welcome!
my name is Ali, and im currently studying software engineering and management in gothenburg university. This blog will be about our game developing project using Java. you will read about the teams progress and the outcome of the game will be presented sooner in december 2010.
sorry for no updates in the blog
i have been very busy with exams and shit, so now to show some cool stuff :D..
first of all the game is almost finished, i know i suck, but lately there havent been much to say about the game because we have been doing some boring shit with connecting a database to the game to then be able to save and load the game and also use it as a maploader for the three levels in the game.Luo and Li have been pretty busy with the menu, and its starting to turn out good, so tomorrow we will dedicate the day to connecting the menu to the overall game.
as for multiplayer, yes we can play multiplayer, but on the same computer, and only two players are able to play at a time. we were going for networking, which means that other computers can connect to you, the host, through a server, and the server would then provide the necessary data to the client, those who connected to the host. this would enable us to reach the gold standards through enabling interactions from different computers, however as for the status of the game right now, i dont think this is possible.
i have been working on various things,ex the boss, creating graphics such as the boss itself and objects to pick up for eventual health increase. i need to create another sprite graphic for enemies, so that will also be spent time on tomorrow.
the groups presentation will be on tuesday afternoon next week.
and the game will also be uploaded somewhere, i dont know where but i will upload it for a download somehow.
one thing i need feedback on is that will our game be so awesome that people would actually like to pay for it ? hiihihihihihhiihih ;) only time can tell.
i will try to update the gripus progress on a daily baises from now on until the presentation day, sooooo
until then !
Sayoonara!
oh and ofcourse the boss sprite, the beta version,, i think :P
ladies and gentlemen :D
our game character is now able to shoot and take different weapons :D and its looks FKIN AWESOME !
and the most amazing thing , if the bullets dont hit a target they will bounce around on the tiles :D and the game is really smooth .
im sooooo excited how our game will end up to look like :)
the first sprint's due date is nearing upon the team, and there is a lot of pressure at the moment, from upcoming exams and and the project at the same time. sometimes i do wish that we had a bit more time with the other subjects, and i also wish that we wouldnt be reading 3 subjects at a time. compared to most universities who have 2 subjects at a time. however, i do believe that one of the goals of this university is also to teach us how to manage time, and this will be very helpful for later on in the industry world.
unfortunately i wont be able to load up a picture today of our current game, i dont want you guys to see to much hehe ;)
what i have been doing theese past two weeks, is preparing for exams, researching about networking and databases for our game, and doing assignments, alot of things still needs to be finished!
hopefully next time, i may be able to upload some pictures :) bye for now
i just wanted to say that i hate snow... i really utterly hate it ... i hope it wont snow more than it has in gothenborg.
right now im working on the maploader and doing some more configurations on the keyboard class. we had no meeting today, everyone now what is supposed to be done, i will try to present up some more pictures on the game, but i cant promise anything.
yes yes, the first sprint is done ! and our game is looking really good : D. so for the today we had a big meeting with further planning on how to create an awesome game.
We started with the sprint two, and i had made up a couple of suggestions, including to either work with the graphics or work with the requirements we listed up for the start menu.
basically we have a main game right now, as our goal was, so we can start worrying about other stuff such as networking and connecting a database for our game. I do believe that if we start worrying about this things in time , we will have it more easier later on to achieve them. I really want to go for the gold standard requirements to our game, and i hope we can get time for that.
the things we are going to do for this sprint is :
Neda/gokul- they are going for the sound part of our game, they will make nice sound effects such as when the rabbit gets hit by a shot or when he gets hurt.
ali-- maploader/ researching about database// keyboard// research about networking
luo and li- menu with own made graphics and a mouseover function.
kristoffer- swapping level mechanism. and game logics.
after the first sprint being achieved successfully, i have full faith that the team will give good results for the second sprint.
we also had a meeting with our supervisor today who was pretty impressed with our progress, right shan ? haha x)
he also talked to each person in the group and discussed eventual problem that group member had.
A message for the team is that i have uploaded a todolist connected to out next milestone (second sprint ) in basecamp, so any information about the second sprint will be available there.
Sprint 1 result :) AWESOME!!!
Off to work ;) cya soooooooooooooooooooooon :D and plz give feedback :D
Today, my friend kristoffer assigned me to create a keylistener for our keyboard, So most of the day i have been working on it. the game is right now under development stage, but it is at the moment possible for us to test it!
when we start the game, an applet window pops up with a very cool background image created by kristoffer :).
the awesome background image ! we can see a square which will later on resemble our character, and this square is atm able to move back and forth by pressing the arrow keys, and it can also jump. however the movement is not good enough because of the code handling this department of the game is not good. It will be replaced by a keylistener code so it can run better, which i was assigned to. so hopefully during the week this will be fixed. As the sprint due date comes closer, we are working very hard to finish our first sprint. For the group members who are not coding at the moment, they have tasked to understand the codes that has been created. I must say that Kristoffer is doing a very good job and i hope i can learn alot from him :).
