Bear Studios

Current plans

- game theme – chess

- temp game name- chess wars

- Commander unit -king

- Meele unit – Knight

- Range unit – Bishop

- Support unit – Queen

- Neutral unit – Pawn

- Control points – Rook

Current task list

Anselm

-Add ons to terrain(trees, moutains, waters, buildings)

-Add credit screen and blah blah screen

- long 5:3 map

Wen bin

-Basic commander AI

-Flocking

YunXu

- traps

- randomly add them to terrain (preloaded traps)

- influence map

- visibility check using frustrum bounding box

Shao Chong

- timer

- seperate team(mechanics)

- Combat system

Will have a small meetin online everyday online from 10am-12pm

Idea for team formation controlling using xbox controller thumb stick

Go go go!!!

monster(s) will chase player when distance is < 100 and stop when distance < 20.

Exploration (Anselm)
Generate game map from real satellite images

Timeline
Stage 1: Image processing on Google Maps image to generate 3D terrain
Stage 2: Generate control points based on generated terrain
Stage 3: Populate the map – trees, building, monsters w influence map (w Yunxu)
Stage 4: Process user input using Google Maps API

Exploration (Yunxu)Terrain analysis for trap placement, high level Squad AI decisions

Timeline
Stage 1: decide best location for 1 trap type – Boulder Trap – high ground facing possible path.
Stage 2: 2 more types of trap, e.g. the powerful Bear Trap – low visibility, high foliage
Stage 3: intelligent squad deployment AI (w Boon Pin)
Stage 4: TBC
Exploration (Boon Pin)
Intelligent Combat AI algorithms for NPCs (Monsters)

Timeline
Stage 1: Basic pathfinding and monster AI
Stage 2: High level Commander AI based on control points (w Anselm)
Stage 3: Squad AI
Stage 4: Advanced squad AI for squad and monster

Exploration (Shao Chong)
Engine development, UI and enhancing game play through camera and controls

Timeline
Stage 1: Engine up w combat capability and fly through camera
Stage 2: Game play coding, camera research
Stage 3: Camera development and combat control
Stage 4: Fine tuning of camera and combat controls via play testing

Agenda
———–
1] Update
2] Reflections on what transpired last week
3] to-do

Update
The team read through and is in the process of compiling the Innovation Engine into XP-Dev
Abit of research on individual parts

Reflections
Input from Allan:
3D Game is wide (complex) and difficult to implement
individual’s parts are dependent on each other, ie. Map Representation -> Pathfinding -> AI, etc
advise is to scale down on implementation so as to fit into project timeframe
features to show must be obvious (eg. clever AI must be able to be observed by player)

To-Do
Meeting the next day to sort out product backlog and plan sprints
Follow-up on relevant people for update on xbox loan, creators’ club premium account, schedule for meeting with Claude and Dr. Ashraf, updating Allan on meeting timings

part 2 coming up after tommorow’s meeting

Reference Books

Went to Clementi Book Store to look for reference books. Tenatively we will be deciding on this book: Microsoft Xna Unleashed : Graphics and Game Programming for Xbox 360 and Windows.

Game Engine

We took a look at a few ready 3D XNA game engines, but could not find a suitable one. We decided to use the tutorial for building a 3D XNA game engine at http://innovativegames.net/ to start a game engine from scratch. This will enable us to understand the internals of a game engine better.

Follow-up

Platform

School only has 2 Xbox 360 for possible loan. Anselm’s still on the way. I might be able to loan one from friend who works at Microsoft. We’d try to develop for PC with Xbox 360 controllers first. At least for initial few releases until we can settle deployment problems for the Xbox. Worst case scenario would be to fully develop on PC and port to 360 at the end of the day.

Meetings

Meeting timing with Dr Ashraf is tentatively set for Thursdays or Fridays. To check with Claude.

