The Final Steps

As we approach the final few deadlines everyone is starting to get restless and working as hard as they can in order to be able to deliver a properly finished product for the presentations next week. So I have to do my part as well, therefore, here I am, blasting awesome music through my headphones, typing this update for all of our faithful followers.

As a little starter, have this awesome poster I've been working on:

Le awesome flyer

There've once again been a lot of changes and features added, for example we finally have our first fully finished level, more tweaking for better gameplay, and updated menu screens. However, those are just small things, the major things we've been working on are particle effects and online multiplayer.

Particles
Particle effects were the first thing we tackled, because particle effects are AWESOME, this was quite a pain in the ass in the beginning to get working correctly, we've had all kinds of strange things happening, particles being drawn on top of everything, extra particle emitters being added (not supposed to happen). Most problems were quite easily resolved as most of it had to do with calling the proper methods (and not calling certain other ones), however, we were left with one problem that took us quite a bit of effort to get working the way we wanted it to. The exact problem we were struggling with was that we added nice particle effects with every bullet we shot and collided with something, but the emitter kept on emitting and wouldn't stop on it's own. We tried a lot of different things, but in the end the solution was actually quite simple, just give the emitters a lifespan so they'll automatically be stopped after a certain amount of time has passed. Now we have particle effects in tons of places, whenever a bullet collides with something, and even our menu's have particle effects, because more particle effects is more better.

Awesome particles in menu

Fire with particles

Online multiplayer
The other thing we've been working on is online multiplayer, because who doesn't want to team up with (or beat up) his friends over the internet? This was quite hard to implement as well, probable even more so than the particle effects. The problems already started when we tried to just simply connect to each other and a connection just couldn't be established, after quite a bit of frustration it turned out that the problem was simply ports not being open. Of course we had some more problems after that, they were fixed quite easily with a little bit of effort since the problems just came into existence because enemies and bullets etc. weren't changed yet to account for the transition to online multiplayer. In local multiplayer all data is stored on the host, however, with online multiplayer data has to be stored on the server because otherwise you'd get desync issues where the players see different things on their screens. Some of those changes are actually being worked as I'm typing this blog-post.

Additionally
In this final week we'll mostly be working on finalizing the online gameplay functions, adding more awesome particle effects, tweaking the game to make the gameplay enjoyable, testing for bugs and working on some promotional materials.

Finally
It's time for me to get back to working on the promotional materials so we'll be able to blow the audience away. Thank you all for reading this blog-post and hopefully see next time.

Hey Everyone, we're back!

This week we finally had the chance again to meet up at the university. It took me quite some effort to get back to my regular sleep-schedule again and regulate time spent "not working on the project" to a minimum.

It was Christmas for us developers too, so we took a 1 week break to see our friends and family. Not to mention gathering up energy to blast into 2014! But not everything went according to plan. Some family members were struck seriously ill and a teammate left our team. So, I want to say goodbye to our old teammate Yannick who served us from the start of this project. We wish him the best and hopefully he will find a course he will enjoy.

New features

Even during the holidays, we still managed to get some work done which resulted in some new features and an extensive variety of bugs. We have added some new features, including a couple of new bosses, more playable characters, and something we really had to add, sounds! So, without further ado, we introduce you our new bosses "Dr Wily" and "FireMan"!

Dr. Wily (phase 1)

FireMan

FireMan is not yet completely finished, but he is meant to be almost exactly like the boss in the original series, with a few AI tweaks to make it more challenging to defeat him. Dr. Wily's AI on the other hand is designed from scratch. Dr. Wily is a two stage boss battle that will really put the player skills to the test. His first phase consist of his newest creation hanging from the ceiling, bombarding the player with bombs and the flea enemies (as seen on the screen shot). His second phase is his emergency escape pod that really puts up a fight. He is a lot stronger than the other bosses and is a worthy final boss to defeat.

For the new playable characters, we added Axl and Zero, including MegaMen we now have 3 playable characters to choose from. They each get a unique ability and coop ability. MegaMen is able to slide (this was already shown in the midterm presentation) and will be able to buff allies to deal more damage. Zero has the ability to block incoming damage and can also grant his teammates a shield which functions similarly. And last but not least, we made it so that Axl could angle his shots and gave him the ability to heal his allies' health and weapon power, which is needed to use the weapons other than the standard blaster.

