WEEK 2

April 26, 2018

GROUP STATUS REPORT

Weekly Status

The group is steadily making progress on our goals, and we now have some basic game movement implemented. While not as rapid as last week, the group is still keeping a good pace on our tasks.

Here is a breakdown of things in summary:

• Networking and Game Logic: Event structures were created and expanded to allow future more complex actions to be taken beyond simply moving around to be communicated between server and clients. We have logging for easier debugging as well.
• Graphics: The room model that Vivian made has been integrated into our game and the camera was moved to account for how we want the game view to look.  We’ve also added some touchups to the game’s lighting, though some of this still needs to be implemented.

Meeting Dates

Friday, 4/20 (blaze it)

Tuesday, 4/24 @ 10 am

Wednesday, 4/25 @ 2 pm

Thursday, 4/26 @ 10 am (official meeting with professor)

Group Morale

7/10 - Our pace has slowed down somewhat from last week (as other classes and life in general start to bombard us with tasks) but we are still making good progress. It seems that at times that we are not completely cohesive on who is working on what, but all in all the group is communicating well to breeze past these hiccups.

Screenshots

INDIVIDUAL STATUS REPORTS

Leon Medvinsky

What were your concrete goals for the week?

• Extend network protocol to support features necessary for first demo

What goals were you able to accomplish?

• Synchronized player facing direction
• Reorganized physics code
• Added command line argument for client to choose server address
• Extended update message to include information about flags and winning (no flag currently exists)

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

• I didn’t implement sending the map layout to clients, but it doesn’t seem like multi-room maps will be finished this week anyway.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

• Continue to extend network if needed
• Work on other parts of the game that seem necessary for the game to actually be a game by next week.

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

• (Unexpected) Parts of the Bullet API

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

[5/10] First demo is tomorrow and our game still has no winning condition, which was planned to be finished this week.

Chris Ozawa

What were your concrete goals for the week?

Work on improvements to lighting and shaders for the game’s graphics, as we only had diffuse components for our lighting and the shading wasn’t acting quite the way it was supposed to.

What goals were you able to accomplish?

Originally there was a problem with the shading for our player object seeming to follow the player as it rotates rather than being consistent.  The front side of the cube was always lighted even when it moved and turned in different directions.  Some changes to the shaders fixed the problem.  I also added in code for the ambient and specular colors for lighting, though at the moment, the specular lighting doesn’t seem visible so I’m unsure if this is an implementation problem or the expected result given our current lighting and coloring.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

I was also hoping to add point lights to the code since we’re currently relying on directional lights in our shaders, but troubleshooting with the phong lighting components along with prep for a midterm earlier this week kept me from starting on this yet.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

Finish up the aforementioned lighting touchups and add more rendering for the most basic version of our game.  This would entail having 3 different rooms (one for each team on the ends with the center room holding the flag) as well as a model for the players and the flag.  Should be pretty cool to see all the main components for our game in action!

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

OpenGL tutorials are your friend!  I went back to consult the one I referenced for lighting back when I took 167 and it was pretty useful since I was able to trace through our shaders to see what needed modifying to make the lighting act a bit more how we wanted it to.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

I guess about an 8/10, things are starting to pile up in the quarter but it’s pretty cool to see how everything’s starting to come together with the game and I’m pretty excited about what we’ll have by the end of the quarter!

Paula Quach

What were your concrete goals for the week?

Create a basic struct for input events and allow a single client to run a “co-op” version where the same keyboard can be used to control 2 players for easier testing purposes.

What goals were you able to accomplish?

All goals were completed. The input events only has a basic “nothing” default event and an “attack” event that does nothing for now, but they can be passed around by our InputFrames between server and client. The local co-op version works using WASD keys for 1 player and arrow keys for the other and they can move around independently and collide.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

N/A

What are your specific goals for the next week?

I want to integrate more actions with our game so the characters can actually do things and make sure the InputManager and inputs in general is actually extensible for the future. I also feel like we are behind on tests and want to work on that as well so we can establish a baseline of passing sanity checks.

