October 31, 2005

The official cloud bug/Improvement list

Fixed or Sovled:

  • Don't need power limits for consume and release*
  • Multiple power levels is not effectively communicate*
  • Some Lightning continued to strike after the collision*
  • We didn't mention press both moust button to slow down*
  • Rain takes a looooooong time, and you have to keep pushing them together or they separate, and if you leave they stop raining. * twice faster now
  • Sticky/unresponsive space bar (missing keyup callback? Held down for too long?)* (was a sticky mode for lazy people, seems people don't appreciate it)
  • Vince want to have the ability to look from below when cloud boy is dragging the clouds.*
  • Cursor shows up as a distant blob in editing mode*
  • typo on page 3 in the PDF*
  • There's at least one cloud in the sample level that's bigger than the others. Needs to kill the big cloud dots.*
  • Strange modal behavior when rotating camera and ctrl-clicking to add clouds.*
  • It's hard to see dialog, cloudboy and cursor when you have a big white cloud*
  • Lost control of the boy when going fast (mouse extent needs to be limited)*
  • One person would have preferred a loose following camera, that tends to align itself with your moving direction.*
  • Camera update, now the boy doesn't always stay in the center of the screen*
  • Freefly mode will push the camera closer to the boy automatically*
  • Introduced free fly mode after player finish the lollipop and 10 more sec for them to enjoy the shape*

    Here are the summarized version for the development task based on Friday's usability test feedback:

    Glenn:

  • Lollipop level's grid needs to response when it is filled, like turn to transparent or disappear will be nice
  • Reset boy's cloud power between level
  • Volcano smoke particle system
  • Editing mode more user friendly
  • Develop the technology for replenishing the drought island

    Rick:

  • Save boy and camera orientation and load them when each level starts
  • Reset music looping bug after the credits animation
  • Fix the pink color banding in the menu screens
  • Fix losing keyframe at the beginning of the animation
  • Add losing state for level 3
  • Invert Mouse boolean in Bios.txt

    Jenova:

  • Change Level 1 beginning instruction to:
  • Change slow down from LMB+RMB to SPACE *
  • Emphasize the layer concept in Level 2
  • Assets for replenishing island
  • Add in default camera angle
  • F1 to summon help HUD showing all the control

    Vince:

  • Level 4 Music
  • Finishing Level SFX
  • Losing Level SFX
  • SFX for clicking on nothing or wrong object

    Erin, Kellee:

  • Update instruction menu with all the changes
  • Start making website

    Posted by Jenova at 11:19 AM | Comments (2)

    October 14, 2005

    Cloud Dash Checklist

    Production
    Kellee & Erin are going to work on
    1) Finish the Booklet design
    2) Credit List, photos
    3) Print and produce 4 copies of DVD case with booklets in them
    4) Fill and print 3 copies of the related 4 forms for Slam dance submission

    Art
    Jenova is going to work on
    1) Intro animation for dream 2*
    2) In-game Dialog & Instruction textures
    3) Change menu from Start Create Exit to Start Credit Exit*
    4) Credit animation*
    5) Consume & Release radius visual
    6) Consumed Power visual
    7) Polish Dreams Appstate background*

    SFX / Music
    Vince is going to work on
    1) Music for dream3
    2) SFX for rain and lightning
    3) Improve cloud converting SFX
    4) Intro animation BG sound / music for Daydream 3 (1 needs re-timing, 2 is going to be the in game BG music, 4 is done)
    5) Consume & Release SFX

    Level Design
    Jenova is going to work on
    1) Polish Dream 1 cloud layout
    2) Label the Grid for Dream 2 once the support is ready
    3) Adjust dark clouds layout and label the dark cloud attraction point when support is ready

    Engine
    John is going to work on
    1) Consume and Release (add/erase version)
    2) Label grid cells in editing mode & save to level file.
    For each grid cell,
    "1" means it needs to be filled by purified clouds in order to win the game
    "2" means rain has to happen in this grid in order to win.
    "3" means dark cloud attractor where all the dark cloud will slowly move to it and player will lose the game if it is filled by dark cloud.
    If none of the grid is labeled as 1 or 2 or 3, player wins the level by converting all the clouds to purified clouds

