Jared

This past week I spent a lot of time getting to know Papervision3D and everything that it is capable of.  One of the most interesting things that it can do is parse Collada XML files that read in 3D models.  The models can be made in Maya and 3D Studio Max, among other applications, and are saved as .dae or .md2 files.  The Collada XML files hold all of the textures and separate animations which can then be controlled through some AS3 code.  We are going to list some advantages/disadvantages to using this method and figure out if it will be necessary for our project.

We finished our Gantt Chart at the meeting Thursday and it scares me.  There is a link to it at the bottom of this post.

Over the next week I plan on doing some more heavy testing with Papervision3D, wiiFlash, and Air.  I’m also going to incorporate our updated Gantt Chart into a group Google Calendar so everyone can easily read our milestones.  The other big thing I plan on doing this week is a website redesign, with a new color palette and Fourmationy feel.

Chau

This week I created the “site map” for the initial menu page. It contains a general outline of what pages will need to interact within each other and an overall sense of HCI applicable navigation. I also have created concepts of a possible menu style and roughly fleshed it out in illustrator. Finally, I familiarized myself with a few of the technologies we will be using in our game such as AS3 and PaperVision. Although my trials with Papervision were overall not to my ideal standard they were a learning process.

Next week I plan on doing more layouts as well as prototype the navigation, design icons, and start developing HUD and in-game menus. Also, I plan on further experimenting with Papervision as we will be doing some heavy coding within the system.

The team has been working together like a well oiled machine and everyone is doing their part.

Todd

My first goal was to familiarize myself with Papervision 3D. Through several tutorials and example projects I created a 3D cube that interacts with the mouse.

I also set out to experiment with the HUD layout and color schemes. I based the design on our cube game, having most of the clickable assets cubes. The whole concept is exploiting 3D with flash so the atmosphere itself has depth as well as the objects in the scene.

http://thefourmation.com/2009/01/22/hud-concept/

I eventually settled on a pale blue to off-white palette. As shown above. The next steps will include working with Chau to integrate his site map with my concept assets.

Kyle

Over the past week I’ve been testing out WiiFlash and Papervision 3D. I have been trying to get the Wiimote to directly interact with a Papervision cube. I have successfully managed to control a Papervision cube’s rotation with the D-pad on the Wiimote (the example Jared posted below to be exact.) I have also been messing around with the head tracking aspect of the game, and have gotten the Wiimote IR sensor working on a small scale. I got it to track where it is pointing. This is going to be one of the most important parts of the game, so I am trying to familiarize myself with WiiFlash as much as I can early on.

During our meeting on Thursday me and Deimler started some level concepts and the basic design of each level. We decided on 4 different themes; forest, desert, dungeon/cave, and city (subject to change.) Connecting all four sides will be a river which will play an important part in the overall flow of the game (see what i did there?) We decided that there will be 3 basic puzzle types for each side. One they can solve by themselves, one that requires someone else to help you, and one that requires an item. For the items we were thinking simple things like an axe, bomb, crank, and shovel.

Over the next week I plan to continue working with Wiimote connectivity, and hopefully reverse engineer the IR tracking so we can use it for head tracking. When we meet again on Thursday Deimler and I will continue working on level concepts. At some point we need to make a hierarchy of events that has all possible cause and effects…it’s going to suck.

Nick (aka Deimler)

Ok, so here is my post. I have been learning the ways of Adobe Air and so far have made a few applications with Flash and Air. The reason our team needs to use Air is because the user will need to albe to run this from the desktop as an Application, which Air is best suited to do so. Adobe’s website offers a bunch of tutorials that helped me get started. I explored simply how to make the application show text, how to manipulate window size, and a few other odds and ends. The approximate time I spent doing this is 2.5 hours.

Here are the 2 programs I downloaded and played with. One program showed how to make menu items that interact with windows. The other program shows how you can make an application a priority window by having it stay on top of the screen as well as allowing the user to resize and interact with the window.

http://www.nickdeimler.com/senior project/AIRMenusFlash.zip

http://www.nickdeimler.com/senior project/PixelPerfect.zip

As Kyle stated, we also started to flesh out ideas for the level we’re going to create. I would really like to have this completed by next week so we can start building assets. We are trying to make sure that the level will really utilize the 3D head tracking that we’re producing as well as incorporating teamwork in the game. I have come to realize that thinking of a puzzle-esque/problem solving style game is much more difficult than I thought.

Updated Gantt Chart

Week 1 Hours