Corleone Diaries 16/12/2009 WB

Today we had our review meeting for stage 3, User Requirements with Derek. This involved reviewing our Updated Project Plan, Use Case Diagram, Use Case Details, Game design artwork, Storyboard and Game Prototype. The overall outcome of the meeting was very good as all the Corleone team had put a lot of time and effort into doing as good a job on the project as we possibly could and this was reflected in the scores we achieved. I was really proud of the fact that both Ashley and Mike received distinctions from Derek for their Artwork and Prototype in relation to the ‘Space Invader’ game we are working on. Both lads thoroughly deserve the distinctions and when you see the game up to this point, you will understand why, it is fantastic, they have put so much of their selves into this project (ideas, conceptions, originality) along with added time and effort. Così saluto i miei due Don di persona per un lavoro estremamente bene fatto, lei entrambi lo merita. (So I salute my two fellow Dons for a job extremely well done, you both deserve it.)

Reflecting upon this stage 3 task and as Project manager for it, I felt that I neglected to delegate and split the project up at the beginning as well as I should have done. Although this did not detract us from doing the project really well, I feel on reflection that it would have worked even better if certain elements had been broken down into smaller manageable portions. This I will take on board and if I am project leader again will implement into another stage of the project.

At tea break our Corleone team had a discussion on what ideas we had for an end game sequence, Mike suggested adding a smoking effect to the gun picture, I suggested a video sequence with an U.S. army being led by George Bush, Tony Blair, Simon Cowell, Len Goodman, Piers Morgan and Margaret Thatcher, with the caption
‘If you thought that lot were bad, LOOK WHOS COMING NOW’.
Ideas also talked about were for ‘Win Game’ ‘High Score’ ‘Power Ups’ and actual audio music. These will be discussed, reviewed and decided upon later and I will blog and let you know what we have decided, when we have made our choice.

WB Corleone Diaries 9/12/2009

Since we started our Space Invaders project our Corleone team (Ashley, Mike and Wayne) have come up with many new ideas to improve the look and playability of our game.
These range from;
· New Spaceships we have created
· Alien Spaceships we have created
· Background level scenes. These are famous landmark silhouettes and skylines from around the world
·Background level music
·Improved spaceship animation.
·Start and end sequence with video and music

After discussion amongst our team we have gone ahead with including new spaceship models that we have created and it has vastly improved the visual and playability side of the game.

We have also come up with the idea of a Godfather theme to replace the “Space Invaders” theme, and we have all thought up of different ideas for this game. This will hopefully come to fruition after we have finished this Space Invaders Project, as I think our ideas are brilliant and if we, by that I mean (Ashley and Mike) can get them up and running, will be something to behold. (Horses heads/Flying pigs/Model T cars just to name a few of the ideas we have thought of).

Once again these have come from having little impromptu team discussions during lesson and break times.

Corleone Diaries 08/12/2009 Team Meeting

As present project manager, I arrandged a team meeting with my other two partners Ashley and Mike.
The reason I had a team meeting was for several reasons, these being to find out if everthing was going to plan, if the project was on track and that we were all clear on what we were all doing with the project and keeping one another up to date with any changes.
Also in regards to game we are working on, the meeting allowed us to air any queries we had come across and discudss the queries, plus any other issues.
(I feel it is far better to have team meetings regularly to discuss any project issues than to get further down the line and find you have a big problem that if raised and discussed earlier at a team meeting would have saved a lot of time, energy and money, not to mention jepordising said project and possibly not being able to meet the completion date with the project outcome first envisaged).
The outcome of the team meeting was very good with our project progressing reall well and our team all knowing what we need to do to keep it on track. Also all the game queries we had were discussed and rectified where necessary.
Reflecting on the team meeting I feel that they are a very important part of a project as they enable us to reiterate and focus on our goals, whilst also being able to examine and re-evaluate if necessary any problems or queries the project may have thrown up.
I feel that it is vital that all members of a project team are fully up to date with the project they are working on and are also aware of one anothers project worries and concerns, as it is also my belief that by having regular meetings, discussing project team worries and concerns collectively that it reduces project stress, this then produces an enjoyable team project where positive and productive project ideas are more forthcoming, thus improving the project and project working conditions and environment.

We've decided to change the player one and two colours so its easier to identify who is who and whos score and bullets belong to who. We have chosen blue for player one and green for player two. The alien bombs are now red.