Tweaks

The last few weeks, we have worked on improving the camera movement, buffing the enemies, redesigned level selection, fixing bugs, and made some custom sprites. These changes will definitely alter the way this game is played, because the enemies actually deal much more damage than before. The camera movement is, due to bugs, still not in its desired state even after improving it. We still have lots more work to complete, but now with less people.

All weapons currently available to the player

We worked on improving and adding more weapons for the player to be able to unlock and use, additionally the player needs to be able to dodge the new attacks that will be used by the enemies (mostly bosses).
We revised the player loading and player saving methods to work properly, and we fixed some bugs that occurred afterwards.

What are we gonna do next?

In our last team meeting we redesigned our "to do" list because of our teammate dropping out. During this meeting we made some decisions. Like the decision we made regarding the changes we wanted to make to our level selection system, and changes we wanted to make to the background sprites and character sprites, for a more enhanced gameplay feeling.

This week we will focus on finishing the most important things we definitely need to have to have a game that will be fun to play repeatedly and still be challenging. Finishing the game levels and making the game playable with a functionally good camera are key objectives that we need to achieve this week. We also need to improve the game functionality as well as getting the return to game/restart game functions to work properly with the reset function.

Midterm

Welcome everyone at what is probably the last update of our blog for this calendar year. The exams are over and all that is left for us is this blog post before we can celebrate our holidays as well. Since our last update a few weeks ago, we have again been doing well on our way to achieve our goal. In fact, we are already able to play parts of the game! In this update, we want to raise attention for the things that have kept us busy the past two weeks and already look forward to the things that still need to happen in order to run the game properly.

Also, since the last update of our blog we have received bad news from one of our team members. We started this project with five members, but after a while it became clear that we were getting an additional team member. About a week and a half ago, we received the news that we were back at the original five names which we started this project with. We want to thank Jop for his services and wish him the best.

Midterm presentation

So, what have we been doing the past two weeks? As a matter of fact, this week was the midterm of our project. This means that we were expected to show our tutor, the Teaching Assistant and fellow students what we have been doing so far in the project by means of a short presentation and getting our code checked. We also had to fill in a form containing our own experiences so far.

On Monday we had our code checked by the Teaching Assistant and got some feedback on it. Also, we had to sent in the form on this day. On Wednesday, in addition, there was a short presentation which had to be about what we had done so far and what we plan to do before we can call the game ‘’finished’’. In addition we had made a brief demo of the game play so far. For this game play demo we made three short introduction levels, consisting of a simple single map, the same map for co-op and a single square map with a boss-fight.

Metalman

But what is it exactly what we have been working on? This two-week period, there is a lot of work been devoted to the different types of enemies. Those are now almost entirely implemented in the game, except for the enemies we want to create ourselves. Furthermore, there has been a lot of working at the game states, which are now all working. And moreover, this week was worked on improving the classes for both the enemies and the players. There is now a general class containing methods and variables that are used by multiple enemies and players. This makes it easier to add new players and enemies in the future.

In the meantime, we also had some problems with Visual Studios. When some of us were trying to open the game’s solution, the program suddenly refused to open it. In one situation, this was easily solved by choosing another start-up project. On the other hand, the problem in the other situation is still not solved. Probably lies in the lack of a specific component in the program. Both the folder as a completely new installation of Visual Studios have not had the desired results so far, but we will keep trying!

For that reason we have not been able to complete the first level of our game completely. Most of the enemies have been implemented as well as the background after splitting it (it was too big). The design of the first level is already done and the place of all sort of different things, such as enemies, power-ups and tiles in this first level are discussed. The only thing we have to add here to complete the level is to translate the whole level into characters in the Notepad document. Furthermore, we also want to look at the different types of enemies in this level and distinguish them in strength. Now they all do the same amount of (little) damage, making it virtually impossible to die if do not play like a complete retard.

Background, tiles & HP/WE bars

For the holidays, we have not made any concrete plans. So far we know there are at least two members not able to work on the project the whole one and a half week due to vacation, holidays and learning for exams. But that’s cool. We can all use a little break, I guess. 

Moving On

Here we are again, with this time mainly a summary of what we have been doing the past few weeks, and what we all want to achieve the upcoming weeks. Furthermore, there will be items discussed such as our weekly meetings and visiting a workshop on particles.

