Blog 14

Doing a second round of testing with Scott to make sure it's working properly before we start taking the screen and video caps of the prototype project. We weren't able to find any program breaking problems when we tested it. Only things to really note would be some changes we would make to the page layout of a couple of the screens, namely the control page which is a bit cluttered. Though we will fix that at a later date when we move past the prototype stage. The menu system is working well and executes a gameplay screen, though it doesn't currently have a game to execute but that will be added when we push forward from the prototype stage. The foundation seems to be set for the mini games to be put on.

Scott will start taking some of the screen caps and video caps after I just tidy up some of the code.

Blog 13

Really just spending a lot of time effectively debugging the code and have been making progress fixing some of the problems I mentioned beforehand. The issue with going back to previous states has been rectified and had to do with me trying to create the state again when I tried to move back to it when I had to be popping the current game state off the stack which returned me to the desired screen state. The graphics problem got fixed as well and was pretty much just down to an error with some of the coordinates I had set them in and put some of the initializing code in the wrong game state classes. Will do a second round of tests with Scott to make sure everything is working properly before moving on.

Blog 12

We're both just starting to test the menu code and see what the main problems are. The issue with it being a bit strange regarding going back to previous states is still there, and there are a couple of issues with the background graphics as well not being aligned properly that need fixed. The title music seems to be working after a silly error had me stuck for a couple of hours. I'll need to go back and look from the beginning to see if I can figure out why I'm getting some of these errors and start trying to fix them.

Other than that Scott finalized the design document, though I don't think there was to many major changes required at this stage.

Blog 11

I've just been shifting my efforts back to moving the menu system along. I've been trying to put in the graphics that Scott came up with and cleaning up the code a bit. We will start running a brief testing period on it soon and decide what we need to focus on for it. Having some minor problems with getting proper navigation backwards from one gamestate to a previous gamestate.

Scott has been finishing off a few more of the backgrounds and has been looking for some suitable music and sound FX that we can put into the games. We will have some bag pipe music playing in the menu ideally, and then each game will have it's own song.

Blog 10

I've been trying to put in some physics code into C# based off older projects I did in C++ but not had very much success. I don't think I really know enough about C# to convert the code over and have probably spent a bit to much time trying to get it to work than I should have considering I've basically not gotten anything out of it that can get put into the project. I'll be moving back to trying to finish off the menu system and add in some of the graphics and music for it. It's making me think that it would probably be worth spending the time to learn how to use the Farseer physics engine later on rather than trying to hack and slash it my way. Though this is something I can come back to later on in the project.

Scott was giving was working with me quite a bit on the physics since we both worked on the original C++ physics project from last year. He has also been making some background graphics for us to pretty much work as placeholders at the moment. Art and graphics is probably our combined weakest aspect, since neither of us have drawn since we were forced to in early high school. Our bad computer art will be what we are stuck with for now. This could be an area that when we go past the prototype stage we could consider trying to find someone who could do better art for us, or consider looking into some alternatives.

Blog 9

Moved away from focusing on the menu system since that has come along quite well so far. Looked more so into the physics engine side of XNA C# for later on down the line in the project. Both myself and Scott looked into different physics based engines and in particular looking at one called 'Farseer' which seems to be the box2d engine converted into C#. We used a different version of box2d before in a previous module called jbox2d which was  java version of the engine. Though we only worked on a few basic examples with it, we could see from different demo programs that it had a strong capability and could potentially be something we incorporated into our mini games later on.

Since the games that would require physics are fairly small, integrating a whole physics engine into the project might be a little bit too much, but it's hard to know at the moment. We decided I'll have a grind at trying to get some basic physics hard coded into a separate project using some of the things I learned over a year ago in C++. Though I'm a bit unsure of how they will translate over into C# but it's worth testing out at this point.

Blog 8

Not much to really write about in thus entry, really much of the same since the last time. Continuing to code away on the project and making some steady progress on the menu functionality. Got a lot of code into the project at this point though not a lot actually happens but that's the way it goes since this is all a foundation for the games to be put on top of later on.

Scott drafted out a technical specification from brief notes we took earlier on, so the design and technical documents are pretty much completed, I think one final draft of the design document will be made to bring everything in line.

Blog 7

Just been continue to study up on C#  mostly. I'm going into a lot of new territory since I've only made one game in C# before but I think I'm getting on not to bad so far. The early bones of the menu system are up and running, made a library with the state manager and an initial starting title screen. No graphics or anything yet, but that can come later on.

Scott is working on the design document, and he had also written up a statement of risks a while ago which I forgot to post about. It pretty much covered a few areas that stuck out to us that could be problems, like potential data loss, the dependent layers of functionality and so on. Things like communication won't really be a huge problem since unlike a lot of other student groups we live together so this isn't a problem.