Themes

Currently we are having a space invaders theme for our space invaders. However we are thinking of having two themes, with a full godfather theme, along with the space invaders theme. Our plan is to include both themes, and add an option in the options menu, to switch between the themes.

We have not included this feature yet, as it has been quite difficult to come up with the right sprites to use instead of a ship. Some ideas we have come up with are: a gun, car, don corleones head and a horses head. However none of these have worked out.

Plans for the future

We have decided to advance our game further with more features, we are trying not to over complicate the game but with our prototype already up and running we are develpoing more advanced features and better quality art work. The spaceships are now very detailed as are the aliens. We have plans to add a boss level as well as many other features which we have yet to dicuss. I feel that the game will be really enjoyable and of a high quality because of how long we have spent on the prototype and GUI design.

Prototype changes

Hey ash, I have been testing the game and I have found the following errors

• The mothership is still visible when the player dies
• The text is in the wrong place for player one and two
• The aliens get too low before the game ends (should be at the black line (earth))
• The spaceship can move at the end of the level but is centered on the new level, do one of the other.
• The player sees "Game Over" when a life is lost, needs to be changed to "Live lost" or something else.
• The speed we increse the aliens needs to slow down between the levels. Level 5 is fast, no skill involved, makes the game too easy.
• When playing one player, two player should be disabled, vice versa
• Different colour for player two bullets
• Should we have one or two boss levels? level 5 and 10?

Corleone Diaries more pics

Hi ash and Mike what about these for background also have china, japan, usa, stonhenge

Corleone Diaries 20/11/2009

Hi Ash and Mike have found this spaceship and adapted it so it now has guns, what do you think?

Spaceship designs

Some spaceship designs for us to look at. Let me know if you like any?

Art work decisions

When we started drawing up ideas of what the game might look like we all agreed that, although a black background is easier we all felt it was too dark and needed some colour. We played around with a few ideas trying to incorporate the godfather theme. We found the best fitting skyline was Manhattan so we created a few different ideas with that. We also tried a full space theme which would have animated surroundings. Eventually we decided to leave the full space theme and go with a mixture of both. Here are some of the backgrounds we created.

We like this image the most because it has the Manhattan skyline and the blue night sky rather than black. Our decision might change again as we draw more images but for now this is the background we have chosen.

We liked all the ideas we created but have decided on the top image with the night sky.

Corleone Diaries 18/11/2009 VP

Cheers Mike, have just e-mailed derek and said that I have just updated the UCD in VP, so could you and Ash have a look and see if I have missed anything. If I have then blog me to tell me what to put right and I will do it.
OK
Wayne

VP

Hey Wayne. We are just working on the GUI design. I think we will have to have an option of full Godfather theme or aliens theme. Its so much easier to complete the alien theme so that is what we are working on. We'd rather get a complete project then struggle with the other design but we are still working on it. I will load up VP and have a look at the changes now. Don't worry about it if you're not feeling well.

Corleone Diaries 18/11/2009

Hi there Mike and Ash cannot be there today as I am on the sick but I think we need to put into place the changes we spoke about regarding using cars, background weapon used to shoot. By doing this I can amend the Use Case Diagram, as we are using terms like aliens, mothership etc. Also on the UCD we have used the wording 'Change Options' was 'Options' we need to amend this wording in our Tof R or any where else it appears to keep consistency.
If you can think of anything else then Blog after 1pm today and I will be ready to reply as I will treat this afternoon as if I was at College by siting at my PC at home.
OK
Wayne

Hi there Mike and Ash, have just been doing the descriptions and have noticed that the aliens drop bombs but no damage is incurred to us if bomb hits us. Do we need to alter this so that if we get hit by more than 5 bombs, that is to say on the sixth bomb hit we die.

Corleone Diaries Confused Wayne

Hi there Mike or Ash if you read this can you reply and tell me when I get to the Stephenson College Staff screen and then go to - higher education - computing, where then to get to the visual paradigm? (Have got that far then end up clicking on Portal which takes me to our web pages) I do not know what to do to get to Visual Paradigm place Help!!!

Help! Manged to get through and on tne stephenson college web on saturday, since then I can connect but thats it, once I put in Staff address or http://he-track:8080 it does nothing and tells me cannot connect, although it did work first time round on Saturday.

Any ideas on what I can do would be helpful. See everbody Thursday night.
Wayne

Corleone Diaries 31/10/2009

Ai colleghi ricopre.
Hello michael e ashley potete auitarmi. VPN lavovare, ma come posso ottenere il visual modello?

To my fellow Dons.
Hello michael and ashley can you help me.VPN working, but how do I get to the visual paradigm?