But let's keep the set chronologically and talk about what we have been doing since our first and also last update. As you could have seen in the previous update, at the time we just finished the Analysis Document , which meant that we almost certainly know how the original game was put together at this time. We have achieved this goal mainly by playing the game itself or analyze game play videos on the internet. As a result, we could easily get an idea about how we want to edit the game and all the different parts in it. This brings us automatically to the Design Document , which actually came after the Analysis Document . This is mainly what kept us working the past two weeks. It contains a number of basic aspects of the game itself, but the big difference with the Analysis Document is that this really is about how we want our game to be in comparison with the original game. You could say it describes how we want to improve the game, but also has some basic aspects of the game in it, since we do not want to improve every single aspect. A few examples are how the player interacts with the different objects, the story-line and how the design of the different menus is going to be. But also how we want to achieve this through the code is an important part of the Design Document.

Design Titlescreen

One of the things that came up in the Design Document and we want to implement our new game are called particles. We got this idea as a result of the workshop that was given at Utrecht University. Three out of six persons of our team attended this exclusive workshop and have been able to find out about the particles and how they can be implemented in a game. These will in normal circumstances also be implemented in our game. At least, that is the plan.

In addition, we would also like to talk about the meetings that we have every week. Usually we try not to use only the mandatory hour on Thursday afternoon with our tutor to discuss our project, but we try to plan an additional meeting every now and then to make sure that everything runs smoothly. It is very important that everyone knows their responsibilities and is actually working on his part of the project . In this way we thus ensure that the group has constantly updates of how things are going and how the rest of the team stands in terms of progress. Although it is often not possible that we are all present at this meetings, it is nevertheless proved to be the most efficient way to communicate with each other in our team.

Design Options Menu

Now that we have talked about the things we have done in the past few weeks, it is time that the things we want to do next few weeks will be discussed. Now that we have the analytical phase behind us, it is roughly said time to start making the game itself. This sounds easier than it really is going to be of course since it is a lot of programming and mistakes are easy to make, but we will try our best. We even had our first troubles while programming. An error occurred in the player physics and it took over two and a half hour for us to figure out a simple ‘’2’’ had to be a ‘’3’’. But to achieve our goal everyone in the team has taken separate tasks or been allocated some of them and this person is also responsible for this part, of course. Our plan for the upcoming week and a half and the presentations after it are to make at least one playable level with all operating elements that apply to it and the player and try to finish the versus-mode. For this element we also want to have at least one playable level.

Design Music Menu

Briefly , we finished the Analysis Document and Design Document last week and we started programming the game itself. At the moment we are already working hard on achieving our goals, while the design part also is being worked hard on really hard.

The Beginning

This is our first "real" blog-post. In this post I'll give you some quick information on what we'll be doing for this project and some extra info on the side as well.

Let's start with some information about the team. Our name is as you might have already noticed Pownage Productions (logo made by our awesome team captain). We chose this name because we'll be powning the other teams and will definitely come out on top, or try very hard at least. More info about the team members can be found at: About Us

The goal of this project is to implement a retro game and extend some parts of it with state of the art technology. We'll be doing a remake of Megaman. 

  

Most of you should know what I'm talking about, but for those of you that don't I'll give you a quick explanation of what megaman is. 

Megaman is a side-scrolling platformer where you play a character named, you might have already guessed this , Megaman. Megaman is a robot, created by Dr. Light, who is constantly trying to save the earth from the evil Dr. Wily and his creations. 

     

To save the earth Megaman must first defeat eight bosses before he can go to the last part of the game to finally beat and stop Dr. Wily. Upon defeating each of these bosses Megaman gets access to new powers that can be used against Dr. Wily.

If you're interested in a more thorough analysis of analysis of Megaman, you can find our analysis document at this link

That's all for today, we'll be back soon with more info for all of you.

Pownage Productions

Alle dingen hebben een begin, zo dus ook Pownage Productions.

Dit is onze eerste update en zal zeker niet de laatste zijn. Gedurende het komende blok zal deze blog regelmatig worden geupdate met informatie over de stand van zaken en vooruitgang van ons introductieproject gametechnologie.

We hopen jullie vanzelf weer hier te zien,

Pownage Productions People