MDDN 343, Project 3, Doors and animation Update

Our game is finally starting to take shape and it is actually looking alright. We have put in the animations for Uddu. Ryan managed to figure out how to import the animations without doing it the strange way in which he wanted to (thankfully). The animations transition between one another really well and it looks really good. I still have a problem with the jump fall animation and I want to see how it looks without it and if we can keep it out. Also the walk animation needs a little bit of tweaking because at the moment it looks like he is marching. I think all I need to do is to bring is back leg back more when hes walking.

As asset wise we are finally starting to get textures thanks to Katie. Since the beta she has always been in communication with us which is awesome. She also had the same problem with the guard animations which I had but I showed her how I fixed it so she got them working fine.

There are only afew more assets which we had to make. Me and Katie split the ones which we need so that we are both doing them. I have been working on a door which will be put in several places in our game. I want to make a sliding door which looks like it is something which could be in a government facility and also be secure.

I took inspiration from these doors which I found online

I like the way which they have pieces which kind of click together so that is what I tired to replicate and I think I managed to go a good job of it.

I really like the Look of the door. When the doors open they will be hidden withen the walls which will be next to it. We have decided to use rectangles from unity to be used as the walls and add textures to them. This will be good because then we wont have to stretch models to fit the exact way which we want them to and the texture wont also stretch. This is also because our walls come right up to the camera so they dont really have an end point from the viewers eyes.

Door Open

MDDN 352, Project 3, Beta Presentation

We just had our beta presentation for our app. We had most of the functionality done. Every button which you press goes onto another page, even if it just goes to a page which doesn't have anything useable or relevant on it yet. This is the layout of the main screen of the app which we showed.

The Barcode button goes to the barcode scanner and when you successfully can a product it goes to a page which tells you the barcode number as well as what type of recyclable product it is. At the moment we are only working with cans so it only tells you that it is a aluminum product.

We had 4 different cans so that does show that you can scan other stuff. Unfortunately the counting system wasn't implemented for the beta which is kind of a disappointment because we really wanted to have that one in to show the tutors.

We got google maps working in our app. At the moment it finds your current location (as long as GPS is on) and also if you want you can tag your location. The tagging point of our app is meant for if you are by a recycling bin you can tag where that bin is so that other users can find that bin which you have tagged. We got that aspect implemented properly so that is a good thing.

The About and Statistics button done just go to pages which show the icon for that page.
All the back buttons work and sends the user to the main home screen.

We got some really good feedback about our app and all the tutors and lecturers like it. They really liked the barcode scanner aspect. The art of the app could use some touching up because what we realized the day before the beta is the just looking at the app without knowing anything about it is that you would have no idea that this is an app for recycling.  That is something which we definitely need to change for the hand in.

Another thing which we were told we need to do is have user feedback whenever you press a button or when you successfully scan a product. I was thinking that we could either have the phone vibrate or if a small sound plays, or even both. We were also told to get rid of our boarder which we have around our app. Kah said that it isn't necessary as most people do know that the edges of the phone are the end and nothing usually goes past that point unless it is something important and its meant to be there.

Overall I think that the beta went well and we are quite on track for getting the app done by the final hand in. Going forward from this we are going to get all of the pages working and flowing nicely. We will have a lot data in our database for more products as well as the art looking a lot better and be relevant to being about recycling.

MDDN 343, Project 3, Guard

Our game is based in a government facility. UDDU has been captured by the government and is trying to escape. Along the way he has to try and avoid guards. The job of modeling a guard was given to katie but we hadn't heard from her in awhile.
I started to model what I think that could be good for a guard incase we run out of time and we havent got the models from katie.
I thought that because the scene is a government facility that most people would think of the men in black. I thought it could be cool if they had sort of robots patrolling the facility.

I didnt work on this much because I was always still hoping that Katie would get hold of us (which she did)
If she never got hold of us I would of taken this model into mudbox and then made it look a lot better than it currently does. But I wouldnt mind working with this for a future piece when I get some free time

MDDN 343, Project 3, Beta Presentation

We just had our beta presentation and I think it went alright. Luckily we have finally managed to get hold of Katie and she has given us the guard model and animations. For the beta all we had was un-animated guards because we didn't have time to put in the animations but it is better than nothing. She has also promised us that she will always attend the times which we set to meet up between now and hand in which is a couple weeks away.

