This contains updates and notes about any major developments in the project (design changes, completion of components, etc).

5/11/04:

5/09/04:

14 hours left

The game is coming along well I think. The graphics look significantly different than two weeks ago, so here's a new screenshot:

My "sheep" currently are named after Greek gods. If you have any better ideas, I'm open to suggestions. :)

I've also started experimenting with slightly more interesting maps:

5/08/04:

Okay, I finallllyyy finished all my other work (a research paper, 15-887 final project, and 15-887 take-home final), and can actually work on my game now for all of the remaining 2 days that I have before Monday's launch.

I'm discovering that pathfinding may be more of a pain than I thought. I have to compute paths for the opponents, teammates, and the bricks when they're being pushed somewhere. This could potentially mean 15+ paths per cycle, and I don't want to have to run A* that many times per cycle! So I'm going to need to implement some path caching. Not difficult, but it's one extra thing on top of the hundred other things I need to do in the next 48 hours.

4/22/04:

So somehow both milestones have worked out such that I don't have any time before them to do any serious amount of work, but I have time after them. For milestone 2, which is due today, I wasn't able to do as much as I wanted because I've had to spend all my time preparing for the Robocup competition which I'll be at from Friday till Wednesday.

Milestone 2 update is posted, but it will probably be added to next week.

4/13/04:

I got basic enemy AI working today. Currently opponents simply go to the nearest brick and destroy it. They don't have any obstacle-avoidance or pathfinding, so if they hit anything, they get stuck. I also added support for recording movie screenshots, so I am posting a movie of enemies destroying all the bricks (29 MB) [no longer available], which I think is pretty cool.

Note: the brick damage rate is much faster than it will be during actual gameplay. I have it that fast now just for convenience. Next step is to get basic AI for the teammates so that they will be able to build bricks.

4/09/04:

I put in a good deal of work today, and got the following done:

• Teammate players - simple GLUT spheres
• Opponent players
• Player control - I can take control of any of the teammate or opponent players
• Basic camera follow mode - camera follows the player that is being controlled.
• Block pushing and block attacking - when you control a teammate you can push blocks, and when you control an opponent you can damage blocks (this is just for testing).
• Created a larger game map - 64 x 64. This will be used later on.

A few screenshots:

Teammates are blue, enemies are purple, and the player currently being controlled is yellow. The black dots on the spheres indicate the player's direction/orientation

For now, the bricks just become darker when they are damaged:

This is my giant 64x64 "football field" map :) (yes, I know the lines don't match a football field):

4/06/04:

Today is the deadline for milestone 1, which is supposed to be a playable demo. My game is not quite playable, but it is also not entirely clear what playable means. (if you like just pushing blocks around, then my game is playable =)). But anyway, you can read more details and see screenshots at the Milestone 1 update.

Progress so far has been smooth and expedient, but has been limited only by the amount of time I've had, since I've been extremely busy lately.

3/28/04:

• it's too grand in scope - I would never be able to fully implement the complete idea.
• Would it be fun? Maybe, but maybe not. I really don't know, and that is sort of a problem because it makes it a big risk.
• not enough conflict. Good games need to have a clear+exciting conflict. While my plan included some inter-character conflict, it wasn't all that strong. Admittedly, games like The Sims are successful despite not having much conflict, but doing a game like that takes a ton of time.