mobo fried

My motherboard on my laptop fried, how nice. At least its not something where i will lose any data but i can't access my work that i haven't uploaded and have had to rewrite it. The level class seems to be functional but it needs some way to determine "events" or progression in a level. For instance if the level contains an escort and the escort dies, we want the level to know that the mission has been failed

non linear level design

I feel a big problem with a lot of the newer games released is that the direction you need to go is always right in front of you. I miss being able to get lost in a level and exploring for a little bit, this doesn't mean that the player should have no idea where he is going, just that the next waypoint should be somewhere other than forward. Backtracking in a level is not always bad, especially if the areas change their behavior. if an asteroid field was easy for the first part of a mission because the player was fighting slow ships with no escorts, it could change to be one of the hardest areas after the player is faced with a swarm of small agile ships

sick

blarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg

pseudocode

Began working on the main game screen for the space game. I've been fiddling around with different ways to implement levels without the enormous task of building a level editor and i feel that having a subclass of the level class that is a level "chunk" will be the best way. by having prebuilt "chunks" we can mix levels up fairly quickly without a whole lot of effort. they "chunks" will still be hardcoded but at least it offers a little bit of abstractaction

nom nom nom

Character Sprites, Howway!

stairs and such

There was a little loss of detail when i scaled things down but so far i think it looks pretty good. making objects look 3d in a 2d environment was something i overlooked as simplistic. When you only have a 50x50 box of pixels to work with, some things just have to kinda look like their representation, rather than looking exactly like it

art assets for prototype

i've been tasked with fulfilling the basic art needs for the prototype of our team pitch "Dungeon Descent" the team suggested a 25x25 pixel box for sprites but i feel like that will be to small for the art style they requested. Jason was very specific that he did not want it to look like and old school final fantasy game which is basically "pixel art" if i up the constraints for size a bit i will have a lot more freedom in building sprites that don't look like the first mario, perhaps a 250x250 box in illustrator that i can scale down to the appropriate size... more on this when i finish a couple of the sprites...

group pitch, dungeon descent

https://sites.google.com/a/eae.utah.edu/capstone-students/students/jason-thummel/dungeon-descent

zombeez pitch

All Your Base Are Belong to Zombeez

Zombeez is a tower defense game and a first person shooter combined into a small arena where the players (1-4) face waves of zombeez with a brief period in between to rebuild repair and expand their base.

The player takes control of one of the four survivors who are armed with very basic guns (perhaps a pistol to start) and is placed on the arena map which consists of a grid of x by x squares that can be built upon (think minecraft). At the center of the map is the goal of the game (perhaps a treasure chest, or a giant brain ((why would zombeez want gold??))).

Survivors can also purchase base parts and upgrades at a store located next to the goal (the store can also be destroyed by the brainless mutants). Player will also have a repair “gun” (doesn’t have to be a gun, could be a hammer or saw etc) to rebuild their fort that gives health to building at X per second.

Consequences for playing like a n00b: If a player loses health, it will regenerate very slowly, or the user can purchase health from the store (think gauntlet legends arcade version). If a player dies, he can be revived provided he has the resources to pay for it (maybe add a trading system so players can help revive their companions). Armor can also be purchased which reduces damage by a flat number as indicated on the armor piece (ex: helmet of nonbrainedibility: -5 damage)

The map: the playing field consists of a grid of buildable area and an area where the player can run around without being damaged. Outside the grid is a “fog” of sorts that drains health from the player based on a % of how far into the fog he is. If he is 3 *units* into the fog it will drain 3% hp per second, this provides an invisible wall that allows us to control where the player goes and limit him to the playing grid. Zombeez will spawn in the fog with their paths set to rush the goal of the game, changing if they encounter a player within X blocks.

Building: the player will purchase base parts with the resources they earn from killing zombeez and surviving a wave. The shop will be open during a wave, but buying upgrades late game will most likely get you killed as the waves become more difficult with each successful level beat. Basing the build system on a grid will only allow buildings to be built on 1 axis and will simplify programming. Several different types of blocks will be available, Walls, Towers, Gates, traps with other sub-blocks such as ladders.

Walls will be made out of different materials depending on what the player can afford. Walls are stackable but when the base is destroyed so is the rest of the wall, to compensate for this the wall gains bonuses for different combinations, (ex stone wall with wood wall on top would combine the health of the stone and wood with no bonus, say 10 + 20 = 30, now say a wall is stone + stone, maybe give the player a same material bonus and give it extra health say 20+ 20 + 10same material bonus = 50.) this allows the player to build one wall if they choose and simply build on top of it, giving players a better vantage point for attacking and some elevation to protect them from attackers. Players can also repair buildings with one of their base weapons (which can be upgraded).

test

what goes here?