WEEK 3

May 3, 2018

GROUP STATUS REPORT

Weekly Status

We’ve made good progress this week, though many of us are still bogged down by outside classes. However, morale is good and we are all somewhat optimistic for future tasks.

Here is a breakdown of things in summary:

• Networking and Game Logic

• Implemented “local co-op” for testing purposes (two connections to the same server)
• Implemented collisions between the player and room
• Implemented support for collision callbacks, e.g. for collecting the flag
• Tweaked player physics to make collisions nicer
• Refactored physics to reduce duplicated code and make things more modular

• Graphics:

• More detailed lighting incorporated
• Color changing VFX for models
• Basic HP bar for player character

Meeting Dates

Friday, 4/27

Wednesday, 5/2 @ 2 pm

Thursday, 5/3 @ 10 am (official meeting with professor)

Group Morale

7/10 - We are more optimistic than we were last week, though we are still slightly cautious and wary of what we can accomplish due to outside influences such as midterms, other class assignments, etc. However, our mood and morale is on the up and up, which is good. :)

Screenshots

INDIVIDUAL STATUS REPORTS

Leon Medvinsky

What were your concrete goals for the week?

• No concrete goals
• Extend network if necessary
• Work on physics and other areas as necessary to have win conditions complete

What goals were you able to accomplish?

• Implemented player-room collisions
• Refactored physics

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

What are your specific goals for the next week?

• Refactor networking to make object updates simpler and require less boilerplate

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

• How to use assimp to import a mesh and how to use its data structures
• How to eliminate coplanar faces in Blender

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

7/10

Chris Ozawa

What were your concrete goals for the week?

Work on more of the lighting and some coloring effects for the models.

What goals were you able to accomplish?

I got Phong shading to work for the lighting.  I started a little bit of work on a bit more point light generalization in case we wanted more than one later on, but I ended up switching focus to time-interpolated color changing as that would be more critical to the end product.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

As mentioned above, I didn’t finish all of the fine tuning for lighting that I was expecting to as a result of prioritizing the color changing.  It should be doable, but it’s also a matter of what we need finished, so it depends a bit on how much time is needed for highest priority issues.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

More rendering improvements and visual effects as needed.  We want to incorporate basic UI into the game as well.  For now we have a basic HP bar, but we’ll be deciding specifically what else is needed and how we want it to look.

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

I was never really exposed to std::chrono for time keeping before, so I had to get a bit accustomed with it.  Had to play around with it to figure out how to make the model’s color flash based on time and then make more adjustments in order to restrict the color changing to a set amount of time (currently half a second).  There was some stumbling and in hindsight, the end result’s actually simpler than I was expecting when I was initially scrambling to get it to work properly, but we have functional time interpolated color changing now!  Jimmy helped a lot with getting it to work since there was a bunch of confusion and some silly mistakes at first.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

Probably about a 7/10.  It’s cool seeing features continuing to be added and the game steadily getting more visual flair, but we’re approaching the halfway point of the quarter so I’m not entirely sure how much of our plans we’ll be able to incorporate into the final game as the weeks continue to pass.

Paula Quach

What were your concrete goals for the week?

We decided instead of focusing on expanding InputManager and testing to get a MVP working which involved having a flag object with flag-based events set up so I worked on that instead.

What goals were you able to accomplish?

I got a very basic flag object created which can be seen on the client side and with state on the server side. Currently, it’s just a box though.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

Despite getting a very minimum flag object up, it isn’t actually “working” per se. Partly was because I had less time this week due to an upcoming midterm and partly because I was having trouble understanding how our physics engine worked. I was basically lifting code from other server/client objects and trying to convert it into a working flag object.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

Finish up on the flag and I think perhaps go through our code to add more documentation for better understanding later down the line so I don’t spend several hours trying out numbers to get a visible origin spawn point… Also use better coding practices.

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

I thought I at least had a baseline understanding of our code, but when it comes to the physics side I guess not…

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

6/10 Pretty average.

Jack Wang

What were your concrete goals for the week?

Fully understand bullet lib.

Improve Collision event system.

What goals were you able to accomplish?

Implemented and improved collision event system.

Implemented basic trigger type.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

N/A

What are your specific goals for the next week?

Stick to the schedule and deliver efficient and decent code on time.

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

I mastered bullet library! yeah!

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

8/10

Jimmy Ye

What were your concrete goals for the week?

Finish flag objective mechanic and other such features for our first demo milestone.

What goals were you able to accomplish?

I worked on adding the flag mechanic and helped with some graphics work (e.g. color flashing, HP bars).

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

Combat hasn't been implemented, unfortunately. We have most of the graphics and networking infrastructure to do it quickly (at least that's the plan), so I expect to add this game logic over the next few days.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

Complete a basic combat system.

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

Lots of C++, as to be expected.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

8/10. I've been quite productive in implementing code, as well as with collaborating with other group members on their code/design, and I feel like we are making fairly good progress.

Jamie Zhang

What were your concrete goals for the week?

• Work on rendering 2D UI
• Work on loading textured models

What goals were you able to accomplish?

• I implemented a basic HP bar that renders above the player model

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

• Did not finish loading the models with textures, unfortunately I was a bit busy so I could not finish in time

What are your specific goals for the next week?

• Finish loading textured models

• Continue working on 2D UI, maybe work on a main menu (we also talked about having your hp bar rendered in the corner as well)

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

• Learned a bit about loading and rendering textures on models with Assimp, which I expected to learn since I have not had much experience in the past.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

• 5/10, it seems like there is still a lot of things to do but I’m not quite sure what to work on first since I don’t know what is important right now. In addition, it seems like many things need to be changed or fixed when it comes to shaders but we have not talked about how we want our game to look or the overall UI design.

Vivian Zhang

What were your concrete goals for the week?

Finish the warrior model and start on misc items such as enemies, small objects (flag, doors, etc).

What goals were you able to accomplish?

I was able to model, color, and finish the warrior model and the enemy slime.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

I was hoping to get more miscellaneous items modeled, but I got sucked into perfecting the warrior model and spending a lot of time on each individual clothing bit. Overall though, I am happy with my progress compared to last week.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

Begin coloring and texturing the dungeon room, and maybe work on the mage model, which I expect to be much quicker now that i’ve gotten the hang of modeling clothing. Perhaps if I am way ahead of schedule, I will start taking a look at rigging and animating.

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

I am becoming much more used to Blender, including its hotkeys and shortcuts! Modeling simple things is now becoming much faster.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

8/10 - I am happy with the progress that I have made this week, particularly in comparison to the road block I had last week.