CSG 129/130: Polishing and Retrospectives

Hello everyone!

Today we did some bug fixing, polishing  and a test run of our presentation. Shea found a a few problems with the life replenish script and the highlight script. I went though the highlight script to try and figure why it was making the health and key switch between green and red when the player was on top of them. I found out that some how I combined  the read and green code together with the curly brackets. It was a easy fix. I also helped Eric O. adjust the values n side of the health replenish script so you didn't start off almost dead when you go in to battle. Then Shea and Eric H. went over the Bereavement presentation for demo day. Shea nailed the presentation for the most part while Eric H. played though the game on the projector. I really feel that demo day is going to go well!

Now on to retrospectives.
This semester was great .  I learned a lot about developing a game and how agile can be a epic fail if you don't follow the rules. I learned how important sprint 0 is and how it maps out the rest of the project. The planning process is one the the most important parts of a good agile based development. Also, communication is key on any team. Being open with your team make it easier on the team, the project and yourself. I also think our scope was way to big for a 16 week project. Looking back, we should have focused on creating a smaller game to get the bare minimum features working and polished before moving on to other levels. Then it would have been possible for us to create more levels and a more complete game. I also learned that no matter how hard I work, it means nothing if other people don't work hard as well. When creating a game its not about the one person it's about the team. If one person fails we all fail. I'm really excited to move forward with my education in the  CSG program and I can't wait until next semester.

Thank you for following me on my journey this semester. I hope you enjoyed it

CSG 130: The Highlight Script

Hello everyone.

After talking with the team , We realized it would be cool if we had a highlight script to highlight  our pick up items when the player walks over it. So I took on the task of trying to figure out how to do it. I knew I would need to use a boolean to get it to work but I wasn't sure how to word it. So I went back to my best friend GOOGLE and found out how to create it. Here it is!

CSG 129: Victory Version 1

Hello everyone!

Today I  decided to work on a song for after you beat the final boss. I named it Victory! I know it's kind of boring but, it was the only thing I could come up with. I wanted something uplifting with strings and a fast tempo. After about an hour of terrible melodies I finally created something I thought fit my vision. As of right now, the song is sort of annoying and a little boring. But with a little more time I know I can get it to sound EPIC! Here's what i have so far. Enjoy!


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6dedthDQTrMR3NvUmZ6SHJRLVk/view?usp=sharing

CSG 129: Life Replenish Script

Hello everyone.

Today I took on the task of creating a life replenish script. It took longer then I thought but it came out nice. Early on I had a problem with the life pick up giving the player too much life but Mike helped me fix it. I had a few numbers off and he saw it right away. I'm just happy we're almost done with the game and this is my last script.
Check it out!

CSG 130: Weird

Hello everyone.

So while I was trying to create Shock and Sadness I created this song called Weird. Weird my first attempt at making a sad song. At first I didn't like this song at all but while going though all of my music files looking for music for level 2 I realized it wasn't that bad. I let Darrin and Anthony listen to it during the audio meeting and they really like it. I changed a few patterns up and got rid of a few instruments and now its a song I really like! check it out.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6dedthDQTrMVGk1aXoxRmRlYmM/view?usp=sharing

CSG 130: Game Over Version 1

Hello everyone.

So I was talking to Anthony and Mario and they alerted me to the fact that we didn't have any game over music. So I threw something together for them as a place holder but i think with some work my place holder could be the actual game over song. Take a listen.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6dedthDQTrMVWp4SS0zMTFDYlE/view?usp=sharing

CSG 130: Lock And Key Script

Hello everyone!

So I took it upon my self to create a lock and key script for the three doors on the level. I searched fir hours and found nothing! Every script I tried was either broken or in java script( I suck at converting form java script to c#). So I gave up for a few hours and it hit me! why not use a boolean then put a IF statement inside of a IF statement with a tag name for the key? It made sense to me! I played around with my idea for a few hours and it still wouldn't work. Then once again I asked Mike to look at my script. He told me the "logic is there and it's written correctly... I don't know why it isn't working". Then he saw that i wrote my boolean wrong. when i was declaring my boolean I typed  bool checkIfTriggered = false instead of  bool checkIfTriggered = true.  One little thing had me feeling crazy for hours. After making the change to my script it worked just fine.
Here's the script.

