11/22/2014

Having been very sick up until the time of presentations has been one of the most stressful things I have had to do in a very longtime. Preparing for the presentation has taken up a lot of my time. I have made three different iterations on our power point and the wording that I want to use on each slide. I am dedicating myself now to learning this completely new slide  along with the addition of note cards. I am still deciding whether or not I want to actively use the note cards I created, not only does it feel more awkward to be using them while i am presenting but it also adds at least a minuet onto the entire presentation. They also disrupt my flow while I am presenting and make me into a robot that is putting out information rather than a developer talking about their game. I do feel ready however, in that I have rehearsed a great deal for this presentation and even though I have changed the order and wording I know that I have a firm grasp on what I want to communicate to the audience about our game.

11/15/2014

While this day has come with some amazing news of passing stage three it has been a struggle for me personally with this awful sickness. Not only has this limited me in this class but also in all of my other classes. There is nothing more frustrating then knowing that there are extremely important dates coming up while knowing that pushing yourself while sick will only make things worse. The biggest thing I have been focusing on is trying to rest so that I will be ready and able to present next week. I have also stayed in constant communication with my team so that they can stay up to date with how I am doing and my progress that I have been making. I have put all the energy I could into creating the presentation and trying to fit an entire semester, or at least how long we have been working on this game into a 15 min presentation which is not easy but is not completely undo able. While resting and hoping to get better only time will tell what is going to happen.

11/8/2014

This past week has been jammed with huge amounts of week. Balancing progress in all has been a difficult challenge thus far. However, even though this has been a rough week we have been making huge strides with our game. We have been making huge strides with audio and creation of our tutorial level. I feel confident that we have a good grasp on our game play and what we want our players to ultimately experience. Our market however, has caused us to take a step back and reconsider. Even though I believe that we could potentially make the Facebook market work and that it would be a worth while attempt to make a difference in this market the amount of time and effort that would go into trying to do this is out of scope. We plan on venturing into new territory and perhaps explore how the steam community would receive our game. So far I believe this might be a more welcoming place to have our game and players that are more involved and can retrieve deeper meaning from games would be easier to find here than in a Facebook community. Other documents will need to be updated and adjusted but overall I feel comfortable that we are in a good place to move forward.

11/1/2014

For this week as a team we really wanted to step back and focus on what we really needed to get done so that we can move onto stage three easily. A lot of the market analysis for this particular idea has already been researched in a relatively detailed way. I personally want to dive in further and defiantly make sure that this game is going to be received by this market at least in a positive way. I will have to be sure that the players in the Facebook market that we are exploring will be able to follow such an intense and in depth game. I plan on addressing this through a basic walk through tutorial level narrated by Noah. Traditionally Facebook games are quick and give an enormous amount of feel good points  whenever the player does anything right. While I do not want to fall in with the rest of these typical Facebook games I do appreciate how much feedback the players do receive in these types of games in general. This is definitely where I have been placing my focus for this week and have been researching ways in which the followers can show their response's to the player through body language, specifically the proximity the followers want to have to the player depending on their loyalty at any given time. This has not yet been completely worked out  but it is a good way to start heading in.  We also are focusing on a camera blur that will aid us in our new theme that the player is in some time of dream like world. In our meeting today we are working all of these into our new level that I also created for a tutorial.

10/25/2014

This has been one of the best weeks in Capstone ever. All of the hard work has definitely paid off these last two weeks. We were not only able to finally past stage one but pass stage two as well. This was an incredible feat and cannot be happier. Now we are trying very hard to make sure that we step back and greatly plan and use our time wisely in attempting stage three.  We want to be sure that we will be able to go through no matter what. Everyone on the team has been working extremely hard to get us were we need to be and I could not be prouder of myself or my team. The next big challenges that we have to deal with have to do with making realistic and appealing AI that follow the player as they move. Rob and I are already making preparations to address these issues and I feel confident that we will be able to quickly fix any issues surrounding this. Another focus that we have to work on is nailing down the exact background that we want to have. At the moment it is between a more realistic background that we are currently using and a more fantasy less realistic look. Although, we have agreed that we want this to take place in ruins or an Easter island type of setting. For me personally I want to be sure that the players are having a fun and positive experience while playing and that the game play does not become stale.

