Don't break the build

As we approach Demo day, where we will show off Alternalien, I have been working to tweak every setting in the build so that it is as smooth and consistent as possible. Emil mentioned a few weeks ago that he hopes our team breaks the cycle of working on the build directly before we present.

I intend to take his advice. As build master, I will restrict access anyone has to the build 2 days before we present. Up until then, I only want the build to get polished and add in sounds with a few last minute sprites and animations that need to work.

Poor planning

Poor planning at the start of the semester led our team to the "crush time" feeling, the one of a "death march". We were unable to see how we had over-estimated our ability to create 3 biomes with multiple levels with the lack of experience on our team.

Had we decided from the beginning to simplify the game even more, the game would be much more polished and a lot smoother. Furthermore, going back to the team synergy, had we worked better together, we could have learned and accomplished much more with much less stress.

From the beginning, we should have encompassed Kaizen...and especially so when Emil wrote it on the board for us to make a point.

Adding Kaizen to our work ethic would ensure we accomplished more throughout the semester more efficiently.

Adding music to the build

Once we received the audio for the game, I put implemented the background music for the Main Menu, Level select, and base level. Playing with the background music makes the game seem more complete and it really sets in that the semester is almost over and we will no longer be working on Alternalien.

While importing, Crushers inspector items were missing. When punching, the game would fail and I was required to add the audio in, since it was a part of the coroutine.

Team bonding

If we do not succeed this semester, it will be because the team was too stubborn to put aside petty issues and work together to make our an environment one of fun and excellence and commitment. Ego and selfishness run rampant.

Emil sat us down and told us that we must get past this in order to succeed. In capstone, we have to work together. Personally, I agreed. Our team took turns around the room telling someone one good quality and one they should improve. Afterwards, Mike treated the team for dinner at Dave and Busters for bonding as an apology for his previous actions.  

There was not a prevalent effort for professionalism in the team and, with the way the program is set up, we should treat this class as we would our career. It will be our career if we learn and exert the effort it takes.

Hopefully, the team will step up and realize how much our futures are affected by who we know and what we experience here today.

Main Menu Finished

Once I finished the GUI and found correct placement and sizing for the buttons/font, I created the necessary scenes for each buttons and linked them to ensure they worked.

For the Alien Data and Personnel buttons, I created a png for the normal and plan to use the same GUI.skin.

Menu GUI

Once I watched a few videos on the GUI, I was relatively simple to make the menu GUI and implement it. My first try, I over-complicated the task and tried to put an extreme amount of detail which gave my a very ugly result.

Taking a step back, I found a good font and colors. I then created a simple black box and a green one for the hover and normal, switching the colors on hover.

Main Menu Script

Working on the main menu script was simply linking buttons to the scenes. At first, we considered using a pre - made button without text for the main menu, since no one in our class has experience with the UI. However, it was much more time and effort to create each button and use that technique.

The harder part was coding the skinned buttons to be an acceptable size no matter the screen size. The font size made it very hard to hard code in a specific number. Once I found the fontSize component, the menu script came together.