The Home Stretch

So here we are in our final week of school. This semester has gone by so quickly and it's hard to believe it's almost done. At the same time I am excited to move forward and get one step closer to graduation. Hard to believe I'm less that 2 years away from that but I'm excited all the same. However with this end of the semester push comes a mountain of work to be done over the next week. I still have to do at least one engines question to write my exam and I have a few other outstanding assignments that are all due tomorrow. Hopefully I can get this done it might be a very long night

Though it is busy there is some good news, our game is near completion! We have added audio, our prototype tutorial is done, and we are putting the final touches on our protoype gameplay. This has been a very fun semester in the way of game dev because we have actually managed to create something we're proud of. And that is the best reward of them all. 

This next week will be me loading sounds into the game, and finding some basic menu sounds and other sounds like, walking, jumping, shooting, parrying etc. I really like working on the audio for games so this is very fun for me. There's nothing better than seeing something you made go into the game and having it work. It is truly a great feeling.  

It is truly amazing that we have gone from this:

To this:

In just 4 months. It is a great feeling to have something that we all like and are proud of. 

Next step after the game is complete is to study like mad for my final exams. I only have 2 this semester and I believe I am prepared for both. I am done on the 10th so I have nearly a month off! I have to think about this to help me get through these next 2 weeks and then I can finally relax and take a break. 

Who am I kidding I will probably be working on a side project during my time off.

Road to MIGS!

This is a very special week for all UOIT game devs. It's finally time for MIGS! I'm very excited to go and meet many new people and lots of game developers over the next week. This is a fantastic opportunity to get to meet many of the industries current developers and make connections. Not to mention the awesome lectures provided over the 2 day event. This is a perfect time of year to learn many new things and take those lessons and apply them to the game I am currently working on.

The past few weeks have been very busy with the peak of midterms coming and going and the medium homework questions due for engines. I have 35 xp now so I am on track to completing my homework questions. For this period I did the pong question and the keyframing question in engine.

Specular Shader Test - Project Pinnacle

So onto my game, over the last few weeks we have implemented a lot of things. These include global illumination, models, specular lighting, and networking. Yes we have the ability for 2 players from 2 computers to inhabit the same space online which is a very large step in making our multi-player game a reality!

Global Illumination - Project Pinnacle

This next work period is loading in all of our assets. Next I am going to have to load in audio and music to the game which involves implementing fmod and re-familiarizing myself with it. This shouldn't be too hard but I will need to learn how to get it working in 2LoC. Hopefully this goes smoothly. I do quite enjoy doing the audio of a game and plan on sitting in on many of the audio talks during MIGS.

Multiplayer Mode - Project Pinnacle

Another thing that can be noted is that all of our models are still in T-pose. This is because we are still working on our animations and while that is happening our programmers are hard at work implementing any animations at all into the engine. This is a key part in the next step of our game. It would look quite silly if the player you're facing was permanently in T-pose.

Global Illumination 2 - Project Pinnacle

So that's the update for this blog! Things are moving well and we are right on track to finish our game and have time to polish it. MIGS will be an awesome experiance for me and my team as most members are also going. A side note is I have made a new business card for the trip which I will post on here. And of course, we need to end it with a joke!

Credit to xkcd

http://blog.protectedstatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/pointers.png