of the manager class that handles entities to make it easier to get a valid entity reference.
• Refactor of how we handle death and added death animations to all of the units.
• Created an 8 player map for the playtesting session.
• Fixed a bunch of misc errors after the playtesting session.
• It's no longer possible to make it into a lobby before the host enters the lobby.
• Played around with the shader code that we use for health bars so we no longer need to use 2 materials to get the effect we want.  This took a decent chunk out of the total number of draw calls while playing.

What's Next

• It seems like Kail's units/towers/superunits are wrapping up, so hopefully I will be able to put those in this week.
• More work on performance optimizations to make the game smoother with more than 4 players.

Total time:  34 hours