    Rick is going to work on
    1) Implement animation to each dream and credits
    2) Set up event to triggers in game instruction and dialog for dream 1, 2, 3
    3) Implement a save file that unlock different dreams

    Glenn is going to work on
    1) Finish lightning
    2) Optimize rain and cloud rendering
    3) Render Consume & Erase & Power assets from Jenova
    4) Help Rick on implementing event triggers

    Posted by Jenova at 05:35 AM | Comments (0)

    September 25, 2005

    Schedule Midterm Update

    2005fallschedule.htm

    Posted by Jenova at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)

    September 11, 2005

    Meeting Notes 9/11/2005

    Here's the update from today:

    John:
    Finished the game plan structure and multiple misc. changes. But he still need to catch up finishing the tasks assigned last week which is:
    multi layer clouds, cloud power, cloud consume & release with editing support.
    In the coming week, John's task is to:
    Stabilize Gameplay, Level Goal setup Support
    There's a lot for John to do, John please survive:p. The week after this week is relative easy for you, just to realizing rain, maybe you can postpone some of the tasks to that week.

    Rick:
    Integrated lots of stuff from summer, but still not upload to CVS yet. He started working on 2D animation text & dialogue support. The tasks Rick needs to accomplish this coming week is:
    Support 2D animation text & dialogue with multiple layers. Can run in game mode and also cinematic mode.After next week, we are going to start working with Rick hatred camera and control. Gonna be fun.

    Glenn:
    Glenn and I finally fixed fog today. And Glenn is still looking on batching and shadow map implementation which is gonna be the task for the coming week:
    Batching and shadow map implementationadditionally please give a look to other ways to implement procedually cloud brightness control.

    Vince:
    Vince is sick today, so we need an update from you. Please drop us an email with the link to the latest work if they are available. The tasks assign for this and next weeks are:
    SFX for cloud interactions, button/slider, Intro storyboard music locked

    Jenova:
    Painting 9 and it's animation is done, I'm still looking for feed back and language check in terms of the text I used in the animation. Anybody wants to volunteer?
    Painting 10 draft is done, but I'm still working on the details on it. It will take me another day to finish it. My tasks in the coming week are:
    Production Painting 4/8, In game dialog assets for Rick, In-game Dialog & Instruction Script

    Kellee:
    This is coming week I will need your help on the in game dialog and instruction scripts, and after next week we will start playing with editor to tune the levels. I think we also need to double check the application process for both festivals making sure we won't miss something important.

    Good job guys, let's keep it up.

    Posted by Jenova at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)

    August 28, 2005

    Fall 2005 Production Schedule

    Today, we hammered out our schedule. Take a look of all the tasks every week, oh my god~~~ Glenn and Rick will update their detailed plan later. Gasp, don't be panic, we got lots of things to do. But it will be quick, 7 weeks, after that we will be able to enjoy our victory.

    2005fallschedule.htm
    2005fallschedule.xls

    Posted by Jenova at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)

    August 14, 2005

    Meeting Notes 08/14/2005

    Today's meeting has been a very constructive one.
    Here's the notes:
    1) For Cloud spring 2005 wrap up
    We want give a presentation to the department including faculty and students. It may take the form of a wednesday night speaker series.

    The presentation is about the postmortem of the Cloud project and the plans for the coming two months. In order to create our postmoterm, all of us will require to write a brief postmoterm about our works, for example, engineering, art or game design. And we will spend a couple hours during the second week of the school and have a meeting with all the members including Tracy, Erin and Aaron too.

    This meeting is mainly dedicated for the feedback and suggestion for Grant project's production and process.

    2) Plans for Aug - Nov 2005
    Time is never enough for us, neither Dyadin nor Cloud. I guess that's the way human nature is. Looking at all the opportunities we are facing. We have a pretty good luck to have both IGF student showcase 11/15/2005 and SlamDance student group 10/24/2005 available for us. Yes we are going to fight for both.

