damijin
/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />Each weekend, between Friday and Sunday night, each member of the team will be asked to make a post in this thread describing what they did this week, and it is strongly asked that you provide something to show everyone so that they can see what you did. If you did something this week that's very back-end code related (Dave or Greg), then it's understandable if there's nothing that can be shown. For An or myself, I will expect a post every week showing either concepts, finished art, mockups, or text designs.This thread is going to be the lifeblood of our progress until we get further along and can start setting up more formal milestones, so it is to be taken very seriously. We're going to get this shit done and rock the world, because its really sad to see games like Dream World making fans and money that should be ours /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />Kick ass my friends!Week of 2/25 through 3/4/10I didnt manage to update this over the weekend as intended. However, there is a lot of great things to report that got done this week. For starters, there was considerably work done by Dave on the server which is shaping up nicely and may be able to communicate with a basic client within a week or so time.An continued to develop great art including a prototype for the Golem race. We worked out an agreement regarding Golem armor (and everyone's armor really), and Dave and I reduced the necessary statistics at launch for 6 to 5, and have far fewer secondary stats. We developed further backstories for more of the races. We also had a discussion regarding combat range and the client's display of combat that will allow the game to look exciting without having a true range/distance system.This week I want:Dave: To have the server at a point where we can have a very basic client/server communication. (Might just spit out the text that the server is currently showing for debug purposes).Greg: Create the very basic client to talk with the server. An: I'd like to work with you to discuss regions in the game and environments.Me: I'm going to attempt to establish some of our skills for the races.Week of 2/14/10 through 2/21/10Well, we're getting halfway through February, but things look good. I really want to have us at least going a serious beta test by early summer, so lets keep cracking the whip!coloro:#FF0000/coloroDave: Your goal this week is TBD until I ask you tomorrow morning. In the meantime, my thoughts are that you should continue to flesh out the basic systems. The rest of us are desperate for any glimpse of server progress, so if you have even a basic text client or something that you use just to test your code -- we'd love to see it. My hope is that by the end of the week we'll have a pretty solid server side combat cycle going, which will let us transition into Greg's goals soonish, which are...colorc/colorccoloro:#9932CC/colorocoloro:#008000/coloroGreg: As of today (Sunday) you've got enough avatar art to build a very basic combat simulation. By the end of this week, I'd like to see it working even if it isn't pretty yet. Start with just making them swing at each other and knock health bars down (this is a simulation, all the health stuff will be done on the server soon -- just make it for visual's sake as we try to assess the combat style). At first, they dont need to move at all. Once you have them fighting from toe to toe, try moving them to opposite ends of the screen when the game starts, and make one of the 2 guys run over to the other in a very fast dash at the start of combat. After that, they should just exchange blows like they did in the middle of the field in the first combat. Once you have one of the characters dashing and attacking after the dash, we'll do the "critical blowback" effect. At random intervals (in the real game, it'll be each time you get a critical hit), one of the characters should knock the other one backward. How much knockback we do is up to us. We could do it based on the damage so that SUPER strong hits send things flying into the wall -- or it could be a standard amount,The other thing up for debate is, when you know someone back, should your character follow their knockback and stay right on top of them? Or should your character stay where it was, and dash to them again on the next round? Im not sure which is better but we can always experiment with both.Anyhow, only one character should attack at a time. Then the next character. Try to put the delay between the last attack and the next attack very very low. Make combat fast and frantic looking. No long cooldowns or standing around. I know this was a huge list -- you dont need to finish it all, I'm just giving you a gameplan of what to do for the next while.colorc/colorccolorc/colorccoloro:#0000FF/coloroAn: You did great last week -- your contributions were fantastic. This week we need to get that UI going. Get the windows made and get the assets to Greg whenever we can. Those are priority #1, and you and I should talk about what will go on all the various panes.colorc/colorcMe: This week I will finish the UI definition with An and get EVERY window designed for that and hopefully get those assets to Greg within 7 days. I will also be offering a lot of guidance to Greg on the combat style and what we can do to make it look awesome without being too hard to do. I will also begin to figure out specific things in terms of content, and I'll be going through the design doc and slashing things that we can save for post-launch or severely decrease development requirements (at least for launch) to save us time. We're on grind mode, and we ARE going to get this done in a few months. It may not be the big picture we want, but it will be good an it will generate revenue to build what we want with all the features we want. Until then, bust out asses on the essentials and put it out there quick![Week of 2/07/10 through 2/14/10]Dave: Your goal is to set up a basic simulation of the game's encounter system. This will involve a character who is in a zone and finds encounters within a random interval window. Once an encounter has been triggered, the player character and the enemy should take turns hitting each other, causing a health variable of each to decrease. For the sake of simplicity, player characters can go into negative HP, but when the enemy dies, the player should resume the behavior to find the next enemy.Greg & Mike: Our goal this week is to establish a solid candidate for the user interface design. We're going to work on mockups and create a structure that makes sense (as well as define the final resolution choice). Once we have a solid design candidate with art assets, Greg will begin to code the interface structure (making windows open/close and things like that).An: I didn't have a chance to talk to An yet about his weekly goals, but I would like to see a character design (male + female) for at least 2 of the player races in the game. I want at least one of those 2 races to be animated by the end of the week (simple idles animation + animation for "walking" in a zone looking for encounters). These goals may be updated after I talk to An.An's Updated Goals!: First of all, An already created the best damn UI mockup we have to date. So, I feel like he should earn a free weekly pass! But since I'm a slave driver and terrible man, I'm going to have him do two things. 1) Help us adapt that beautiful UI design to a functional interface with all the features that we need it to have. 2) Flesh out his dope picture of our fractured world some more with color and prettyness.[Thread Format]I would like each of us to make only one post in this thread, and to continually update our posts, just for structure purposes. I don't want the thread to get mega long and then have to search through everything to find something. I will update this main post with each week's goals, and we'll all have posts below where we will state our weekly achievements with the top of our post being the newest achievements and the bottom being the oldest (so it's easier to read through quickly for new thin
an
Last reply on Feb 07, 10I don't want to start on another race until I'm sure on the structure of the game, sprite development depending gears equiped. Also, it is not possible to have 4 characters , illustrated, and animated and look good in one week; specially when I'm not working full time.I may be able to finish Human female and male. But not more.About UI design, I would like to play an important part in designing it. UI is important for me and I hate to have the wrong style to go with my art and lore. A bad choice will destroy the coherence of a polished ga
damijin
[2/07 through 2/14 - Happy Valentine's day!]My goal this week was to work with Greg to establish a solid design candidate for the client's UI. Instead, we had a great surprise on Monday when An submitted his own design that turned out to be awesome. I worked with An and Greg for the rest of the week to figure out how to make everything we need in the UI fit within An's layout, and I think we've done so for the most part (though many specific windows are not yet defined.)All in all, I think the UI design is great. I proposed a long-winded adaptation to our hotbar for increased functionality in a limited space and also described how skill-use queues.Some UI Specifics:1) The resolution is 720 by 540.2) Only one pop-up window may be open at any given time. Opening another window pane will change your existing pane into the new one.3) We will display a larger close up character profile of the head in the bottom left (Character pane), along with other vital character statistics relevant to battle.4) HP bars will appear above or under the combat avatars, not along the bottom of the screen or in a window (though the HP integer may be shown in the character pane).5) Total number of hotbar icons is 13. One of them is a default attack which must always be in slot #1. The other 12 can be set with any items or skills you have.In addition to fleshing out UI design, I added a bit to the design document (nothing major except a possible "arena progression system" where you unlock new content by playing in the arena -- but I'm not super sure we'll ever use it or
