Alby Update

For the last couple weeks it seems as though the team has been largely focused on finishing the major mechanics of the game so we can move into a polishing stage.

For my part I worked on the "sticky" code to make alby stick to certain blocks in the game.  The problem had two parts. For an unknown reason when alby jumps to the left to stick onto a platform the stickyness was not enough to hold him in place and eventually fell off all together. This problem can be countered by at every update when alby is sticking to a left wall creating a small force that also pushes him upward. This is not a very robust solution, but because of the mysterious nature of this bug it may be the only solution that we can come up with in a reasonable amount of time.

The second part is slightly more complicated. It is that when alby is sticking to a moving platform alby must move along with it. Originally i thought that i would be able to just set his velocity to the velocity of the platform that he is sticking to, but because of the way that platforms actually move themselves their velocity does not directly translate to the velocity that alby would need. The next route was to set alby's position relative to the platform, but that caused another round of strange errors. Eventually through a combination of these two methods I was able to come up with a passible solution at least until we can iterate on it again in polish.

Other than the mechanical additions there has been a push to put several more levels together. I have put a fairly unique level together of decent size that will need to be updated to be compatiable with the newer versions of the game, but it is one of the few to utilize sticking to the bottom of a platform.

Update

Last Spring I was tasked with implementing a spawner for the platforms.
I accomplished that, but then there was a conflict with a rewrite of the platform code
so I was forced to write it over again essentially from scratch. I improved the code
as i re-wrote it in an attempt to make it more "artist friendly" as our team has takled about.
There are more public variables to teak gameplay that are easily accessible.

I also wrote code that fixed a bug in the GUI, but it seems as though other
code written may force me to do another rewrite of this, but that is yet to
be determined.

Sarah and I were also able to during class time implement a basic sunscreen
pickup that makes the player invulnerable to damage for a specified duration.

My task for this week is to somehow dynamically cast a shadow on to alby.
I believe this will be accomplished by shading him darker when he is under
a platform (and therefor in a shadow).

Progress Update

Last week I managed to complete the script that was in charge of managing the texture of the player.
It dynamically changes the texture applied to the character according to the current health of the player.
For now it is all placeholder art, so it is not too flashy putting a brick texture on our character, but once there is actual art it will be much more impressive.

This week I was tasked with implementing a way to spawn platforms or other things during gameplay. The end goal of this mechanic will be to have clouds, but for stand in we are using platforms. So for no apparent reason the platforms will despawn (clouds will dissipate). There were minor difficulties in the shadow collision detection, but ultimately they were resolved and i was able to complete the task.

Scrum Is Up

After the meeting with the producers last week we laid out a User story and talked about all the elements required to make that a reality. The user story was "User Experiences hiding in the shadow", for this we decided on the obvious things, Sun Light does damage, user has health, user get's hurt in the sun and is safe in the shadow, this involved the making of a few art assets.

The task that I checked out was to investigate and implement changing the texture on the player character as he/she/it is damaged by the sun. I believe I'm fairly close to having this task done. In my research I've also found that it may be possible for us to lay textures over one another or even blend them to cut down on the number that is required to be made, but that may prove to be no more efficient. Part of the problem has been that the artists have to create the assets and so us all working on the same thing is difficult because many of the programming projects are dependent on the assets not yet complete, not that this is anything against the artists. It is just the way it is.

By thursday I hope to have the texture switching correctly, but possibly only with placeholder textures and model. which could hopefully be switched out with minimal effort when the art is done.

Progress.

As a team it seems we have decided on a fairly linear path with 2.5D graphics. By fairly linear I mean that we are going to not limit the player to only one "track" we are going to have three. So while the player is forced into 1 of three side by side paths at a given time it still allows for more creativity in puzzle creation. Besides the camera view and the track system we looked at concept art for our main character and seem to all be in agreement that we about a white blob character with large cartoon eyes. I made the suggestion that the character instead of having a normal jump animation can squish down the longer the player holds the jump button and will jump higher according to how "squished" it became. This was well received and I think a likely candidate for the game. My job for this week sprint is to research and implement some of the physics of the game. I've only spent a few hours with unity so it will be very much a learn as you go process for me, but from what I have seen of it I like it.

Brainstorm

Inspirational Graphics:

Questions and Gameplay:

        Target Age group?

        Levels, open world, platformer, action?

        Length of game?

        Hook mechanic?

Agenda

I believe it is one of the great failures of our society that it has become socially acceptable to proudly proclaim one's own incompetence in mathematics or science. It would be absurd to hear someone similarly declaring that they simply don't read very well or don't think that reading is applicable to life or bragging about how they've never read a book. Yet, it is common place to hear someone use a phrase like "I just never got math" or "what's the point, you never use it once your out of school." It is precisely this attitude that guarantees critical thinking and logical thinking stay out of mainstream society and trapped in schools. I feel personally robbed of my education from hearing adults in my life say things like "I never did well in math either". I took that and used it as an excuse to limp along in mathmatics and even when I began to think of it as important I was never quite able to recover.

My agenda is to educate students at a relatively low mathematical level in simple math. I feel that by helping kids form a strong basis in the lower grades it will provide a much better launching platform for them to enter into Jr. High and High School where I believe negative attitudes about math are most common.

Using advanced mathematical concepts like Calculus or Linear Algebra in a game scenario is beyond me, but I can see how the foundation of math from simple addition and subtraction through geometry and possibly algebra could be incorporated fairly organically. I personally like game where you build and empire through abstract data, like wealth or population, but I also very much enjoy games where you build something more literally like building in the Sims series or Minecraft.

I feel like combining these into a game about construction for children would open the door for a lot of mathematics into the gameplay. The first part of the game would be managing a very simple business which consisted of a budget. Income and Expenses woudl have to be maintained to maintain a positive cache flow. This, however, would likely be a fairly small portion of the game.

The main game play would involve building structures from simple blueprints.  The building might call for 10 5foot pieces of wood. The Player would then have to order a similar amount of wood. On a particularly easy level there might be 5 foot pieces available for purchase, but as the player advances they would have to find the best deals by buying varying lengths and cutting them to meet specifications.