Team Leader Changes

It has been decided that for stage 3, Wayne will be team leader, and i will be team leader for stage 4. This is because I am the most experiened in C# and enjoy doing programing. I will also be able to help the other members in the team as I have a greater knowledge of the language and game programming, as i have been developing a prototype, which has helped me a lot in finding out how difficult certain features are to implement.

This has helped us to define some new features (which mike has already described) as we can discuss features we want in the game at college, then i can go and see how easy/hard they are to implement and, depending on the difficulty, add them to the list of features which will hopefully make our game unique.

New game features to be agreed

Start Game: When the game loads the player will be presented with a main menu. You will have the option of one or two player, Options, Instructions and exit. Under the options sub menu will have, sound effects on or off, music selection or music off, and game difficulty. The player will have to select one or two player to start the game.

Move Aliens: The aliens will move left and right and slowly descend at either side of the screen. Each alien is animated and will randomly drop bombs on the spaceship, one bomb at a time.

Move spaceship: The player can move the spaceship along the bottom of the screen, left and right only. The spaceship can fire a maximum of three bullets at a time unless they have collected a power up which allows them to fire more.

Kill Aliens: To kill the aliens the player must shoot them using the gun of the spaceship. The player can only fire a maximum of three bullets at a time upwards at the aliens. One bullet will kill one alien.

Win Game: The player must kill all the aliens by shooting them before they reach earth. The player has three lives to kill all the aliens unless they collect more lives from the power ups, once all the lives are gone the game is over.

Levels: The player will advance to the next level when you have killed all the aliens on that level. The speed of the alien decent will increase every level and the number of aliens will also increase every 3 levels. The game pauses at the end of the level, where the player presses a key to start the next level.

Music: Background music will play when the game loads and the main menu is showing. Music will also play while the game is being played unless it is turned off. The player can select different music from a list found in the options sub menu. The player can also chose to have music off.

Sound Effects: Sound effects will play when the spaceship fires, when the spaceship moves across the screen and when the aliens drop the bomb. The sound effects can be turned on or off before starting the game found in the options sub menu.

Score: Keeps a score to let the player know how well they are doing, aliens are worth 100 points, mother ships are worth 250 points.

High Score: The high score keeps track of the highest score achieved during the game. The highest score will be saved and displayed on the screen. For two player the highest score of each player will be recorded.

Instructions: The player will find a list of instructions on the main menu which will describe the purpose of the game and also how to play the game including controls.

Two players: The player can select one or two players, another player will be needed for two player. They will work together to kill the aliens but have separate scores. If one player loses all their lives they are out the game, if both players lose all their lives the game is over. Each player will have different controls on the same keyboard to move and fire.

Power ups: The player can collect 'power ups' which will be randomly dropped. These will be one of the following; extra lives, temporary extra bullets and a temporary shield. The player can collect a maximum three power ups at a time.

Second review

Last week we had our second review which unfortunately didn't go very well, we had a few minor changes to make to all three personal skills pages which hadn't shown up in design view. we also had a few missing links and spelling mistakes. All the changes have now been corrected and we passed the review with a merit. I have written a list of jobs for the team to complete over the break. Once they are complete we should have stages one and two complete.

We have also written and expanded the terms of reference features which Wayne has yet to read. (I will post new changes) We decided to expand our game, adding new more technical features to make it completely unique to anyone Else's. Because of the position we are in and how well the team functions we believe we will finish all the features on time and have a great finished game!

We are managing to stick to the project plan exactly! Let me know what you think of the new features please Wayne.

Jobs to be completed by next week please

Evaluation of stage one/two

Assigning team roles including choice of project lead and planning lead.
I was very happy with how the project was set up, I was glad to be working with Wayne and Ashley because I knew we would agree on how to go about tasks. We managed to write a list of characteristics a team leader should have and we decided I should be the team leader. We also decided Ashley should be Webmaster as he has the most experience and Wayne would record all the decisions made in the project.


How well tasks have been assigned to individual team members
It has been my responsibility to assign the tasks to each team member, I gave Ashley most of the major changes to our project website and Wayne some of the minor changes and I have shown him to how to do the basics such as changing an image. Wayne has been learning the basics of dream weaver and html code on Wednesday morning with Colin which he is really enjoying and has found very useful for this project. I think he feels more confident doing the tasks on his own now. However he still needs reminding to synchronising the site before and after working.


