Date: Thursday, May 4, 2006 10:30-11am

Outline

• Overall Status
• Elizabeth (Graphics)
• Jim (Network)
• Kristen (Graphics)
• Masa (Interface/UI)
• Mei (Network)
• Nghiem (Audio)

Overall Status

Group Morale: still gotta catch up...

This Week's Goals:

1. Finish collision detection
2. Finish animation integration
3. Physics, AI
4. Game logic
5. Integrate networking
6. Implement basic UI

Goals Accomplished:

1. Player animation
2. Client/Server input works
3. Collision detection
4. Parser config for .ini files

Next Week's Goals:

1. Add terrain to collision detection
2. Add second client
3. Sound playback on panda running
4. Basic sound effects on each action
5. Fully animated character running around with collision detection (implement throwing and hitting)

Graphics

Elizabeth

1. What were your concrete goals for the week?
   
   My goals for this week were to get some composer
   lined up for music, finish more modeling, and help
   with the game engine
   
   
2. What goals were you able to accomplish?
   
   This week, I worked with Masa to try loading a
   terrain. It's loaded but we don't have a height map
   yet for collision testing. I've been chugging along
   with my modeling. Also, I've been looking up better
   ways for managing all the scene data because maybe
   it's too slow right now. AND!! We definitely have
   one composer and two who agreed to compose but have
   disappeared .. I need to start bugging them more ^^;
   
   
3. If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
   
   We wanted to have the terrain finished and basic
   character with terrain collision testing started but I
   didn't know that it's not usual to go from terrain to
   height map (you usually go the other way around) so we
   spent a while struggling with that. =/
   
   
4. What are your specific goals for the next week?
   
   My concrete goals for next week is to help Jim and
   Masa speed up the scene rendering and well as to
   finish up some more models. Also, I'd like to make
   sure my music people are on track so I should have
   some meetings with them.
   
   
5. What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
   
   I think we're getting there. I don't really so
   panicked right now .. although I'm sure that's just a
   phase.
   
   
6. Screenshots:
   • screen shot is the rocketpack in progress .. mmm ..
     needs texture obviously and the fins are still a lil
     off

Kristen

1. What were your concrete goals for the week?
   
   To get multianimation working and design a Player class that would contain all player-related data including the character mesh and functions to control its movement.
   
   
2. What goals were you able to accomplish?
   
   Multianimation is working (DXUT free!) and we were able to integrate the Player class into the client. I finished the panda's animations and created a monkey mesh. The panda can run, jump, get hit, fall, and taunt on a key press.
   
   
3. If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
   
   I need more sleep.
   
   
4. What are your specific goals for the next week?
   
   Fine-tune the Player class. Skin and animate the monkey. Add a cel-shading vertex shader. Design a logo and finish designing the website. More character modeling.
   
   
5. What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
   
   I feel a lot better now that we have animated models in the game. Modeling the monkey in 3DS was a lot faster since I had experience modeling the panda.
   
   
6. Screenshots
   
   
   • Monkey mesh in 3DS
     

Network

Jim

1. What were your concrete goals for the week?
   
   I wanted to start cleaning up the code and implement some decent scene management. Also, I wanted the input to be sent to the server and it would update the clients position.
   
   
2. What goals were you able to accomplish?
   
   I was able to implement the communication between the server and client for input. The scene management is a lot more cleaned up, but it still needs some more work.
   
   
3. If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
   
   I wasn't able to implement an awesome management yet, but I hope Elizabeth and I will sort some great master plan in the coming week.
   
   
4. What are your specific goals for the next week?
   
   My goals for next week is integrate a lot more of other member's modules into the scene management. Hopefully, collision detection (scene objects and terrain) and user input will be nicely integrated into the client and server scene management. Possibly, I would want to add a second client and start managing more two clients server-side.
   
   
5. What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
   
   My morale is that I still don't think I'm getting a lot done. I need to Masa-fy my work habits.
   
   
6. Screenshots:
   • Panda

Mei

1. What were your concrete goals for the week?
   
   
   • finish collision detection
   • order the physics book, study it
   • learning bitmaps that generates height field for terrain collision
   • finish projectile and particle  (physics)
     
     
2. What goals were you able to accomplish?
   
   
• finished collision detection ( not include terrain)
• created a bitmap class that can load .bmp files, and can generate RGB for each pixel
• received the physics book (unfortunately it was a little late, I just got it on Tuesday L)
  
  
3. If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
• I was really confused about how to get the heights from the bitmap, so I wasn’t able to finish the terrain collision (however, last night when I talk to Masa, he said he had a better idea to generate terrain collision without using the height map, we will see who figures out first J)
• I did not have time to implement my physics yet
  
  
4. What are your specific goals for the next week?
   
   
• finish with physics integrate with server
• help other teammates
  
  
5. What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
   
   

   I was really running out of time this week, there’re too much things going on in my other classes (a 20 page essay due by this Thursday).  I need to catch up, and finish up the physics part (some simple projectile motion).  However, I was not sure on the part that talks about particles, is it mainly the explosions?

6. Screenshot

Audio

Nghiem

1. What were your concrete goals for the week?
   
   
• Implement .ini
• Look at physics for game
  
  
2. What goals were you able to accomplish?
   
   
   • Complete implementing .ini so the other team members can take advantage of it
     
     
3. If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
   


• Not be able to look at physics part yet
• I don't have a lot of time this week because I'm a little behind in other classes. I'll work on this class more next week.. promise
  
  
4. What are your specific goals for the next week?
   
   
   • Integrate the sound part with the rest of the game, probably just the sample background sound.
   • Implement some sound effects for panda since panda can run, throw bombs and die ..
     
   
   
5. What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
   
   
   • The clock is ticking
     
     
6. Screenshots

Interface

Masa

1. What were your concrete goals for the week?
   
   My goal was to have most of the server/client framework done. I also wanted to have the underlying game engine completed and finally start writing game code.
   
   
2. What goals were you able to accomplish?
   
   We still didn't get around to implementing any actual game code. However, we did make some decent progress on the networking. The server and client parts of the game have been completely separated and things seem to be working alright. They still need work but I feel we are in an okay place.
   
   
3. If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
   
   I think one reason was because we we've been tackling some of the most difficult parts of the project these past 7 days. In my opinion, getting animation to work in DirectX and doing the collision detection with a complex terrain are 2 of the most challenging problems we faced so far. We also spent a considerable amount of time this week on doing some early integration.
   
   
4. What are your specific goals for the next week?
   
   Get more cool character animation. Start writing lots of game code. Flesh out the server/client data managing. Maybe start testing out cell shading. Have a game!
   
   
5. What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
   
   I stayed up last night hacking away at my first attempt at terrain collision detection. Turned out, I totally overestimated our machines' CPU speed... so I am a little bummed out about that. But otherwise, my morale is okay. I feel more confident that we'll be able to finish the game and I also think our game has a lot of personality. Also, since Kristen succeeded in getting the animation working, I feel that the hardest parts of the project will be behind us once we finish the collision detection system.
   
   
6. Screenshots
   

 

last updated Wednesday, May 3, 2006 10:05 PM