    Since SlamDance has a 10/24 deadline, we will want to have all the features and assets being done before that. And spend the rest time before IGF to do bug fixing and game tunning. Kellee will join and help us on the production side. We will produce the equally or more fancy instruction menu and CD cases before 10/20 and submit them to both festivals.

    We looked at the current cloud today and look at our schedule. Since Rick is going to work at EA for the first week after the school starts, we literally only have 7 weeks to realize all the features. I am concerned that to start a new system for cloud simulation may be beyond the risk line. I'll discuss this issue with John again.

    In terms of quests and game-play, the little girl idea seems working with the four of us today. For challenge and conflict Kellee brought up the dark clouds again. Vince mentioned about flying through the dark clouds and dodge them. For story and opening animtaion, I shew Vince my story board sketch, and he is going to rewrite them, and add in music and potentially narrater's voice. Look at what left from the spring production there are still a lot things that nearlly everybody want to see:
    a.Better Cloud Rendering (sprite size and movement)
    b.Cloud on different layer
    c.fog and view frustum culling
    d.Weather effects
    e.Better and maybe extra ways to control clouds
    f.Dark Clouds


    3) Schedule
    I started a schedule template and filled in blocks and important days, for all the features and arts left to be done. I will need your opinions and suggestions to fill the finish the rest part of the schedule. I'm pretty confident of being able to get in the festivals, but it's our honor to make it a better game now. Cheer!

    Schedule for IGF template
    2005fallschedule.htm
    Microsoft Excel Version

    Posted by Jenova at 07:15 PM | Comments (1)

    May 23, 2005

    Meeting Notes from 05/21/2005

    Since Glenn is going to depart at May 27th, cloud team sets a milestone at May 24th.

    Here's the new checklist for the development:

    Glenn
    -Cloud Rendering
    -Fog
    -Skybox
    -Blooming & Shadow (maybe)

    Jenova
    -Level Assets Refine
    -Menu Assets Refine
    -Camera & Control Refine
    -Game Play Refine
    -Level X

    Rick & Vince
    -SFX&Music
    -Menu Interaction

    John
    -5*5 for Glenn's cloud rendering
    -Cloud Fighting
    -Interaction based on size & bags (no interaction when u r smaller than normal clouds)
    -Move the Entire Bag
    -Simulation popping around window edge
    -Dark Cloud behavior and Normal Cloud Behavior

    Posted by Jenova at 08:03 PM | Comments (0)

    May 14, 2005

    Summer Production Checklist

    Please Read Carefully

    Posted by Jenova at 02:29 AM | Comments (0)

    March 13, 2005

    Spring Break Work List

    Integrate Bushido into CVS. (John, Rick, Glenn)

    Tweaking processing prototype. (Aaron, Jenova)

    Implement editing and bags in C++ prototype. (John)

    Vince & Dinehart, please follow your schedule according to Feb 20.

    Posted by Jenova at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

    February 20, 2005

    Cloud Schedule

    Feb 20

    Engineering: Finish up input/camera, finish cloud boy flying prototype, Material/Texture integration, clean bushido integration (Glenn, Rick)
    Art/Music: Jenova: Finalize Cloudboy / Vince: List of SFX
    Gameplay: Scale Bounce, Wrap (John), Bounce (Aaron), balance processing demo, MAKE IT FUN!! :)

    Feb 27

    Art/Music: Jenova: Level one assets design, half of the modelling done.
    Gameplay: Bag (John)

    March 6 (Sunday before the GDC)
    Engineering: Input, dots integrated, camera, cloud boy integrated, scene description, shaders, texture manager, simple sound (Glenn, John, Rick)
    Art/Music: some simple effects; Jenova: Cloud Boy final model/tex, first level environment (islands, urrs, trees)
    Gameplay: Level 1 FUN!!! in Processing, SFX in processing
    Story: Storyboards for all cut scenes

    GDC (7-11th for Dyadin folks)

