This week I've been working on making the game feel more arcade like. I tweaked a few variables in arcade mode to give it a more "wave-like" feeling. I also tweaked the capital ship AI to make it feel like more of a fight. In attack mode, they approach you slower so they have more time to fire at you.
I also changed the turrets a little. I widened their range of movement to a 180 degree dome. This makes it a little easier for them to fire at you. I also tweaked the AI for the second cap ship so that the weak point isn't enabled until you destroy all of the turrets. That makes the second fight a little harder and a little more involved. To compensate, I reduced the shield strength of the turrets as well, and I think I'll make them vulnerable to weapon and big bomb pods so it's not so hard to kill them.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Polish and Submitting
The last few weeks have been all about polishing the game and making sure everything works and looks nice. Also, we submitted our game to the XBox live community for play testing. We got some good feedback about the game and a bug that we hadn't caught that has to do with saving and loading the scores. Daniel was going to look into making it a synchronous call so that the game waits for the data do save/load and hopefully that will fix it.
I worked on the sound system - the framework for making our sounds 3D was in place but wasn't being used. I also fixed the problem with too many sounds being played at once so there was a lot of distortion. I edited the song Burning ambition so that it looped and made the music loop when it finishes. I also trimmed the gravity sound effect and made it loop in the player instead. That way it can play as long as the effect is active.
I made a new sprite sheet for the cap ship weak point. Brandon showed me how to do lightning in Maya so I made a lightning ball and colored it purple. I also shrunk the normal maps and color maps for the ships to reduce our project size. I changed the health meters to correspond to the ship that's currently targeted and I added some lines to the radars to make them look more like radars instead of just circles. I also added a new menu screen background and separated the title into its own image so we can make sure it's title safe.
I finished up the turret class for Jason and Wilson. They were really close but they had never worked with models before so it was a little tough for them to finish. I also added code to the AI class so that the ships bug out after a certain amount of time if you haven't killed them. They only do it if you're not in phase 3 since you need to kill the ships in phase 3 to collect the tactical pod. I also got random ships to spawn in phases 1 and 2 so it's not just scouts. Only ships you've already seen up to that point will spawn though.
I worked on a few of the suggestions from the industry professionals that came to our class. One of them was to change the targeting system so that you're always targeting an enemy, and clicking L3 just targets the enemy in front of you instead of toggling it on and off. I tweaked the controls so that you can always barrel roll with the bumpers and change targets with D-Pad up and down.
I worked on the sound system - the framework for making our sounds 3D was in place but wasn't being used. I also fixed the problem with too many sounds being played at once so there was a lot of distortion. I edited the song Burning ambition so that it looped and made the music loop when it finishes. I also trimmed the gravity sound effect and made it loop in the player instead. That way it can play as long as the effect is active.
I made a new sprite sheet for the cap ship weak point. Brandon showed me how to do lightning in Maya so I made a lightning ball and colored it purple. I also shrunk the normal maps and color maps for the ships to reduce our project size. I changed the health meters to correspond to the ship that's currently targeted and I added some lines to the radars to make them look more like radars instead of just circles. I also added a new menu screen background and separated the title into its own image so we can make sure it's title safe.
I finished up the turret class for Jason and Wilson. They were really close but they had never worked with models before so it was a little tough for them to finish. I also added code to the AI class so that the ships bug out after a certain amount of time if you haven't killed them. They only do it if you're not in phase 3 since you need to kill the ships in phase 3 to collect the tactical pod. I also got random ships to spawn in phases 1 and 2 so it's not just scouts. Only ships you've already seen up to that point will spawn though.
I worked on a few of the suggestions from the industry professionals that came to our class. One of them was to change the targeting system so that you're always targeting an enemy, and clicking L3 just targets the enemy in front of you instead of toggling it on and off. I tweaked the controls so that you can always barrel roll with the bumpers and change targets with D-Pad up and down.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Wrapping things up
We're just about done with all the functionality. Right now survival mode is done and we're finishing arcade mode. We need to get the space station in and tweak the capital ship battles. The AI for the capital ships is different than the rest of the fighters, so Pace and Felix and Daniel have been working on that.
There's just been all these little tweaks and things we've been meaning to get in but haven't been able to until now. I got trails to appear behind the pods, but engine trails for the ships are a little processor intensive so we're not using them right now, though the system is in place. I got maneuvers in the system - a barrel role and two immelmann rolls (up and down). The screen shakes when you get hit and the controller rumbles when you're getting low on health. The HUD is now title safe and scaled to the screen size. Felix and Jason started the Energy Ball system and I finished it up. It uses an animated sprite. I got them charging and firing at the player for the capital ship and just firing for the bombers. I put shields in the game so if you get hit or an enemy gets hit their shields light up. Also, if you use a shield pod your shield glows blue for a few seconds.
I fixed the texturing issues on the xbox - the glow maps were screwed up and the texture mapping was all distorted. I fixed an issue where the animated sprites weren't being positioned correctly because the field of view was changing. Finally, I cleaned up most of the content - I got rid of stuff we weren't using and renamed everything to be more consistent. I still have to go through and convert everything to png's and jpg's and adjust the resolution on some of the bigger textures to save space.
There's just been all these little tweaks and things we've been meaning to get in but haven't been able to until now. I got trails to appear behind the pods, but engine trails for the ships are a little processor intensive so we're not using them right now, though the system is in place. I got maneuvers in the system - a barrel role and two immelmann rolls (up and down). The screen shakes when you get hit and the controller rumbles when you're getting low on health. The HUD is now title safe and scaled to the screen size. Felix and Jason started the Energy Ball system and I finished it up. It uses an animated sprite. I got them charging and firing at the player for the capital ship and just firing for the bombers. I put shields in the game so if you get hit or an enemy gets hit their shields light up. Also, if you use a shield pod your shield glows blue for a few seconds.
I fixed the texturing issues on the xbox - the glow maps were screwed up and the texture mapping was all distorted. I fixed an issue where the animated sprites weren't being positioned correctly because the field of view was changing. Finally, I cleaned up most of the content - I got rid of stuff we weren't using and renamed everything to be more consistent. I still have to go through and convert everything to png's and jpg's and adjust the resolution on some of the bigger textures to save space.
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