Game Design

To-Do

• Check pricing of Xbox controller + bluetooth dongle
  • Update: 75.90 per piece w/o dongle
• Arrange fixed timing for meetings with Claude & Dr Ashraf as well as free time for group programming/discussion. To be confirmed once tutorials are allocated.

Release 1 planned

• magic/fantasy (eg. drawf vs globins)
• start with a 1 unit vs 1 unit prototype
• troops + turrets for bases
• traps
• 1-2 general type of unit?
• feed back and UI
• controls -> xbox controller will be better
• Indoor(castle, tunnel) + outdoor(forest, mountain, river, plain)
• weather -> global effect ( rain = mass slow?, reduce in visibility)
• terrain height map (affect the movement speed in up hill and down hill)
• tentatively will be on PC for prototype 1

2d version of the prototype map

Agenda

- finalise roles

- come up with all possible game features

- preparing for initial prototype

Discussion

Implementation – OOP?

The chosen platform XNA has a class ‘Game1′ which holds the bulk of the code the team has seen so far after looking through XNA tutorials and code.

For a medium size game, this could get messy. Without OOP, objects will have to be stored as structure data types. Alternatively, to implement OOP several methods can be used. 1 of the method is to create classes seperately for each object. An alternative is to code the classes inside the ‘Game’ class. The team will research on this and come to a decision in the following week.

Scrum?

The team decided to research on the Scrum development process and will most likely follow a similar workflow.

Shao Chong will be in charged of maintaining the processes. The team will create a product backlog over the next week, which will contain the list of features which could be included in the game. This list will be trimmed into a release backlog where the team will prune away features that are not necessary or ideal.

The first release, or prototype is targeted to be released by 18th Jan 2009.

Roles

Below are the team’s finalised roles for the project:

Shao Chong – Project lead

Anselm - Lead designer

Boon Pin – Documentation

Yunxu - QA

Every team member will be developers as well, involved in the coding of different aspects of the game.

Roles as developers:

Shao Chong

- combat system

- damage locality

- damage feedback

Boon Pin

- Enemy AI including tactics, behaviour, action

- Pathfinding

Anselm

- visual effects

- weather system

Yunxu

- procedural environment

- trap system

Team members may work together (pair programming) or help out each other during the course of the development.

Other discussions

- discussed on the map requirements for initial prototype (start small, build gradually)

- to finalise on version control software by next meeting

- discussed on implementation of trap system

- to research and try on portability of code between PC and XBOX, and decide on platform for final release

Main focus of the day was to settle on the gameplay aspects.

Goal

Players will be given a choice to choose which side to play as.

Objective of the game:

1. Destroy all enemies

2. Destroy the leader/boss of the enemy

3. Destroy a base/capture the flag

After much discussion, the team decided to take option 3. This however is not final, might be subject to changes as we implement, test and balance the game. Players might even be allowed to choose how to complete the game.

Neutral enemies will be placed on the map that is aggressive to all sides.

Map

Initial decision is to implement a single map over multiple levels.

map ideas

1. Initial Idea

Players can choose 1 of 3 sides in the map and will attack each other.

- Balancing issue. Alliance (2 vs 1) might unbalance the game, FFA difficult to manage as well.

2. Central goal

2 teams ( 2/4 players or AI) will start at opposite ends of the map and eventually converge into the goal/flag in the centre of the map. Required to traverse through intermediate nodes/base.

Many variations possible.

a. Get flag from enemy base, then place it at the goal

- with current map configurations, opposite enemies might not meet if different path taken towards goal.

b. Get to goal, then destroy enemy base

3. Distant goal

2 teams start at the same side of the map to eventually reach the goal at the opposite end of the map. Will have to pass through the same route eventually

- Solves the problem of enemies not engaging with each other

Decision:

*what was our decision?* tbc

Character

Characters growth automatic based on player’s choice of actions, weapons.

Player have choice to select controllable allies with different specialisations to aid in battle.

Weapons

Start with a basic weapon. Can get better weapons from defeated NPCs or find from map.

Enemies

Different types, strong and weak against different types of attacks.