CSG 130: Pick Up/ Destroy Script PT2

Hello everyone.

I realized that my destroy script worked a little too well. It was destroying the pick up item before it had time to play the SFX for the item. I tried adding a timer with the  IEnumerator method on the destroy script but it still wouldn't work. So I decided to go ask Mike about it since I couldn't find any answers on Google. For a second he couldn't even figure out why the IEnumerator wasn't working. So he told me it would be best to get rid of the destroy script all together! Then she showed me how to have tell my pick up script to check the inventory and destroy the item if the item was in the inventory array. Mike is truly a life saver!
Here's the line of code that saved me!

CSG 130: Inventory System

Hello everyone!
I'm really excited today! I did some thinking and remembered we really needed a inventory system. I honestly didn't think I could write a inventory script. After some research I realized it wasn't that difficult....well a basic inventory system isn't that difficult. It was only a few lines of script. I was really mad when I found out how simple the scrip
t was but i'm happy I figured it out. here it is!

CSG 130: Deeper Into Madness

Hello interweb!
I was doing some thinking and decided I wanted to create something a little more 8bit.Since we needed another boss battle song, I felt this was the perfect time to get back to the basics.Deeper Into Madness is a pretty up tempo song. I tried to make it up beat and insane much like Meet the Reaper and the Insanity song. I think I did a pretty good job. I discovered two sounds in Fl Studio ( Action 3 and Bite Size)that I thought fit with the sound I was going for. I also have to change ups in the song that makes it sound more dramatic. take a listen and enjoy!

CSG 130: Victory Final Version

Hello everyone.

I finally finished the Victory song. It took more time then I thought it would but it done!

I have a my 8bit sound along with strings,piano and a orchestra synth sound. I changed a few patterns up and added a few. It has a richer sound to it now. Simple yet complex. Check it out for yourself!

CSG 129: Something Darker

Hello everyone, welcome back!
So I felt like some of my music was a little to up beat and a little too fast. So I decided to create Something Darker ( I know Terrible name). I wanted to create something a little sadder. A little slower and kind of dreamy.After a few hours I came up with this. check it out!

CSG 129: Game Over Final

Hello everyone.
So I realized that I like the place a lot more after listening to it a few times.
I changed a few patterns up and added a few change ups. I came to the realization that this was probably the saddest song I've made so far. To be honest, it really sounds like you just failed at something. I let the team hear it and they all loved it so the game over scene is good to go! check out the song below!

CSG 129: Shock And Sadness

Hello everyone.

With Shock and Sadness I wanted to give a sad and creepy feeling. This song was actually really hard for me to create. At first I couldn't capture the sadness and I was really frustrated. Then  Athena gave me a good idea. She told me to think about how i felt when my dad died a year ago. She said " try to remember the shock ad sadness you felt when you realized he was gone." After  a few minutes of really thinking about it and a few tears I came up with this. This song will always  be special to me now.

Enjoy.

CSG 129: Back To Programming! Pick UP Script

Hello everyone.
So I realized that we didn't need anymore music for our MVP but we still needed a lot of scripts. So I took it upon myself try and tackle a few of them. I have no experience in coding what so ever. I haven't even taken my ITDEV  class yet. But with hours of research and Youtube I created a pick up script! I knew what I needed to happen in the script  but I had no idea how to go about writing it. After watching a few Youtube videos I finally got this script to work! Here's my script.

CSG 129: Pick up With Action Key

Hello everyone.

So I was talking to Steve about my pick up script and he told me it would be better if we could pick it up with the action key (E). I thought it made sense but i had no idea how to do it. Then I realized that I could probably take some code out of the script Eric O. wrote for the scene transition script. After looking at Eric's script I figured it out in a few minutes. Here's the script!

