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.

The New Build

Coming to terms that the old build was too messy to export all as one package was frustrating. Items were too scattered as there were too many people who had access to the build.

The build is more organized and runs into less problems once I limited the access of the build to Mike and I alone. While I had originally wanted to have a separate branch for the devs, with time running so short and certain imports being difficult, I have been left to just importing the new items into the new build myself and referencing the old build when something is not as it should be.

Obligatory Build Master

On November 10th, our team had a dispute in which I was left as Build Master. At the beginning of the semester, I decided not to take on leadership roles so that I may learn a lot of programming in a short amount of time. In addition, I needed time to come to terms with personal issues which I knew would come in the way of being an effective leader.

Yet as the semester came to an end, with a very messy build, I became Build Master and was forced to step up. While the terms in which I was made to do so were unprofessional and unnecessary, I took the role in order to finish the semester out. I decided to accept the role with as much grace as I could.

Piston Movement

For the piston movement, I originally thought of something with trigger box colliders, but I really enjoyed working with coroutines and decided to use it for the movement. While finding the perfect numbers was a little tricky, the movement worked the way I wanted it to:

We ended up using Mike's script using box colliders for the movement.

Working 2D vs 3D

For a while, the fireballs/iceballs thrown by temper were not setting off a trigger that was set on top of the geysers for the arctic wasteland. Mike Anderson and I worked on it one day in class as Mike could not make it that day. The balls were clones. We had to have the originals set in the scene (out of view) and we had to set the colliders as triggers. Looking in 3D, we could tell the balls were too far away in the z position.

Working in 2D, It is hard to tell how far away an object is in the z position. Toggling between 3D and 2D can help set up a 2D environment in an aesthetically pleasing way while making sure it is functional as well. 

Draw Bridge

Working on the draw bridge, I had the movement bound to keys in order to test. While I tested the object in a scene, I didn't notice until later that the pivot point did not stay on the far right as it was supposed to and so the bridge has a gap from the original position. To change that, I am going to translate the object downward as it rotates up and vice versa.