10/14/2014

Coming up on the newest reveal of our project Influence. I am excited for what I believe will be taken very well. Everyone has been working extremely hard to prepare for taking on two stages at once. We have been meeting non stop and work meeting have been going extremely well. the art and prototypes look good, and if I do say so myself the research is spot on with what we are portraying in our game. if we can keep up this focus I strongly believe we can push this game through to where it needs to be, even if we are a bit behind. The systems all seem to work together and through playing the prototype I can kind of feel that excitement someone who is fishing gets. The unknowing of whether that follower will agree to how you answered last or not. The biggest problem I see in my way now is just pulling it all together and selling it as best I can and get this game to stage 2.

10/8/2014

Influence went spectacularly, just like we were all hoping for. even though this idea has come to us extremely late, compared to what we were hoping for. I believe we can pull it off and hopeful get through to the needed stages. I have already research a great deal and can see that this game can be extremely complex, however it will pay off through authentic game play. I will continue to do further research in hopes of getting this game were it needs to be to continue on.

9/30/2014

At this point the team has been very demotivated that we have not been successful in passing stage 1. It has come to everyone's attention that following up with any of our games is fairly hopeless.  We have decided to seek help to clear up some confusion. going and speaking to Professor Ferguson has greatly improved our outlook and has helped to re motivate us by assisting in coming up with a new idea. I am excited for the new system heavy ideas that have been spoken about for influence.

9/26/2014

This week I will be trying a new way to discuss my design processes. This past week has been met with both success and hardship. Starting with the more challenging parts of this week I will note that being unable to challenge stage one has been a major downer for me personally. Going through to make the project stand out and work well with the criteria of stage one was a challenge and ultimately did not affect whether we would be able to move on or not. However, we were still able to receive feedback on our presentation and make up of what we had to present. On another less than amazing note is finding out that our Conundrum Coliseum Game idea has potential to be stopped in its tracks do to criteria that all games should be able to be played in a single player mode. While we are not completely in trouble this has made a lot of my ideas and the teams ideas extremely challenging to work with. a lot of pressure has been put on me to try to rethink how this game is going to work. While I accept this challenge I will not lie and say I was not disappointed. On a more positive note however, I am very happy with the focus and advancement the team has made on Comet Collide. Seeing this has also made me feel a lot better about the fact that a single player game may be required to continue on. If Conundrum Coliseum does ultimately become unsalvageable Comet Collide game may be just what saves us in the end.

9/15/2014

- Continued working on balancing classes
- Presentation of our solidified and simplified ideas
- Update on comet collision
- Continuing Visual Design doc on both

9/13/2014

- At the moment we are all are all working to make more dialog within the game
- We have been suffering in making the game work well with all the classes, savior and executioner balance each other well enough but the neutral player is lacking.
- We have all decided to do away with points and the idea of last man standing
-I also personally proposed that we add a new class into the mix.
- This new class is defined as the sponge and will suck battery life away from others.
- Through this we have also needed to do away with the neutral class in order to balance game play.
-After doing so we were able to balance in a way that every class helps and hurts in at least to ways to another class
-The shield class may need more editing in the future but for now we are happy.
- The biggest challenges that face me now are finding a way to possibly add the prisoner's dilemma into the game and further balancing the game appropriately.

Weeks 1, 2, and 3

Week 1

•  Introduced teams to ideas
• Started imagining what comet collision would look like
• At first meeting we discussed the comet in depth and how its speed, damage, and movement will work
• As the designer the biggest problem I foresaw was creating and balancing the levels for this game.

Week 2

• This week we continued on our idea of the comet and presented a more in depth version of what was going on
• people had some concerns
• We also presented Death cube people were more interested by this idea. 
• We put a lot more effort into this and I particularly dove into the prisoners dilemma, the main problem I had with this model is that the reward vs punishment outcomes.  
• I worked out a way to introduce this theory into conundrum coliseum. 
• At this point I also went further into how a comet moves and is affected in space

Week 3

• Reworking the prisoner's dilemma, main focus is to understand what we want for the learning outcomes of our game.