CSG 129: Destroy Script

Hello everyone.

I ran in to a little problem with my pick up script. we realized that if you picked up an item and left a scene, then returned  to the previous scene the item would reappear. The inventory would still show that you already picked up the item. So you could pick up the same item infinitely. That's a pretty big problem! So I talked to josh about it and h told me i could create a script that checks to see if the item had been picked up and if so destroy it. I wrote a script with a boolean  that checked to see if the item was in the inventory array and if so destroy it. it was a pretty simple script. check it out.

CSG 129: Pick Up With Scene Transition

Hello everyone.

I was talking to Darrin about the boss fight with the Teddy Bear. We realized that we didn't have a script that could pick up and store an item and trigger a scene transition. so I decided to try and merge the scene transition script that Eric O. created with the pick up script I created. Since i have a better understanding of how IF statements work now it didn't take long to put two and two together. Here's what I came up with.

CSG-130: Bad Day

Hello everyone.

So today was midterms! yay... The bad part about it is i forgot  that today was midterms! I don't know how it happen but it happen. I did great on my peer review. I've been doing a great job of producing content for the game, but I forgot about my blog until today! So I spent my day gathering everything I've worked on so I could fix my mistake. On top of that I found out that a friend and fellow class mate of mine passed away today. It really, really messed me up today . Scott Chaloupka was a wonderful person. I haven't even known him for a year but he still treated me like a real friend. When I started this program last semester I met him at the Global Game Jam. He told me if I ever needed any help with my classes to let him know. In the short time knowing him I could tell it was in his nature to help others. He was the type of person who could always make you laugh when ever he was around. He loved video games and star trek, and he would have had a very bright future creating video games. It hurts to see him gone so soon.

R.I.P Scott.

CSG-129: Pseudo Code

Hello everyone!
Today  I tried to write pseudo code for the insanity mode. I suck at pseudo code I like flow charts a lot more. It's not the best but I gave it a try!

CSg-130:Paper Prototyping and Flow Charts

Hello everyone.
Today was a busy day for me. I started working on another song but its far from being presentable. I spend most of my time working on the song but I just cant get it right! So i decided to bounce around a bit to help out with the rest of the team to clear my head. I sat down with Josh and helped him brain storm for a flow chart for our combat system. Then I went to your combat team and helped them paper prototype the combat system. It was a nice break form music and it gave me some ideas on sound effects for the game. The paper prototyping was pretty fun Eric H, Anthony and Mario did a really good job on mapping it out. I really feel like they found the fun. That was pretty much my day. I'll have more music coming soon!

CSG-129: Meet The Reaper!

Hello everyone!

So i'm really proud of the song I just created. It's called Meet The Reaper. I was talking to Anthony after our audio meeting about different ideas we had. I showed him a few sounds that i found while I was working on 8bit depression. one sound was called Haunted House. It was a weird sound that had strings, a organ and some other sound I couldn't quite make out. He thought the sound was really cool so I decided to play around with it. Some how I came up with this weird yet pleasing song. It still has the 3xOsc in it but it blends beautifully! Check it out!

CSG-130: 8bit Depression

Hello everyone.

So, today I created 8bit depression. I felt like all the music I was making was too fast, so I decided to slow it down just a tad. This song has some guitar in it but the main melody is the 3xOsc. I wanted it to be a little bit more 8bit in nature. I honestly dont have much to say about this one. I was just trying something different and i think it came out pretty good. Check it out.

CSG-129: Chip Tune Adventure!

Hello Everyone.

Today I created  my first chip tune song. Like always I added a twist to it . Like with 8bit, the chip tune gave me a few problems at first. But when I  got the hang of it, it turned out pretty good. I feel like i'm getting better with each song. my plan for the audio team to create between 15 and 20 songs. I want to give the rest of the team a full catalog to choose from. I know we can do it if we keep up this pace.  I was in a really good mood when I created this song and it shows just a little bit. I hope everyone enjoys it.

