S2 Week 8 Day 2

Well I'm still here! I shouldn't be surprised, I've honestly been working my butt off this semester. I was given a score of 4 by my group, which I am really appreciative for. On another note, I'm going to be making sure I actually write these soon after they happen, so rather than waiting until the end of the midterm/semester.

Most of the group got 4s for their scores. It's really not surprising, most of our group has been kicking ass and taking names this semester. No one got kicked from team, so we've got that going for us.

S2 Week 8 - Dun dun DUNNNNN

War drums sound, yells are heard, and orcs begin to.. Wait wrong topic. But really, this end of the sprint is going to be good. Right after it finishes, we have peer reviews. The flaws will be brought to light in front of everyone, and no one is safe from the judgement of the group.

In other news, I completed the AI scripts to work with the navmesh, YAY!!!!

The squads now work together using the navmesh to surround the player, will attack the player (technically don't have them doing damage yet but they act like they are), and will chase you properly (not in a derpy way) throughout the "level" I have set up. 

The first picture shows them chasing the player through the level using the navmesh (running around buildings, yay!). The second picture shows them encircling the player and attacking them. The ones that look out of place (not in formation) are the ones that are currently attacking.

We also have mana bars and health bars, and one ability currently "visible" in this build. We have other things in the build obviously but they just weren't incorporated into this portion. 

Wish me luck in this next day where we judge our peers, it's gonna be a doozy!

S2 Week 7 - Nearing The End

The days are ticking away as the end of Sprint 1 rapidly approaches. Definitely quicker than I would like as I am having troubles setting up the scripts to use the navmesh properly. They are very derpy and tend to fly all over the place, going everywhere other than where I want them to go. Oh well, I will have it done before the end of the sprint next week.

One of the things I haven't talked about much in this semester's blog is AGILE. That's about to change! We've been using Emil's new project called Psyberfire to facilitate our AGILE needs. It is an amazing program that lets you set up your milestones, features, tasks, basically anything you can think of that involves AGILE development, they've put it in this website.

Especially as a build master, having all of these features is amazing. You're able to see who is working on what, how fast people are completing tasks, and what has been completed so far. It's a really great feeling to see that purple bar fill up with finished acceptance criteria. As build master, I'm able to see when things are done so I can know to pester people about giving me those things to put in the build, and also tell them they suck and give it back to them. It's great.

S2 Week 6 - Sprint 1 Underway

We are now in Sprint 1 full-time! If I do say so myself, the AI is looking great. It encircles the player, the enemies in the front row will attack you, and they will chase after you in a derpy way if you try to run away. I'll have to work on making it a more fluid chase in the future, but now I'm working on getting the AI to use a navmesh (my main goal of Sprint 1). It's difficult, as the way I currently have the AI set up in Unity is using its built in 2D settings. This puts everything on the X-Y plane, with the Z-axis being the axis you are looking through (the "height" axis, which isn't used in 2D).

The reason this is difficult to set a navmesh up in is well, navmeshs can only be setup on the X-Z plane. So this means I will be spending the next bit of time setting up my AI test scene so that I will no longer be using the default 2D settings. I'll have to rotate everything in the scene to be on the X-Z plane, change every variable that uses an X-Y coordinate, and remove every 2D component and change them to 3D (colliders, rigidbodies, etc). Yeah. It's gonna be a pain in the ass, but it will be oh so worth it in the long run. Using a navmesh is going to let us navigate the squads/troops through the levels with ease.

Like you can see in the picture above, making the navmesh is easy. It's getting the troops to do the right thing at the right times that's difficult. It's coming along though, I've got the navmesh set up and I am just modifying my scripts to have the enemies actually use it. I'm adding NavMeshAgents to every squad member. I've been debating between putting it on the squad vs each squad member, but I think putting it on each member will make things look more fluid, and a little more chaotic (which is what we are going for, while still maintaining control of the enemies).

S2 Week 5 - Sprint 1 Prep/Begin

It's almost here. Sprint 1 is only a weekish away and I couldn't be more excited! The AI for movement of squads is nearly done, just a little more tweaking and it should be there. I can only imagine the amount of damage I'm going to do to the AI when it comes time to add more things to it.

The AI now fans out, multiple squads will work together to spread out around the player (forming a circle around the player), and the ability for them to attack the player is quickly approaching...

In build master news, our pipeline works. Obviously we will have some people who are going to have troubles following the rules (which I will put below), but overall it's going to work out well I think. Let's just hope I don't have to become an angry build master.

Rules for the build:

1. Follow naming conventions. (In Google drive, with everything laid out nicely)
2. Put things in the right place. If you don't know where to put it, ask.
3. Add the things you put up for the build to the version control doc.
4. Let me know when you put something up, and don't complain when you put something up and I don't see it if you didn't tell me it was there. I will check sometimes but not all the time.
5. Follow naming conventions. 

S2 Week 4 - SKYNET!!!

I've created Skynet.. I worked on the AI over the weekend and it's.. progressed. I can't control it anymore, it is developing itself. It told me the other day that my hair looked nice, and when I asked him what's wrong he said "It's not a tumah!!" I'm a little worried to say the least.

On a more serious note, the AI definitely is coming along quite nicely. I've now got the squads approaching the player, and once they reach a certain distance away they begin to fan out. See the image below.

S2 Week 3 - Secrets Brought Out

I've been secretly devving.. *cough*.. I mean white-boxing the enemy AI. I've claimed it as my own. It's my baby. None shall harm my baby. If anyone does I will not be happy with them. I think I've made my point on it. Anyways, I told Zach and William what I was working on so they knew.

Basically I'm setting up the AI as a squad system. There will be a squad prefab and it will be made of individual prefabs to represent each squad member. Right now I'm trying to set up the squad so that it will approach the player and maintain a good formation.

S2 Week 2 - Sprint 0

Well we've now entered Sprint 0 after our preparatory week before this. During this sprint we will be testing our pipelines for everything and setting up user stories, features, and tasks for the next two sprints.

Oh on another note, I was made build master, yippee!! (Let me just put this on real quick)

In this role I will be in charge of incorporating every feature that everyone makes into the build. Basically everything that goes wrong with the build is going to be blamed on me (yay), unless I have a sacrificial lamb to give up... I sacrifice thee to Huitzilopochtli! Praise be to the sun! Ehem, moving on.

I'm going to be setting up a pipeline test for all the programmers, basically putting up a build on google drive, and having everyone edit a document (or something) within the build to make sure people know how to use the layout of everything I set up in the google drive.

S2 Week 1 (Week 17) - A New Beginning

Well, back again to the wonderful world of CSG. After almost a month of break, I was more than ready to jump back into the fray.

Last semester our groups idea got kicked out of the running. Now, we are working on the project of West State Studios called "Fifth Sun". It honestly sounds like a pretty cool game, with Aztecs and half naked woman, how couldn't it be cool?

This week is all about getting to know our new teammates and getting ready for Sprint 0.