How well the project web site is helping or hindering the development of the game
I feel that having a project website that we can all access at the same time has really helped. It was very helpful having a template to work off as well as being about to syncronise so we all have the latest copy of every page.

Ash's Evaluation

Assigning team roles including choice of project lead and planning lead
When we had to choose our team leader and team roles at the beginning of the project, our was completed quickly and easily. We decided that mike should be the team leader, as he has experience in websites and programming (although this doesn't include C#), and he has better communication skills which will be useful in helping others and assigning them their jobs.

How well tasks have been assigned to individual team members

Mike has been doing a good job of assigning tasks to individual team members. If there is a new page to be created, or the page layout needs changing, the work will be spread between me and mike, as we have the most experience in this area. Wayne, as he has at the moment knows little HTML or how to use dreamweaver, has been able to edit the pages text, as this is easy to do. However, Wayne has been enjoying doing Web Development with Colin, so me and Mike are helping Wayne out when he wants to know how to edit a page, or explain to him what certain code does.

Although Wayne has not been able to do too much in the first two stages, he will be a big help in the next stage as we will be doing UML diagrams, and as he has already stated he enjoys creating UML diagrams and using Visual Paradigm, he has already been assigned this task.

How are you finding working in teams as opposed to individual work?
I am finding working in teams a lot better for this sort of project, as there are different skills needed that 1 person on there own can't do. For example, i am good at programming and web development, however, when it comes to design (such as web layout, or art and user interface for the game) I am not good at, which is something that can be done by another member of the team who is good at it.

Corleone Diaries 13/10/2009

Last week my team Corleone's and I, had our project assessment passed after correcting the minor defects that had been found and then having it scrutinised and given the all clear by luke our SQA.
From my own point of view I think we have a fantastic team with us all contributing greatly to the project in our own ways. I myself am learning so much from my two team members as my base knowledge of coding is nowhere near as good as Ashley or Michaels, but both of these persons are teaching me a great deal about coding, using web pages and html documents, all of which will really be of use to me in my job as an I.T. Co-Ordinator as I would like to become more of a technician. At this point I would also like to add that the morning course with colin, learning basic html coding over the last three weeks has improved tremendously my understanding of coding and I think in the future this should be incorporated in the first year at the beginning of the HNC/HND course as it really does help in understanding basic coding. This thought is also the thought of Tracey Johnson who is also on the same course and who like me had never done coding.
The idea of the project being done in teams has appealed to me and I believe it is working as their is good motivation and competion to see who can do the best, with good banter and teasing during assessment marking etc between all groups (real good atmosphere amongst us all, with us all being able to have agood laugh and joke as well as getting on with the serious side of things). In our team we have divided the tasks up amongst ourselves and given tasks to who we think best to do a particular task and this has worked really well, but as I become more competent at coding I will be looking to be given a coding task as this is something I want to learn to do well.

Corleone Diaries 04/10/2009 Project Assessment

On the 30th September we the Corleone team (Wayne, Ashley and Michael) had our first stage (User Requirements) assessed at a project meeting. The assessment team consisted of Derek Peacock (Overall Head), John (Software Assurance Manager) Luke (Software Quality Assurance) and members of other teams as peer assessors. The assessment itself consisted on grading our deliverable requirement user tasks from poor through to very good. From the resulting assesssment, if there were too many deliverable failures the team would have to go through a second project assessmnet meeting, if however there were only minor or cosmetic changes needed, then it would be passed on the team showing that the said changes had been made. The result of our project meeting was that we had our project passed pending us putting several minor cosmetic faults right and resubmitting the project, this we did as a team and the following day we resubmitted our project and had it passed, we are now moving on to stage 2.

Looking back and reflecting on the Project Assessment Meeting, which I thought was really good, as it gave positive and constructive feedback in what I also felt would be the scenario in a proper games producing company. It also made me think on how we could cut down on the amount of minor and cosmetic errors we had made (could have been major) and I believe in future before a Project Assessment, we should as a team go through each task systematically with a critical but constructive eye, with the two non task persons quizzing and checking the person who has done a particular task and his work. This I believe would cut dramatically the amount of minor errors and pick up any major errors, all of which cost time and money in a real situation further down the line.

Language Choice Part 2

Derek has finalized the decision on the language choice, we will be using C# and XNA. I am happy about this because of having tried XNA before and thought it was easy to create games with.

C# final decision with XNA MM

Today we have finalised the decision to program Space Invaders in C# using XNA. We are very happy with this decision because we already have a completed version of space invaders using XNA. We have moved on to stage two this week, we have analised the risks of the project and listed possible action if any of the risks happen. We will soon be assessed and start writing the user requirements.