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

I got a little more experience with the libraries like msgpack from its use in rpclib and a refresher with very basic C++ concepts which was all expected.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
9/10 I’m pleased with what I’ve accomplished so far and I’m happy I got to participate more this week around. Things are slowly shaping up in-game which is fun to see. I hope this trend continues even as more work and midterms pile up.

Jack Wang

What were your concrete goals for the week?

Build up system to generate colliders for models; and handle collision callbacks or collision events

What goals were you able to accomplish?

I was able to handle collision event and added wall collider

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

Essay due last week, midterm, and other 4 assignments from other courses. And bullet library documentation is kind of lacking some information, and I have to spend tons of time reading the code.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

Catch up with the schedule and built up the system to auto generate collider from the models

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

Don’t take too much courses especially when there is already a writing course.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

6.5/10 I wasn’t contributing enough due to heavy amount of work from other courses. I will be back on track next week though, since the midterms are over and I’m almost finished understanding the bullet library

Jimmy Ye

What were your concrete goals for the week?

Work on completing milestone 1, make sure code is at a clean state for future additions (i.e. soft code freeze on core internal APIs), and organize tasks as we transition some effort away from networking (which should be mostly functionally complete and easy to extend) into other components.

What goals were you able to accomplish?

The code is in a good state, and we are beginning transitioning from networking. We haven't hit all our goals for the first major milestone on our spec, but the main features missing are mostly physics additions which should be fairly simple once we figure out a good workflow for exporting from Blender to Bullet.

As an additional non-critical goal, I implemented basic logging using a small library, which should hopefully speed up debugging in the future.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

Multiple group members had other obligations or extenuating circumstances, so some components have seen less progress than others.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

Finish up the remaining features for our first spec milestone, and ramp up our productivity. I also plan on taking on more implementation tasks myself, since our division of responsibilities is pretty solid now.

Decide on a name for our game...

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

spdlog is a neat C++ logging library.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

7/10. Unfortunate circumstances have led to less progress than expected, but it looks like things will pick up again next week.

Jamie Zhang

What were your concrete goals for the week?

• Render crucial objects for gameplay (i.e. flag, environment)
• Render HP/damage indicator

What goals were you able to accomplish?

• I was able to render rooms and also modify the camera to render everything from top down.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

• I started looking into rendering 2D UI but I wasn’t able to get too far. Unfortunately I was away on a trip for most of the past week so I have not been able to work as much as I wanted to.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

• First, I would like to sync with the rest of the group to figure out what’s most needed to be worked on graphics-wise.
• I would like to continue looking into the 2D UI and set up a way to render the UI, which we’ll need to do for main menu, etc.
• Work on any other issues that need to be finished.

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

• Learned a bit about rendering text using OpenGL (expected)

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

• 7/10, I wasn’t able to make much progress at all last week but I hope to get back into it this week.

Vivian Zhang

What were your concrete goals for the week?

Finalize character designs, create a basic placeholder model for use by graphics, and create the warrior character.

What goals were you able to accomplish?

I was able to finalize character designs and overall determine the firm aesthetics of our game. I was also able to create a basic placeholder model.

If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?

I was unable to finish the warrior character as planned. Unfortunately, Blender ended up giving me more trouble than i thought it would, even as I closely followed online YouTube tutorials. However, I’ve gotten the hang of all the shortcuts and important hotkeys, and believe that my next foray into Blender will be much easier.

What are your specific goals for the next week?

Finish the warrior character and begin actual dungeon room modeling and texturing.

What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)

I learned just how tedious Blender can be with certain features - I never expected it to give me this much trouble with the simplest of things. However, it is a learning experience, and I am now more familiar with the shortcuts and basic nuances of Blender.

What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?

7/10 - I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to finish all of my goals, but I’m hopeful that my experiences with Blender will make the work much faster in the weeks to come.