So at the moment our game looks like this , btw the other sqaures will resemble enemies :
today the group had a meeting and we discussed some crucial things.
I once again highlighted that it is very important to be on time, for every group member. We have had some occurences that group member have dropped in from time to time and not following the exact time we have enlisted for a meeting, so today this was one of the main topic of the discussion. I said that the group will tolerate anymore late arrivals and it will be strictly written down in the checklist on basecamp. and the meetings will not be delayed just because one group member wasnt here, he or she will have to find out on his own what was discussed during the meeting and what to do.
We discussed about what type of responsibility the group members could take upon themselves in order to complete the first sprint, and then we automatically ended up in the discussion that people lacked knowledge in java and therefore were afraid to not take any tasks, however this will be discussed tomorrow whether those group members will get time to increase their knowledge in object orientated programming or if they will be given tasks to complete for the sprint, and thorugh these tasks increase their knowledge in java, which one to choose is up to me the project manager, and at the moment i am very confused of what way im supposed to take for them. i need some supervision. I also believe this problem can delay our project progress. but as mentioned i dont know right now what to do....
i also stressed that the group members that are responsible for the graphics should start working on it as much as possible because we will want to delay the graphics work for later on if we want to have a good game.
and i once again stressed upon the fact that the weekly individual plans should be uploaded to shan so he can see what is happening and what is not.
i also said to the group that they should try to have fun while working on the project because that would create a fun enivorment to work in.
Right now im working on the keyboard class or the controller class and things are quite stuck at the moment but im pretty confident that i will work out a proper solution to make things work. Kristoffer is working on the main class and as i saw it he was getting closer to actually finish it, which is very good, so basically in the code department we are according to me, well ahead but i want to everyone to code and at the moment that is not the case. perhaps if i give people some coding tasks according to the sprints i may be able to get everyone involved in the coding, but then the dilemma of that people lack knowledge in java comes up that makes me even more confused what type of step i must take. hopefully tomorrow i will be able to hand out a solution to our group members.
i will update the same page tomorrow after the groups daily scrum meeting about what decision im going to take.
Today the team had a very pleasant skype meeting . We got through alot of things today. We created a requirement list and through this requirement list we developed a first sprint towards our future game. I also stressed during this meeting that the group members need to write the weekly individual plans to shan our supervisor.
Our first sprint towards completing our game will be the following:
The first sprint:
everyone should read the code and understand it.
our goal is to have a main functioning game.
Make character move back and forth
Jump coding
having the character to walk on the map
the player class.
Estimated time for this sprint is two weeks from tue 26/10-10
I will update the blog with pictures over our progress soon :)
I just finished with the project plan and i have sent it in to the supervisor for feedbacks. for the next meeting i need to talk about something that is very important to cover for our project to function.
Tomorrow is a presentation on Scrum, the development methodology we will use in our project, and i expect everyone in the group to be there.
Im really tired now so if anyone in the group or followers have any questions, send a comment or something. For the group members, you can contact me on skype.
the group had a meeting today. What we talked during this meeting was following:
Assignments:
how the assignments were completed and how people managed to complete their tasks that were given out to them the past week. I mentioned that we needed to show more dedication towards our assignments, and work with them professionally and always strive to present the assignment as good as possible, perhaps with a touch of magic haha.
the group members have taken this into consideration and i hope that i will see better results from the other tasks.
Projectplan:
we divided the different sections of our project plan template to everyone in the team so everyone could be part of the documentation. This way of completing this task is more efficient rather than gokul doing the whole projectplan which indeed will be very frustrating for him.
here are the different sections to the group members :
1.over view(Neda)
2.project Organization(Li)
3.Managerial process plan(Ali, Kristofer)
4.Technical process plan(Gokul,luo)
deadline to complete this is wednesday, because i will have to put everything together and present it to our supervisor so he can give me feedback on it. So i hope everyone complete their tasks completely.Submit your documents into dropbox
Dropbox:
we also decided to use dropbox as a way to handle documents between the group members. This will be a very easy way to handle different files, codes, plans etc in an efficient way.
project presentation on Thursday:
we talked about this topic aswell but very briefly. i told the members that were assigned to create the powerpoint presentation,after have been seing their taskresult, that they should redo their tasks, that is the powerpoint presentation to make it look more complete.
My idea:
I presented my idea that i had been thinking about during the week. The idea was about a technical manual over the game. this technical manual will be a tool for future programmers that would like to redo the game och update different parts of the game. For us developers, this is a great way to learn the actual code and what it means through the creation of this technical manual.
Scrum Methodology:
our supervisor presented us to this methodology through a tem minute youtube clip. I really like it and this is going to be a helpful tool for me when im going to work on the workplan. This is very good way to structure your project so that you can get things done in a structured way with deadlines.
here is the link for it so you also can benefit from it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5k7a9YEoUI
So that was basically everything we did in todays meeting.