CSG-130: Welcome To Insanity Pt2

Hello everyone.
Today I finished the Insanity song! It still needs mastering but I finally feel like the song sounds right. I changed a few notes and tweaked the electric guitar. now it hits a little harder and blends better with the 3xOsc. I also made the song a lot longer so you can get a better feel from it. To me it sounds a lot better! Check it out and let me know what you think!

CSG-129: Welcome To Insanity Pt1

Hello everyone! so I was looking over some of the concept art with Darrin and had an idea for the Insanity music. I did things a little different this time around. I started with the percussion's first because i wanted to set the tone with a insane beat! I turned down the 8bit sound just a little, because I wanted to add a electric guitar to this song. So far it sounds really good to me but it seems like something is missing. I can already see this is a song that will have to do a little more work on to get right. Here's the rough draft.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Q4akCpo5ZtWmRZcnRhUW4wcGM/view?usp=sharing

CSG-130 New Beginnings

Hello everyone!
So I created my first 8bit song!Well, it's my version of an 8bit song. I started with the 3xOsc sound and modified it like in the tutorial from my last post. For the first time in a while I really wasn't sure about what I was doing. I played around with the 3xOsc sound and came up with a pretty cool melody. It sounds ok on its own, but I love percussion's! So I played around with the drum machine until I came up with a cool beat that works with the melody. Then I added a few strings at the end for dramatic effect. It sounds pretty good to me, for it being my first time creating an 8bit song. The link to the song is below. Check it out and let me know what you think!

CSG-129: More Research!

Hello everyone!

So I started creating music for the game! Since we've decided to go with more of a 8bit/ chip tune style, I've done a little bit of research on how to create that style of music in FL Studio. I found a few really good video's on youtube that demonstrate how to get that lovely retro sound! My goal is to put a modern twist on the retro style of music. I'm very familiar with FL Studio and music production in general, But this genre of music is completely foreign to me. I'm excited to start creating the Bereavement sound track and help further create an amazing gaming experience! 

CSG-130: The Road Map To Success

Hello everyone.

Today we went over our project road map. The road map helps us keep on task with our sprints.We mapped out Sprint 0 and Sprint 1, which is shown below. We collectively broke down what we needed to accomplish in each sprint. A sprint is simply a time table of when to accomplish a task. Our sprints are three weeks long followed by a week of retrospectives. During the Retrospective Week, we talk about the success or problems we had in the previous sprint and how to either fix the problems or figure out how we can keep up the good work. We also do peer reviews. So far some of the tasks that need to be done are: Establishing our pipe line, our art style and our tech tool box. So far it looks like we have a lot of things to accomplish but I'm confident in the team's and my own ability to get everything done.

Until next time!

The Road Map

Me with the Road Map!

Me and Eric Oshefsky (Scrum Master)

CSG-129/ 130: Here We Go Again!

Hello everyone!

Its second semester already and I couldn't be happier to get back to school!
Last semester helped me realize that creating great games is something I want to spend the rest of my life doing. On another note, last semester our team lost against PyroForge Studio(PFS). Therefore, this semester the Newbie Games team is apart of PFS. I also have two new roles. I'm the lead of the audio team and a programmer. I was more than happy to be the audio lead since my other passion is music production. I've been creating music for friends and family since I was 15. Anyway, the game we will be working on is called Bereavement. I can't say too much about is as of now but I will keep everyone up to date on my journey.

Until next time.

CSG-110 Retrospectives

This semester has been a great experience. I learned a lot about the game industry and the process of game development. Its been a very bumpy ride and I have a lot of things to work on before next semester. I really enjoyed the style of teaching that Emil and Mike implemented. It kept me interested and always on my toes. I loved working with my team and they taught me just as much as I learned in class. The CSG gave me a new appreciation for video games as a whole. I'm really excited to start next semester and move forward with my education in this program. I finally feel like I discovered what I want to do for the rest of my life.

CSG-110: FAIL, EPIC FAIL!

