Group report
With most of the underlying systems done, we did a lot of refactoring and content filling for the server this week.
We reanalyzed the time remaining and the technical difficulties of remaining goals, and decided to change the game design to more combat focused. We canceled the crafting system and the idea of building towers to overthrow the god. Instead, the survivors kill monsters to gain progress and finally will confront the god himself in combat. The god player wins if all survivors die, or the survivors win if they can finally defeat the god. We plan to add a rouge-like item loot system to allow the survivors grow in strength to confront the overpowered god at the endgame.
However, the animation system is still going slowly. We’re hoping to finish it by the end of this week. And after that, we might arrange someone to shift job and help with the modeling and animation.
Individual Report – Kai Li
1) What were your concrete goals for the week?
A lot of small pieces. Refactor the skill system. Refactor our files. Display teammates and their health. Add visual effect to indicate a player has died. Add an item system, and enhance the player when they pick up items. Add a notification system. Detect wins.
2) What goals were you able to accomplish?
Everything except for the notification system are done. Some small details still need to be improved.
3) If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
Notification system is not done yet because lack of time. Looking forward to finish it ASAP
4) What are your specific goals for the next week?
Not sure yet. Depends on how everything goes. We have a barebone version already, so more likely will need to polish all the details. One thing for sure is to finish the part where God will show himself and the survivors can beat him.
5) What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)
None.
6) What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
Work harder and learn more!
Individual Report – Shuyuan Ma
1) What were your concrete goals for the week?
Review and refactor pull requests. Implement the on-click skill/shooting system. Zooming cameras. FPS viewpoint.
2) What goals were you able to accomplish?
All above, plus reassessing the progress of the project and changing the game design.
3) If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
I wish we could finish the animation integration, but it turns out the standard formats of .dae files are not well supported by some of the parser we found online, or at least we haven’t figured out how to use them correctly.
4) What are your specific goals for the next week?
Help get the animation integrated with our graphics engine.
5) What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)
Good documentation is priceless. Some external JS libraries can be a nightmare to work with, especially when there are no better alternatives.
6) What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
Enjoy the experience.
Individual Report – Lin Zhou
1) What were your concrete goals for the week?
Finish walk and attack animation, static dead position, export to expected format and work with Haomin Wang to put the animation into the game
2) What goals were you able to accomplish?
- Finish walk, run and die animation, export to dae format
- Finish the model for the cactus monster
3) If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
- Integrate animation into game
- reasons:
- blender exporter issue: blender default exporting shifts the position of the head in the animation; so installed an add-on for exporting
- issue with the parser: cannot parse non-deforming bones (control bones) so currently still working on different ways of exporting and parsing
- reasons:
4) What are your specific goals for the next week?
- Integrate animation into game with Haomin Wang
- Add weapon(spear, bow and arrow) to the attack animation
- Design different appearance for players
5) What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)
Exporting animation from Blender (expected)
6) What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
Looking forward to a great improvement in the game UI with integrated animation! Keep working and trying!
Individual Report – Tianhui Cao
1) What were your concrete goals for the week?
- Replace sphere body in the physics engine with box, which works great!
- Use quaternion to update box direction so that the attack region could be easily calculated
- Use collision filter to filter out some collisions
- Randomly plant trees on the map
- Use config.ini
- Adjust god player behavior (Turn off the attack, and immune to any attack)
- Add item/buff system
2) What goals were you able to accomplish?
Item/buff system is still in progress. Other than quaternion, everything is achieved.
3) If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
I researched online about quaternion and its usage in cannon js but wasn’t quite able to use it without causing any incorrect side effects. So right now I still calculate the attack region by treating the player body as a sphere. If time is available I will look into this issue more but would finish item/buff system first.
4) What are your specific goals for the next week?
Finish item/buff system, possibly work with the graphics to incorporate the animation for each attack or item usage.
5) What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)
Application of 80/20 rule and making tradeoff, in the sense that I spent so much time looking into the advanced feature of cannon js, (handling collision and behavior of sphere or cylinder) but it turns out box works the best. The only thing remaining in the physics engine is whether we want collision between survivors and slimes.
6) What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
Unlike last week when I felt no progress was made, I feel more achieved during this week. Feel the hope now and especially look forward to the animation.
Individual Report – Haomin Wang
1) What were your concrete goals for the week?
Finishing the animation system and make it work together with our code and dae files.
2) What goals were you able to accomplish?
I have successfully render an animation using a dae found online.
3) If there were goals you were unable to meet, what were the reasons?
The dae parser I am currently using seems to have problems when loading our dae files. I am currently working on solving that.
4) What are your specific goals for the next week?
I will finish animation system ASAP. Not sure what to do after that, maybe working on performance of animation rendering.
5) What did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it?)
I am currently looking at the dae files and learned something about how data are stored in dae files.
6) What is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?
Still trying to figure out the difference between dae files. Hopefully I can get this soon.