    March 13 (Spring Break Start)
    Engineering: XML, Cloud Appstate Spec, Level Editor, Sound Specs, "Dyadin" Whisper
    Gameplay: Design more levels on paper and in processing
    Story: Animatic for intro

    March 20:
    Engineering: Level Editor (Rough) -- draw, save, load. Bushido Support [level], Animated Texture Support
    Art: Extra Assets, Birds Dolphins, Volcanos
    Story: Animatic for the first half cut scenes

    March 27:
    Engineering: Cloud Boy Animation Support
    Art: Cloud Boy Animation
    Gameplay: Put Level 1 FUN!! into Bushido
    Story: Animatic for the last half cut scenes

    April 3:
    Engineering: Save/Load, Shadow Casting
    Art: Menu (Jenova); SFX for Menu (Vince)
    Gameplay: User Test (internal to IM, friends)

    April 10: Respond to user test

    April 17: FEATURE COMPLETE, but also, Debug the Lack of Features (-Rick) while flailing wildly (-John)

    April 24:

    May 1 : BETA

    Posted by at 05:50 PM | Comments (0)

    February 13, 2005

    Our first glimpse (last sunday)

    Image(17).jpg

    Posted by edinehart at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

    Feb 13 2005 Notes

    Production
    *asset management (stephen)
    *blog permissions (call Justin)

    Art
    *Cloud Boy final design, 3D model (1-2 weeks)
    *Design Briefs, flesh out and review (everyone)
    *trailer (thursday, Erin)
    *Flying logo, animatic, and music

    Engineering
    *Cloud prototype, explore advanced rendering for clouds: GLSL, multitexture, animated texture integration into Bushido. (1-2 weeks, Glenn)
    *Bushido Mouse for camera control, menus, 3D movement (Rick)
    *Bushido Main camera view (Rick)
    *editing tools (John)
    *Dots particle system (John)

    Prototypes
    *Balance
    *Have newest by Thursday morning

    Thursday is Bing Day.

    "We are somewhere between no problems and infinite problems." -Rick

    Posted by Jenova at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)

    February 06, 2005

    Weekly meeting notes, Feb 6th 2005

    Production
    -Assets Managment (Stephen, Feb 13)
    -Blog Permissions, especially for John & Glenn. (Stephen, Feb 13)

    Art
    -Design Briefs (Stephen, Jenova, Feb 13)
    -Animatic Tweaking (Jenova, Feb 10)
    -Trailer (Stephen, Feb 13)

    Engineering
    -Cloud Prototype (Glenn, Feb 13)
    -Bushido Main Game View (Rick, Feb 20)
    -Editing Tools, Shaping Prototype (John, Feb 13)

    Prototype
    -Scaling (Aaron, Feb 13)
    -Dark Clouds(Aaron, Feb 13)
    -Avatar (Aaron, Feb 13)

    Music
    -Music for Dark Cloud (Vincent)
    -Longer Cloud Theme (Vincent)

    Posted by Jenova at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)

    January 30, 2005

    Engineering To Do List

    Glenn: We three engineers met after the meeting and came up with these tasks that needed to be done to make the Cloud game happen. So to quote Mario, "Here we go!"

    Some high level things to consider:
    Cloud Appstate (The One) -- we have this, at least a clean bushido build.
    Get CVS Setup
    GUI (Rick)
    XML: Save games, INI files, Game scenes.

    Prototypes (Priorities 1 (highest) - 5 (lowest))

    *Gameplay/Cloud Behavior (John)
    a. Leonard-Jones Particle Clouds (1)
    b. LOD - partitioning (1)
    c. Fluid Simulation (layer 3) (5)
    d. Wind design (static) (2)

    *Terrain (Rick)
    a. Partioning -- quadtree or BSP (2)
    b. Modeling -- tiles vs. heightmap vs. triangles (1)
    c. Gameplay - what do you do to it? (1)
    d. Lightning, moisture production, rain, trees, growth and decay
    Rendering (1)

    *Sound (Rick)
    a. Muisc and Transitions (1)
    b. SFX (1)
    c. Fuzzy modulation (4)
    d. Sound effect variety/randomization (3)

    Camera (Rick and Glenn)
    a. View and FOV (1)
    b. Physics - springs - force functions (2)

    GUI & HUD (Rick and Jenova)
    a. ASSETS & Layout (1)
    b. Animation? (3)
    c. World map (Radar) (2)

    Rendering (Glenn)
    a. Sunlight & lighting
    b. Animated Textures
    c. Cloud Rendering -- corresponding to particle simulation, height, and all that jazz that deals with clouds.