Corleone Diaries 18/09/2009 WB

Just a mention about the Perforce PV.4 version control. This really is a good version control package for us to have as it allows different persons to use the same source files whilst at the same time It isolates work that is not ready to be shared by the rest of the project. Also each time content is changed and checked back into a content management system, a copy of the content is saved and its identifier (version number) is incremented to indicate its difference from the previous copy.

Corleone Diaries 16/09/2009 WB

This week went really well, with our team keeping ourselves on schedule. Firstly we had a discussion on quality priorites in relation to our game project from a list of fourteen requirements. After a group discussion we came up with what we felt were the top six requirements these being the following;

1. Simplicity
2. Understandability
3. Usability
4. Playability
5. Consistency
6. Originality

The results of our discussion and subsequent list was borne out y the other two groups whose top nine answers were the same but in a slightly different numerical order, allied to the top 4 answers being very much the same.

We also had a management discussion and it was decided to assign John Stewart as Software Assurance Manager (SAM). I feel this was a goood appointment as it brings John into the project and gives him a sense of belonging into our class instead of just being a helping hand.

The last thing to mention is that 'Don' Michael and his sidekick 'Il profosore' Ashley (Corleone Clan) managed to get the Perforce PV.4 version control up and running along with our Tutor extrodinaire Derek 'The Brain' Peacock.

Language Choice

After a debate with the whole class, we have decided to program the game in C#. This is because that most of the class prefered to use Visual Studio 2008 than Netbeans. Other advantages of Visual Studio 2008 over netbeans are :

• It is installed on all of the machines
• XNA support
• Friendly Interface
• Detailed error checking

However there are advantages for netbeans over Visual studio, which are:

• It is multi platform
• Can run in a web browser
• The code can be printed to HTML
• Derek knows Java better than C#

Last week we decided roles for each team member, first we listed 10 qualities a good team leader should have then decided who we think would best fit that role.
We decided on a good team leader needs to be;

Organized
Good at keeping dealings
Experienced with software
Motivational skills
Experienced with planning
Creative Outlook
Communication Skills
Good social skills
Punctuality
Good co-ordination skills

We decided that I should be the team leader. Ashley is now web master and Wayne is Secretary.

At class last Thursday night our team Topaz (Team consists of Wayne, Ashley and Michael) after a discussion on who would be the project manager selected Michael as project manager. This was based on his ability and communication skills. We also discussed which programme language and which game project we would like to work on. In the end we decided on C# as the language and Space Invaders as the game.

2D Game choices

The options that have been discussed for the final 2D game include;

• Frogger
• Snake
• Space invaders
• Breakout

Snake

We first decided snake might be the simplest choice of game because there is only one moving sprite however once the snake has eaten a block it must add a block to its length which could cause a problem. I also think it would be a harder choice because the snake moves automatically and you change the direction and the body must follow the first block. We have decided against this game.

Advantages

• Simple design
• Simple game play
• Small game
• Few sprites

Disadvantages

• Difficult code
• Few additional features

Frogger

Frogger was suggested but I think with several different moving sprites at different speeds and a multi-directional sprite (frog) there would be a lot of code. The game might also include a random function which takes up move time. I think frogger was too big of a game to complete in the time scale while learning a new language.

Advantages

• Creative images
• Interesting game play
• Many extras
• Few sprites
  

Disadvantages

• Lots of code
• Lots of different sprites
• Copy write
• Repetitive game play

Breakout

Breakout was suggested to be an easy game to write however we could not think of many features you could add to create a more interesting game. I think the movement of the ball alone would take time to perfect and making it bounce off a moving platform I think would cause further problems. We also struggled to think of any additional features to enhance the game.

Advantages

• Simple game
• Attractive layout
• High score challenge
• Few sprites

Disadvantages

• Scoring code

Space Invaders

We have decided that space invaders is the best choice of game, we know it is not the simplest game but because of the duplication of images and code I think we can complete a simple game in the time given and enhance it without too much effort. By making a simple game we can add several features which will improve the game play without taking up much time.

Advantages

• Interesting game
• Duplicate code
• Lots of simple extras to add
• Simple graphics
• Left and right keys only
• Interchangeable colours, spaceships and background
• Easy score feature

Disadvantages

• Lots of moving sprites

We have decided as a group to create space invaders as a 2D game because it seems to have more advantages and less disadvantages than the other game choices.