Gold Milestone

We just submitted out Gold Milestone. I guess now I can get some sleep. Some much needed sleep.

Gold awaits us...

It's hard to believe that today (it's just past midnight as I write this) is going to be the last day of our production phase, and the submission of the Gold Master. In what can only be described as organised chaos, we've been working like mad to get everything finished. If only we had more time!!! I think we've all learned a lot of things, like how to do some things well, and how NOT to do some other things. Like making sure that for each system that we build there's at least two people who know how it works! Alternatively, creating more in-depth documentation so that anyone who needs to understand it can do so fully by checking the docs.

Oh well, I have to get back spending a bit more time on the project before getting a few hours sleep for the final day ahead.

Down to the wire.

Well it seems theres always something to do even at the last second.
So many things to do and little time to do them, isnt it always this way.

Many lessons have been learned, "Planning is everything!".

Well back to work...
All best team.

Keegan

Textures!

I guess the most fun part of my day today was texture blending the team's colour onto the avatar, and the Timeghosts. The Timeghosts look flipping awesome being alpha blended and texture blended.

1 Day Left

You heard the title, we have one day to go before we have to submit this thing. Everyone here is exhausted... Beyond exhausted actually. There is a special level of exhaustion reserved for game programmers, and workaholic insomniacs...

Wait...

Is there really a difference?

Wow, what can I say. We made some more progress today, I'm very happy with the results even though we still have much to do. We added what I think are some cool camera effects, and some extra rumble effects for the Xbox 360 controllers. We tweaked the controls and started fine tuning the menus which turned out to be not as simple as we thought. We're putting as much player feedback as we can so the experience is richer for the player. Also we have a tool for selecting the game configuration such as game resolution and hardware options. And we only have 2 days left!!! I still have some of my hair left, but it's going to be an interesting couple of days as the inevitable deadline marches towards us.

The excitement is building as the finish line approaches...I'll be glad to get some sleep at the end of the week!

Final week

This is the final week for production. Actually the Gold build of the game has to be submitted on Wednesday then we have two days of post production, this will include compiling our Post Mortem document. I forget what it's like to have a free weekend. Most of us have spent every day for the past eight weeks working on this final project. I sure hope that all our hard work pays off in the end, I sure know that we deserve it.

Also, it's hard to believe that school is at an end. It has been thirty-two weeks since we started IG and man how the time seems to have gone by in a flash.

Teaser Art

Last week marketing got us to redo some of our art because, frankly, it's not the best. Over the weekend (on top of all the coding I had to do), I managed to whip up this teaser picture for our game. What do you guys think? I hope you like it.

We're gunna' need a montage

Greetings

Well, we've got two days left to go, and as the title suggests, there are a lot of things that could be better. I wish we had another couple of weeks or so to work on the game, but unfortunately that is not the case. In two days, we have to submit this thang'.

A quick cliche,
Carpe Diem.

Final Week

This is the final week of our course. Final submission of our game is on Wednesday and the last day of our course is Friday. We still have a lot of work to do between now and Wednesday. I'll be here Sat and Sun working on the code, and most of the team will be too.

Paul

Late Night

With today being our Beta Milestone, I spent a lot of time last night polishing up sections of code. Most of the game elements are in the game, and it it looking good (or at least I think so, but I'm probably biased).

We've also got some testers coming in today to playtest that game. They were supposed to be coming in yesterday, but lets just say that we failed on that one. Probably the biggest problem was that an hour before the testing was supposed to take place, everyone was frantically working on and uploading last minute fixes/improvements into the game, but because of the sheer ferocity of the moment some people didn't check their code before committing , then everyone had buggy builds.

On the flip side, today we can only improve on our performance.

Leaps and Bounds

Wow...a lot of progress today. Most of the game elements are now present in the game engine, it's just a matter of polishing and finishing the build we currently have in preparation for submission, which is what we'll be doing tomorrow. I anticipate a busy day ahead!

Paul

Crunch time!

The heat is on. Tomorrow the Beta build is due. This means the game need to be finished, minus a little polishing. It also mean no sleep tonight. Bring on the V!

Megadoom

Greetings,

Less than 24 hours before the beta build is due... Scary stuff.
The game isn't in a perfect state (far from it, in fact), but it has come a long way in the past week. The Alpha build was bordering on unplayable, the current build we have at the moment is a lot more stable than the one we submitted last Friday, and there are hints of game-play present...
Even slight hints of "fun", one might say.

Anyway, we have a lot of work to do, so I better get back to coding.

If two's company, and three's a crowd, then what is four?

Testers and Beta Build

Thursday... the day before our beta build is due. We have testers coming in today, in fifteen minutes actually, and we are rushing around trying to get everything ready for them. The testers were meant to come in fifteen minutes ago, but we found some last minute bugs and managed to get them to come at 2:30 instead of 2pm. How embarrassing!

The game itself now is looking pretty nicely, except for the fact that when you try to turn right or left with the Xbox controller you spin around at like a million kilometers an hour.

I have just been assigned the task of writing out some instructions, so better get on to doing that! Let's hope that we're ready in... eleven minutes.

User Feedback

Well its over due but the ability to provide the player with text feedback is finally done. Now when the user is able to interact with a game object or something occurs in the game that the user should know about a messege is sent to the screen. Now how cool is that!

The Level Editor

Well its been talked about, but here is the overview of what in the end it will be able to do.

Make Maps!

In detail...
Add lights, fog, custom made models, map size, premade models, buttons, walls, portcullis(Gate), rotating walls, shops, spawn points and im sure theres more.

Well thats what im working on. Must find out what day we are able to release it to the public.

~~Keegan

Patches

With the Beta milestone this Friday, we've got a lot of work to do to deliver on what we promised. I've implemented the collisions again (for what I hope is the last time), and they are looking really good. Your avatar has momentum so it bounces off the walls and energy is lost in the collision.

I've been working on blended models for Timeghosts and the Timewake, but so far I have had no success. Timeghosts and the Timewake require partial transparencies, while the GUI components require full transparency for their borders. I hope to get it finished tomorrow.