    Level Design
    a. Serialization?
    b. How do we plan to design the levels? What tools/gui interfaces will we need to make that possible?

    World design
    Placing Islands

    Island Design
    Placing clouds
    placing cloud generators (near mountains)
    terrain
    design wind (grid/vector field?)

    Posted by Jenova at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

    Weekly Cloud Meeting, January 30th

    To Do

    1. Experience
    a. 1 Frame of gameplay (Jenova)
    b. Anamatic (ETA 10 Days) (Dinehart)

    2. Engineering
    a. Cloud Rendering prototype -- 1 Cloud (Glenn)
    b. Extended Cloud Particle Sim (John)
    c. Mouse (Rick)
    d. Timer System Bug (Rick)

    3. Processing Prototype (Aaron, John)
    a. Port Cloud/Particle Behavior from John
    b. C++?

    4. Administrative (Dinehart)
    a. Rebalance for pay rate change
    b. Blog Permissions for Rick, Aaron, Glenn, et al.

    Posted by Jenova at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

    Our meeting W/ Bing Gordon

    Our partial team meeting with Bing Gordon in the game lab last Thursday was a great experience. Hearing him challenge our ideas, created a great discourse with the team.

    I asked him if he would advise us and he agreed. I look forward to his continued involvement over the course of the next few months.

    Below are the primary points I took away from our meeting, please feel free to add to this list:

    1) Scope: We need to identify key features to accomplish, and focus on creating quality in our game through those features.

    2) Presentation: For others, and ourselvesm, a concept game and trailer must be created, to insure common vision, within the team and community, moving forward through the production.

    3) Game System Rethinking: The game system is a playground, the elements toys; as such we need to have each piece unto itself to inspire play. Together then as a complex system they will create a emergent system of fun, within the playground.

    Posted by edinehart at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

    January 23, 2005

    Weekly To Do List 1/23/05

    Timesheets and Payment:
    Everyone have his or her time sheets to Jen by Wednesday at noon. If they go more than above your bi-weekly cap you need to pass it by Jenova and Stephen.(Everyone)

    Script: Continue (Jenova and Dinehart)

    Flowchart: Continue (Jenova and Dinehart)

    Bushido Engineering: Mouse issues, Terrain, Integrate w/ John, Alpha Bucket, Camera Control (John, Glenn, Rick, Aaron)

    Glenn, Rick, John:
    - What is sufficient for first-try to support Cloud gameplay (so designers can start tweaking)
    - Pseudo-code of what the rendering & support systems should look like.
    - Terrain
    - Data representation (quadtree, grid, tiles vs. mesh, paging & LOD, etc)
    - LOD (what is the extent of the world?)
    - interaction (rain, trees, lightning, tornados, sucking stuff up and putting it down elsewhere)
    - rendering
    - Cloud behavior & simulation
    - Layer 1 / Cumulus - similar to processing prototype
    - Layer 2 / Stratus / Small storm - scale, behavior changes, layer transitions, rendering
    - Layer 3 / Cirrus / Thunderhead - scale, behavior changes, layer transitions... fluid sim?
    - Space?

