Current Progress

 

Our progress will be reported on a week by week basis.  The most recent entry is first.  Click on the images to see the image full size.

Week 15 (13 Apr – 19 Apr)

We improved our game according to the feedback we received and we had another beta testing session this week.  Our testers told us that they were very impressed with the amount of work that we have gotten done this past week.  So except for documentation we are done with the project.  We have opened up our source code under the FreeBSD license.  View the source online with Doxygen or contact us if you would like a copy of our game with occupying source code.  And here is a link to our final report.

Week 14 (6 Apr – 12 Apr)

We now have a fun and playable game so we had our first public open beta this week.  Our game was very well received and according to plan received feedback on our game.  The biggest thing that people have been asking for is the ability to call in reinforcements into Battle Mode.  We will be working on implementing the suggestions that we received.  Here is a link to the document detailing the feedback we received and our goal for what to implement.

Week 13 (30 Mar – 5 Apr)

We have been working to get ready for our beta testing.  We have been doing a lot of cleanup work and game balancing.

Week 12 (23 Mar – 29 Mar)

We have been working on making the battles more climatic.  The ground now shakes in battle mode when a lot of action is going on.

 

 

Week 11 (16 Mar – 22 Mar)

You can now select multiple units at once.  We also added a HUD to the game so you don’t have to do everything with hotkeys.

Week 10 (9 Mar – 15 Mar)

Units are now color coded.  They have a strip on them that shows who owns them.  And we added Jets into the game this week.

 

Week 9 (2 Mar – 8 Mar)

We have been working on getting the game ready for Prototype day.  The most showy thing that we have done this week is added an opening menu system to the game.  And we have put in some music.

 

 

 

Week 8 (23 Feb – 1 Mar)

The game is now playable over the network.  Meaning that multiple people can join the game and fight it out.  We also added sound to the game.  Here is a video showing the sound and music that we have added.

Week 7 (16 Feb – 22 Feb)

We have put all of the units into the Battle Mode and added a particle system.  Here is a video showing a battle with all of the units.

Week 6 (9 Feb – 15 Feb)

We finished Milestone 3.  We now have an AI player that will conquer cities and units in our overhead mode.  Currently the AI is much too quick and therefore much too powerful to play against.  We have gotten a basic infrastructure for making it possible to play the game over the network in place.  And the units in the battle mode can attack each other (video here).  And we have a better terrain system for our overhead mode (video here).

Week 5 (2 Feb – 8 Feb)

We have been toying around with the idea of composing our own music.  If you want to hear what we have done so far here is a link.  We spent a very significant amount of time over the weekend working on this and we are not satisfied with the result.  We are starting to think that the amount of work required to compose our music is too much and would take away from our ability to work on the game.  We are starting to look into other avenues for getting music into our game.

Week 4 (27 Jan – 1 Feb)

This week we finished Milestone 2.  We converted the overhead mode into 3D.  There are now cities on the overhead map.  The cities produce units and can be conquered.  When units collide a battle mode is entered which currently does nothing other than show tanks lined up against each other.  The game also builds up threat maps for what areas of the map is the greatest threat to an AI player.

 

Video showing finished Milestone 2

Video showing AI threat maps

Week 3 (20 Jan – 26 Jan)

This week we finished Milestone 1 of our project.  This involves getting the overhead view to the point were you can move 2D units around the screen and have them fight when they come in contact.

 

We also got our engine to the point of being able to display 3D models.  Our engine is still very crude but it is to the point were we can use the engine to program the game logic.

 

We have also spent time this week getting ready for our marketing day presentation on the 27th of January. 

 

Video showing finished Milestone 1

Video showing a single 3D light tank rendered by a primitive version of our engine.

Week 2 (13 Jan – 19 Jan)

We have decided to change the name of our game to Modern Warfare, rather than Hyper Battle.  However our goals of the game have remained the same.  We just decided that the old name did not really convey the true objective of the game which is ground based conflict.

 

Usit has been playing around with creating models.  We came up with a preliminary version of a tank model.

 

Our project proposal is available here.

 

Our tentative plan is to split up the project like so:

 

However please note that we also have a very aggressive development schedule.  And our development model is going to follow after the extreme programming model were our project is always show able and our systems are always integrated with each other and what needs to be done is done by someone that has time to do it right then.

Week 1 (6 Jan – 12 Jan)

We got source code management software up and running.  After trying out many different products we have decided to use Perforce.

 

We have decided that we want our Senior Project to be a DirectX game.  And that we will follow an Extreme Programming like development style.  We have two game ideas.  One idea we call Aierra it is an RPG like game.  The second idea we call Hyper Battle which is basically a strategy game.  They are both cool ideas but with each passing day we lean more and more towards Hyper Battle.

 

 

We were playing around with what the opening screen for Hyper Battle might be.  Of course this will change.  We were just having some fun and trying to get inspiration.

 

 

We were playing around with making the main character in Aierra.  Trying to get an idea of what he might look like.  He does not look nearly as good as we would like him for how much time we put into making him.  We are starting to think that the Aierra project could pose a real problem we just don’t have the resources to create the needed art work for the game.