Tasks for the next meeting:
Ali: work on the overall working plan. using scrum as much as possible i should structure the work of our group for the future. Im going to work with this task as much as possible and somehow present it to my team. on thursday. Also me and kristoffer have been given the part of the project plan which is to write the managerial process plan section of the project plan.
Kristoffer: To create the concept art and work with Ali on the projectplan, basically he is also day by day developing the main class of our game.
neda: is going to work with Li to finish the storyline and make it more complete, and she has the overview section of the project plan to complete.
Li : you have to work with neda to complete your previous task and you also have the project ogranization section in the project plan to finish.
Gokul and luo: Complete the powerpoint and work on the technical process plan for the project plan.
Overall group assignment:
everyone should write a little weekly individual plan to our supervisor shan, in basecamp or mail it to him, until friday every week.
today the group had another meeting and on this meeting we did get alot of things done ! :)
here are some of the topics we talked about:
*---------------------------------------*
Group name
Group member roles
about the presentation on thursday
Checklist
Name of the game
more about game type
communication
*--------------------------------------*
--> group name
we decided to name the group to " Group Rock Rabbits". basically because we are gonna have a part rock theme music in our game, we first thought about the group name "super Rabbits", however this suggestion was overruled.
--> group member roles
today, group roles were assigned to the members of the team. Gokul and Luo was assigned to the documentation, gokul is also responsible in the graphical editing since he is good in photoshop and also for the sound for the game. Kristoffer, which will be our lead programmer, will handle most of the programming, and he also wants to do some of graphics. Neda and Li has been given the assignment to write a story line of the game.I have been given the role of project manager, and programming. Basically every one will be involved in the programming part, when they will be given tasks to create specific classes.
---> about the presentation on thursday
We talked about the presentation which will be on thursday, and we talked about what we wanted to present and what we need to do for prepare for this presentation. Gokul and Luo were given the assignment to complete a power point presentation until monday.
---> checklist
I talked about the checklist, which i had been thinking about during the past week, this checklist will be a map in basecamp in which every group members attendancy rate will be inputted. through this i will be able to see who is late and who is on time. This checklist will later on be presented in the final report.
---> Story of the game
the story of the game is about a rabbit whose girlfriend was kille by a person, which will be the final boss. This vengeful rabbit wants to revenge his girlfriend who he so much loved, so he sets himself in a quest to find the person who killed his girlfriend, and kill him. That is the basic story of our game, until monday, hopefully we will have a full storyline.
--->Name of the game
The name of the game was set to " The Vengeful Rabbit" .
-->communication
We have basecamp and we decided to use Skype also:
Instead of uploading all the members skype id on the blog ill upload it on basecamp, so it remains personal.
--> tasks for the next meeting :
Gokul and Luo: they will create the powerpoint which will consist of a concept art of the game created by kristoffer. in this powerpoint we will need to have a section for graphics, group member and roles, about the game and so on.
Neda and Li: you need to write the storyline of the game until monday, i have given you the basic story earlier, now you will have to develop this basic story into a continuing story.
Ali: To understand the main class and go through some more tutorials.
Kristoffer: is going to do some more research in overall java game development and work on the main class.
For the next meeting on either monday or Thursday, i will present an idea which perhaps can make our project even more unique compared to other peoples work :) stay tuned !
The group had a meeting today and we have decided to do a somewhat 2D platform game, more similar to super mario etc. I will not be able to present the group members in a video for now, because individual tasks and group roles have not been given out.. yet. when this is done i will present them all in a small video :)
We also met our supervisor today and he gave us some good information about important dates.
The tasks for the group until thursday 14/10-10 is that members are supposed to research about how to create an animation, such as a circle or square, and then try to move it in different directions. this task was given as a whole group task so everyone could get a basic idea of what we are trying to do. We decided that if we could start with some basic coding, which includes popping up a screen and see a square or a circle and then try to move this square, we would be much better coordinated.
one more task is to research about the inbuild graphic package in java which is AWT. Links for tutorials of theese are at the bottom of this page.
tutorials newboston: 8 tutorials
1) http://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston#p/search/9/hBhAWTSu104 ( if you understand what he says in this tutorial, dont worry, neither did i )
2)http://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston#p/search/29/XMbXnRGkRsE ( this one is a bit hard to understand aswell, but dont worry.)
Java AWT video tutorial = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb4UMdiCMIM
Alright, these tutorials should be enough for the task until thursday. Watch them, try to understand them and most importantly, practice them so you know what is happening.This should be completed until thursday, and the group is expected to have completed this task.
For the next meeting i will introduce something called a checklist, this checklist will be about the group members attendancy and how well we manage to be on time for the scheduled meetings and how we are progressing in our work.
as you can read in the description, this blog will be about a game project, which i am very excited of. stay tuned for further information of what type of game we are planning to create and how we gonna do it. I will also try to present the developers in a video :) :)