    In all these engineering areas, consider:
    - priority of desired new features with regard to Cloud
    - development time
    - leveraging existing bushidoness as well as other libs/sample code

    Rick & Glenn: Skim the tinyxml docs and check out example code
    Rick & Glenn: Skim my project, "hippo" (keep it secret, keep it safe)



    Processing Prototype:     Basic cloud interaction, variations of control method(Jenova, Aaron)

    Music and FX: Continue (Vincent)

    Misc: Network Storage(Rick), Get Petty Cash System Working (Dinehart)

    Posted by edinehart at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

    January 16, 2005

    Jan 16 2005 Meeting Minutes

    To Do and Deliverables by Next Week -- Sunday January 23rd

    Rick:
    *Call john, ask when he's getting back, how he's going to fit in with our process.
    *Work on Bushido: little technical details, i.e. mouse, fix timer bug in kernel, appstate switch bug, intercepting the

    rendering code, alpha bucketing
    *Get networking space for CVS, asset storage, website.

    Glenn: Alpha bucketing/intercept rendering code, camera, cubic spline path

    Jenova, Erin:
    *Outline out the game demo
    *Describe what player is doing in every choice.
    *Script and Flowboard draft by Thursday for comments.
    *Flowboard. Tracy wants an application spec, that is, the flow chart, what is happening on the start screen, options, game

    state, end state, cinematic states. Write a script for the story/gameflow. Draft by Thursday for comments.

    Erin: Semester Schedule, Budget

    Aaron: Processing Prototype. Building Cloud class (base class, inherited classes).

    Tracy: Send us an example of a game flowchart, storyboards, script, etc.

    Vincent: next generation scoring sketch

    Cloud Game Notes

    Date: Sunday, January 16 2005
    Time: 3pm (start)

    In attendance: Dinehart, Aaron, Tracy, Chris, Rick, Glenn, Jenova, Vincent

    Administrative: Budgeting

    Timesheet: January 26th -- biweekly
    Sign up with Jen Stein
    We have hourly rates -- Jen Stein will know the rates.

    Keep recepits and give to Jen at the end -- keep track of how much we spend.

    max: 12 hours a week, $10-12/hr.

    *What can we get done by the end of the semester?
    *Playable demo, essence of the game by? mid-March.
    *Possible to extend the game in the summer (no promise)
    *Get the system of "Cloud" down, one level to start, looks nice.
    *Make sure game play is playing.

    Prototyping
    *Java OpenGL, get the beta of Processing
    *Build something very basic in the engine.
    *Rick: 10-15 lines of C = 1 line of processing

    Plan of attack
    Jenova, Aaron: build prototype in Processing. Cloud simulation/game mechanics, tile-based terrain
    Glenn, John, Rick: Extend Bushido, work in parallel

    Tracy: Basic spec of the game, underlying features the same between the prototype and actual game. Spec needs to be given right away.

    3:30 - 4:07: Jenova giving presentation from: http://interactive.usc.edu/projects/cloud/
    Basic game ideas.

    Tracy: happy if we have a build up, simple tasks: learning how to manipulate clouds, drawing with clouds, and then a large

    goal to build a thunderstorm. Lastly: Payoff, we see an animation (in game, pre-rendered) to see environment change (flowers grow).

    Tracy also says "we're not producing a game, we're investigating an idea."

    Tile Based Terrain
    *How big are the tiles? (n x n)
    *Do we procedurally generate, what's the interface?
    *Develop tile system
    *Each tile a class (inherited from a general tile type), the inherited tile would have an update function that is affected by the gameplay.

    base class (do we inherit this from a basic game object type):

    class ITileType
    {
    render();
    update(delta_t);
    }

    Q: How does the interaction with the terrain work?
    A: The clouds can make a rainstorm, the rain falls on a desert tile and then changes it into a field -- makes it grow grass/trees.

    Crazy Idea: Use tile-based system to build terrain regions (desert, forest/field, water), use the tiles to help procedurally generate 3D blocks that "join" together.

    Tracy: Checkpoints instead of Milestones. We ought to decide which path to choose (what to do and cut) based on how far/fast research on (engineering) topics go -- i.e. cloud rendering.

    Rick: Clouds are more important, we don't know how long it will take (research). Difficulty: We want to wait until John DeWeese gets back.

    Posted by Jenova at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)