Hello everyone
So today in class we had our first sprint! I was really excited to actually attempt a sprint, but it didn't go the way I thought it would. We played a game my instructor created called Scrum Hero. Scrum Hero takes the whole scrum process and turns it in to a D&D style game. I was really lost since I was new to the scrum/sprint process and I've never played D&D. We assigned a scrum master (Steve) and product owner (Shea) to oversee the sprint. Steve was in charge of the burn up/burn down chart and Shea was in charge of our backlog. We gave each user story a value in our poker planning session. We did that to organize our user stories according to how important they were.  We took our user stories  and formed teams around  each user story. Each team gave each user story a time limit. each time you completed a task it was marked on the burn-down chart. Now, the game itself put a twist on the whole process. The  "Dungeons Master" would randomly hand out cards to each team member to to throw you off. An example of this is I could only talk by singing for 5 minutes. At the end of the day the sprint was a epic fail. We lacked communication and had poor planning at the beginning. It was so bad Emil stopped us, told us we sucked, and sat us down for retrospectives. The point of the game was to show you how bad a sprint can go if you do it wrong. We failed fast and hard but I'm sure the next time we have a sprint we won't make the same mistakes.

CSG-110: Agile in Practice: Planning Poker

Hello everyone.

We started scrum poker planning in my CSG-110 class this week but unfortunately I was really sick and missed class. I'm really kicking myself in the ass for missing it but try as I may I couldn't get out of bed. Lucky for me my team got me up to speed the best way they could and youtube has a lot of videos on poker planning. Poker planning is a scrum card game that helps you prioritize your user stories. By doing this it helps you answer some key questions while keeping your engaged and up to date on the project. I did a little research on how a poker planning game should go and I found this video. So check it out. It's a pretty cool method.

CSG-110 TEH Suck!

Hey guys.

Things have been shaken up in my CSG-110 class. For starters we're down to five people on my team now. Emil really wasn't joking when he said half the class would be gone by midterms.

To date we've now lost Chris (COO) Matt(CIO) Dowell(CFO) Ian(CTO) and Nick(CIO). Even though the workload is heavier on everyone, we get quality work on time now. Cutting the suck has made a major difference in the teams whole attitude. On top of all that, Steve was demoted by Emil form the CEO position. Emil's reasons were valid, he told Steve he was hand holding. The suck is like a cancer and it really screwed us in this class because we lost a great CEO. With all that said I stepped up to the plate and took over the role of the CEO. I'm confident that I will pick up where Steve left off and do well helping lead this project. Now that we have a quality team things should get easier for us in the coming weeks.

CSG-110: Box Art Project PART 3

Hello everyone.

Today is the day we print out our box! This has really been fun, even though it had its frustrating moments. This project was harder than I thought it would be simply because I thought we wouldn't create cover art until after we started the game itself. So we really had to think fast about how we wanted the everything to look. That was easier said then done but we pulled it off! Check out the finished box!

CSG-110: Box Art Project PART 2

Hello everyone.

So this week we put all of our ideas together and created the image for the whole box. Steve created a placeholder board for the game play image on the back of the box and Darrin kicked ass with the cover. We're starting to put everything together now so take a look!

CSG-110 Box Art Project PART 1

For the next two weeks we will be working on our box art for our final presentation.

For those of you who don't know what box art is, box art is the cover art you see on every game case.
We broke down our task on trello and each team member chose a task. I chose to work on the trademark/copyright statement seen on the back of all games. That was pretty easy. Then the gears in my head started turning and I went on a massive Google search to help find a cool image to put on the box. I came across this West African symbol! It means "he who does not know can know from learning."
I thought to myself, this is perfect. Our game Feats Of Enlightenment is an educational board game and it just so happens that this symbol has the symbols meaning has something to do with education. As I was patting my self on the back I looked at the symbol again and realized it looked a lot like a board game map. I made quick call to my team and shared the image with them and they were just as excited as I was. I feel like we're off to a great start with the project and we're going to have an amazing box!

