FRIDAY May 6TH 10AM-11AM
MONDAY MAY 9th 10AM-11AM

WEEK 6 STATUS

This week we focused mostly on gameplay and refining the look of everything. Lighting, collisions, and the map are become closer to their look for the complete build.

As a group we were able to complete these tasks: 

• Updated lighting and created an outline shader
• Improved collision and movement
• Made the makeup pit stop mechanic mostly functional
• Some modeling, texturing, and rigging for animation
• Got the game working on multiple machines

GROUP MORALE

Group Morale is mostly good.

IMAGES

Individual Reports

1. Concrete goals
2. Accomplished goals
3. Unmet goals
4. Specific goals for next week
5. Lessons this week
6. Individual morale

Aiden

1. My concrete goals included: getting everything textured (makeup pit stop and base map), rigging things up for animation/animation, and continuing decoration on the map.
2. I was able to do everything I set out to do this week apart from one model.
3. The one goal I did not meet was creating the fan model. This was due to it being a boost powerup, which may be replaced by something else, so it is on hold at the moment.
4. My goals for next week will be looking into creating specular maps, a skybox, and see what can be added to the map.
5. Because of how lighting worked with the new shaders and needing to re-export models, I learned about backface culling.
6. My morale is good and I think our final product will be fun.

Andrew

1. My concrete goals for the week were to implement a configuration file, a synchronized task queue, get the game working on multiple lab computers, and make the server code handle closed connections more gracefully.
2. I was able to complete all of my goals for the week.
3. I didn’t have any unmet goals this week.
4. My specific goals for next week are to review and document the GameLogic code so that I can get more involved with adding new game mechanics. I am also planning on helping out with graphics wherever help is needed.
5. I learned how to run the game on multiple lab machines by specifying the host IP address and port of the server in our configuration file (which each client loaded). I also learned how to use C++’s unique_ptr to perform a lazy initialization of objects for which there were no default constructors (this came up when using Boost sockets).
6. My individual morale is good, although I am wary of the end of the quarter approaching!

Emily

1. My goals for this week were to set up the implementation for 2D UI elements, add particle effects to the cars, and to get a test animation read in to the code. 
2. The transparent elements are kind of working. 
3. Unfortunately, while I was able to figure out a way to implement the transparent textures, I haven’t been able to set up a good way for us to reuse the same objects to implement the UI. I do have some ideas about how to do this though. I’ve added the particle code, but I ran into bugs so the particles don’t render. And since we didn’t use assimp initially to load models in to the code, reading in animations has become a bit tricky because the model reader we used initially doesn’t support .fbx files and it doesn’t seem like .obj files support animations. I also had 2 midterms this week and finding time to work on our project was difficult. All the time that I found to work on the project has been frustrating because I kept running into issues and development has just been slow.
4. For next week, I want to have all of my goals for this week completed to a higher standard. And I would like to make even more progress on reading in animations. 
5. Again, I feel like this week taught me another lesson in time management, the importance of taking breaks while programming, the value in planning out the development before one begins to code, and the need to be patient. 
6. This was probably the most difficult week for me thus far. I think other classwork and my lack of measurable achievements has just been hard.

Evan

1. This week I planned on fixing the race condition bugs we faced last week as well as get the clients working across different computers.
2. Both goals were accomplished by Andrew and Terry, but I was unable to help this week.
3. I had all my midterms this week, so I was unable to help, but luckily Andrew and Terry had time to work on it and were able to get it finished.
4. This week I plan on cleaning up our finished Network code (better practices in oop/organization, comments, optimization, etc). I would also like to start working with Steven on the Game Logic code, so I plan on catching up with him on the current code, and seeing what I can start helping with.
5. I didn’t learn anything because I was unable to get much work done 🙁
6. My morale is good. I’m excited to be finished with the network code and start working on another part.

Steven

1. My concrete goals this week were to work on makeup stations and improve movement (collision handling in particular).
2. I started implementing the makeup stations, though there are some details left to finish (namely, the bar blocking the exit isn’t implemented though I’m fairly certain I know how I’ll handle it). I improved collision handling significantly, and made it so players can push each other (for now I set it to always be active but that can easily be changed). I also made the cursor lock to the game window and modified the client to use the chrono library for time since animations were extremely choppy on my machine.
3. I would’ve liked the makeup station logic to be more complete, but collision handling turned out much better than I anticipated. I also implementing pushing this week, which I was not confident I would get around to, so I am overall quite pleased with my progress this week.
4. My goals for next week are to finish the makeup stations and continue improving movement. I am going to experiment a bit with momentum and smoother turning (though I might revert it based on how the result feels). I’m also going to try implementing basic sloped terrain and some sort of gravity.
5. This week I played with vector operations more and I think I’ve gotten a lot better at reasoning about them.
6. My morale is good.

Terry

1. My concrete goals for this week were to work on synchronizing the race conditions of the queue and testing our implementation on multiple computers. My other goal was to work on the game music. 
2. I worked with Andrew and we were able to have a lock-free queue that was able to serve multiple machines simultaneously. I scored some music and got feedback from the team/ideas to try. 
3. I wanted to finish producing the game menu theme but got caught up in a couple of other projects this week. 
4. My specific goals for this week are
   1. Have a draft of the game music 
   2. Assisting with Gameplay logic (Steven) with makeup controls/time/score
   3. Draft UI elements for our HUD (Aiden and Emily)
5. I learned about Functors trying to work with Boost’s lock-free queue
6. Individual morale is a bit stressed seeing how many things need to come together in these next two weeks. We’ve gotten a lot done but are constantly tweaking what we have already. Just adjusting and embodying a headspace of the entire project/game as a whole rather than a network/graphics mindset. But am proud of what we have so far!

William

1. This week, my goal was to improve the graphics. Specifically, I wanted to make an outline shader and re-work our material and lighting systems. 
2. I completed the outline shader. Re-worked material and lighting systems are in progress (and may be finished by tomorrow morning, depending on time).
3. The outline shader turned out to be much more work than I expected. Specifically, I spent a lot of time reading papers about cel shading, and learning about opengl because I did not understand them well enough to complete the shader (although it turned out that the actual implementation was quite easy). The lighting and material rework is very straightforward – I know what I need to do, I just have to program it (probably ~4 hours). 
4. In addition to finishing the graphics rework, I would like to get animations working. Stretch goal would be a particle system.
5. I learned a ton about cel shading and outline shading, as well as opengl. 
6. My morale is positive. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I am confident that we can do it.