Unfortunately the art is still lacking in our game but now that Katie is back she can go back to focusing on art while me and Francis go back to our originally set roles.

We got good feedback from the guests who came and watched the Betas. Especially from Jim Simmons from Resn. He told us that he really liked how we had the gameplay sorted out and that he didnt mind that the art was lacking since it was still fun to play.

From the Beta we have realized that we still have a lot to do. Francis, Katie and I are planning on coming into the lap to work most of the days next week so we can all collaborate with one another and make sure we are all going well. The coders are also planning on coming in whenever they can to do there parts but we do have a proper all group members meeting next wednesday.

We are planning to try and have our game 99% finished on the Tuesday before Hand in (18th June) so that we can spend all of Wednesday working finding/fixing any bugs which we might find. I think that this is possible if we all get our heads down and focus on it.

Not long to go!!!!!

MDDN 343, Project 3, Meeting before Beta

Our tuesday meeting this week is our last one which we are having up at the kelburn campus. From now we plan on having full working meetings down at te aro.

We still havent got the animations from Katie but Dawn said she is going to try and get hold of her and make sure that she puts them onto our dropbox in time for thursday. 
All of my animations have been given to the Ryan as he is implementing them into unity. For some reason though he wants to do it some really weird way in which I have to cut up UDDUs body into the separate pieces. I am pretty sure that I dont have to do this because Dawn managed to get it working perfectly fine with my project 1B. We are going to wait until after our Beta Presentation on thursday before I cut it up to see if Ryan can figure our how to import them without having me cut up our character.

MDDN 352, Project 3, Changing Pages

So we have our beta on friday and everything seems to be going on schedule. For our beta we want to have our main 2 aspects of our app working.

- The Barcode Scanner working which talks to a server and counts the amount of times that barcode is scanned.
- Maps which shows you your current location as well as tagging working and those locations being sent to the server.

I have been working closely with Matt as he is the one who has got the barcode scanner working. Once we have got all the things which we need for our beta in the app I am then giving the current app to networking students and they are going to add the database aspects into it.
They have already got it working that when you press a button it talks to the server and sends back some information.

I have made the flow of the app working as that when you press any of the buttons on the main page that it goes to another page. Something which is kind of annoying in eclipse is that when you make a button that actually works that you have to make a Java file for that page and thats is where you add all the code which tells the app whats is going to happen. You also have to add that page into the main manfest of the app so that it knows that this page is actually being used in the app. At the moment all I have is that when you press a button that it just goes onto a new page that just has the logo in it for the mean time.

Matt as also integrated the Barcode Scanner into our app. We are using a Zxing Library for it and when there is a successful scan then a screen shot of the app is taken and then goes onto a page where it will show the information, this is exactly what we want for the beta and now we are integrating google maps into it

MDDN 343, Project 3, New animations

Now that I have got the new higher detailed character off Francis I have been able to focus on the real animations for our character. And I have also found out a way in which the Fbx export will always work exactly how I want it to and for it to perfectly go into Unity. 

I had a long chat with Ben Richards and he also was really confused about how it wasn't working. But he lead me to a site in which it gave you step by step instructions on the exact way in which I should do it. In the end it just turned out that I have to select a different Fbx export type (autodesk media and entertainment) and then export it.

I have done the Rigging, Weight painting and contrants with handles about 20 different times on this character so I was 90% sure I knew exactly where everything should go and what they should all look like when they move.

With a high polly it was a lot harder though but I managed to get it sorted.

This time with the animations I kind of cut them up a lot more. They all have seamless transitions when looped which is a real good thing. Also for the jump I have cut that up into 2 sections so that there is a Jump start and a Jump fall. Im not 100% for the fall animation so im going to see what it looks like when we dont have it in game but for now I have put it in.

Something which the Coders have told me is to not have the end point as the origins of the character because they can do that crossfade thing between animations to make it look more natural.

Walk

Idle

Carry

Idle carry

Jump Start

Jump End