CSG-110: WGDS13 :: Emil Harmsen :: Agile Game Development

Hello everyone.

In my CSG-110 class we're learning agile development methods. The video above is a presentation at the Wisconsin Games Development Summit 2013 (WHDS13) at UW-Milwaukee by my instructor Emil Harmsen. So sit back and check out the video. It is very informative.

CSG-115 Retrospectives

Hello everyone!

I've reached the end of the semester and I feel accomplished! It's been a crazy ride but i'm glad I was on it. Out of the three classes I had this semester this class was one of my favorites. I'm the type of person who understands and learns better with hands on task. This class was that and more. I really enjoyed working with my classmates on the Nursing Simulator and I even enjoyed Lerpz! I have a better understanding of the Unity Engine and the process of working on a video game. I know I have tons more to learn but I feel this was a great start. this class much like my other classes really showed me that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. It was really hard at times and had its frustrating moments but nothing good comes easy. Mike was a great and helpful instructor and I can't wait to learn more next semester.

CSG-115: Working On a Inventory System

Hello everyone.

Today  Eric O and I teamed up to work on the inventory system. Neither one of us has any idea how to really go about doing this. So I did what I normally do, went right to Google while Eric was watching tutorial videos on how to write the script from scratch. If you didn't already know Eric O is something like a rock star! I ended up finding a lot of GUI's and not many scripts. This is by far the hardest part of the game i've worked on. It took Eric a nice chunk of time to get through the tutorial but the script was complete. Or so we thought... we ended up with  200+ errors. We continued to work on fixing the errors but every time we would fix one ten more would pop up. We spent the whole class working on this problem with no positive results. We left the class feeling annoyed and frustrated but we'll pick it up again next week. Hopefully with better results.

Pick up Script Part 2

Hello everyone.

So today I feel like shit. I've had a sinus headache for the past three days so I didn't make it to class.
I'm not sure what we're working on but I know we still never figured out the pickup script. I'm sure everyone in class tried at least once to figure it out. Since I'm at home today I figured I'd tinker around with it with the hopes of getting it to work. I know Anthony posted the script on Unity Answers but we haven't had any replies yet. I really don't have much to say today. I'll just talk to you later and try to get better!

CSG-115 Light, Camera, Action Script

So today Leroy and I needed to find an action script.We did a lot of power searching and came up with a few scripts. The only problem was they were all broken! I really wish I could have taken ITDEV-110 right about now. We even asked Mike for some help! He told us it was busted so back to searching we went. Out of nowhere I heard Ian scream "I did it!" I had no idea he was even working on the same script. I was a little annoyed but in the end he got it to work. He rewrote the Highlight script and added a GUI. It was a little buggy but he figured it out. now we need to figure out a inventory system to plug into it. You can already see the difference between what they did last semester and what we've done.

Hello Everyone.

So the highlight scripts that Anthony and I got aren't working with everything we need it to.
We have a few computer monitors in the scene that we want to be able to interact with. I thought it would be cool to have the screen Highlight when when the crosshair hovers over the screen. I thought it would be as easy a Putting a box collider on the screens and attaching the script.Wrong! For some reason it won't react the same way it did with everything else. I'm having the same problem with the patient in the scene. With the patient it's even more annoying because the hospital bed lights up like a Christmas tree! I talked to Steve about it and he couldn't figure it out at the time. Later on he got it to work. I'm not sure how he did it but I'm happy it worked!

CSG-115 Pickup Script Problems

Hello everyone.

So I have a problem this week. I've been working on this pickup script that Anthony came across.

I feel like I'm going insane! For some reason the script will let you pick up the floor but it won't work for anything else. I spent all day trying to get it to work. I put box colliders on our test object but it still won't work. I even attempted mimic everything that was attached to the floor on the test object but it still wont work with me! Frustrated is an understatement. It's bad enough I'm sick with a headache. Oh well, I'll just keep at it. Hopefully i'll figure this out!