Progress Report

Since I have been busy this week, I haven't had much time to work on the project with Dustin other than working on details and getting our GDD put together.

 This week I have learned about planning out games and making formal definitions for the plans that I make. I have never worked on a larger scale game like this (all my previous 'games' have focused less on gameplay and more on the concepts for the class I made it in, e.g. computer graphics), and so it is a good learning experience to focus on the gameplay and think about how to make the game fun. Likewise, my previous projects in computing have been mostly defined by professors, so I'm learning how to design my own project formally.

As far as teaching others, I have shared the idea for Lucky Cat Bazaar with the class and taught them what Dustin and I have been working on. Similarly with what I have learned my self, I have been teaching Dustin and working with him as I learned these things myself. Although I guess I'm not teaching him from things I've known, I'm learning about all these aspects of making a game with him.

GDD v1.0

This is the link to the first draft of our GDD

https://docs.google.com/a/nd.edu/document/d/19mkiGfIV5JtiSaixYRL7APigp4T8HwW1D7FcqmnffqI/edit?usp=sharing

P0 Team Formation

Team Name: Mid and Feed
Team Members: Dan Gomez & Dustin Liaw

A4

To enhance my A3 submission, I added a few formal elements, dramatic elements, and cool effects to spice up the gameplay. As far as formal elements go, the first thing that I added was really simple: lives. Before I had it set up so that if you fall, you just get placed back on the first floor, but now you will lose lives and eventually get a game over if you lose all your lives. Another element I added was a jump power up that allows you to jump when you get it. I also attached some dramatic elements and effects to this, which I'll talk about later. In A3, you didn't need to be able to jump to win, so I also had to change the level design a little bit to make the power up necessary. Lastly, I added some GUI features to give the player more feedback.

For dramatic elements, the biggest addition I made was with sound effects. I added a sound for collecting the balls and the power up, as well as a sound track that plays when you have the power up. These help to make the game a little more exciting (and possibly silly).

Finally, I added a number of effects that make the game considerably more exciting, I think. Now when you collect a ball, it will give off a sparkle (firework explosion) that just makes it look more exciting to collect the balls. The power up that you pick up to jump is also a simple stream of particles that will disappear when the player picks it up. In addition, once the player picks it up, his avatar gets an aura that shows the player that he has powered up (in addition to being a little silly).