Escape - Group 4 - Week 6 - Audio Options & Credits

Progress on the main menu is going surprisingly smoothly. Not only did I finish visual functionality in one day, but practical functionality is almost finished as well.
Both music and sound can now be muted and the slider for lowering sound works like a charm. This however has been tested with only one sound file. There's still a lot of work to make this work for every sound file in the game.
Music and sound has to be dealt with individually, since they work differently. Sound-files are loaded into game process and can be played and affected directly in-game. Music however, are streamed separately from the game and aren't loaded. Because of this, coding a function that affects all music is a bit tricky. Thanks to the sound manager, sound-files can be collected into one single variable. In order to make the sliders work for music, there needs to be code that makes reference for each music-file instead.
Muting the sounds is done directly in the sound manager. If a certain boolean variable isn't set to "true", the sound files can't be played. The music unfortunately has to be coded individually to be lowered down to volume 0. This is a pain, considering that the music will still be running in the background taking up memory space.
Nowhere close to setting up gamma in the options yet, right now I'm focusing on the audio and credits.

The hardest part this week was to get the credits-tab to work, strangely enough. The problem was that apparently, deltatime hadn't been implemented in the template my fellow programmer had given me the first week. So instead, I tried to work around this by using SFML's timer-system instead. It's much harder than it sounds, over a hundred lines of code went into making a decently working credits-tab.

The finished work so far:

In fact, it isn't that surprising how I managed to get this much work done so quickly. Since I had a lot of help, too much help in fact. During all this time, I was pretty much coached by the other two experienced programmers on the team. It seems that I just transcribed most of the code right from their mouths. At times, they were the ones writing it down for me.

This gives me a bad conscience. It feels like I can't take any sort of credit for the work done during the past week. Although I did learn a lot thanks to their help, so far it feels as if I'm just in the way of their work.

Escape - Group 4 - Week 5 - Sound Manager

In an earlier meeting with the advising 3rd year student, it was suggested that I shift my focus off the main menu and start working on something with higher priority. "Sound manager" was on the list in the backlog and as lead sound designer, I chose to start work on it.

To make my job easier, I searched the internet for existing open source sound managers. There were only two existing managers, strange considering you'd find many open source managers for example: sprite-, object-, level- and so on.
The one I chose was apparently for an earlier version of SFML and I was having issues converting it to the current version. I posted a thread in SFML's official forums, later that evening I received my first answer:
"The functionality that you want to implement is already provided by SFML..."

His argument was that SFML was already designed in such a way that it wasn't necessary to have a sound manager. The day after, I solved the issues myself and got the manager to work. Was he right though? It took about a week to get manager to work, was it worth it?

Granted, now that the sound manager is in place, it's quicker to load sound files and requires less code. But it saves about 2 minutes of time comparing to loading sound files the usual way in SFML. In the long run, I may have wasted more time than saving it for the project. I could've focused on other elements or finished work on the main menu.

However, this may have allowed us to save disc memory when launching the game. Instead of having to load sound files in every separate state of the game, every same sound file can now be accessed in every state from the same source. This also makes our game's file size smaller. It may have helped  optimize the game.

It may have been a slight waste of time, but it also may have been worth it to make our game more functional and stable. What do you think?


Work on the main menu has been resumed and hopefully the options tab will be fully functional within the next week. So far, I've only worked on the visual functionality (such as working sliders to control sound-, music- and gamma-levels). Also need to consider to add a fullscreen option after seeing a certain "psychotic" person, react to the lack of that option in earlier projects...

Here's a demonstration of what I've accomplished so far (including sound manager):

Escape - Group 4 - Week 4 - Start Menu State

This past week, I've been working on the main menu. The first state that the player runs into when the game starts. First and foremost, I've been working on the menu's visual function. Doing this first will make it easier for me to program the practical functions.

I decided to work on programming the main menu, because of my little experience with C++ and programming overall. Graphics was done by Henrik Forsman. The design is inspired by 1950s commercial light signs and film noir.

So far, I've managed to load:

• Background image
• Main Buttons
  - Lighting up when hovering mouse over them

          - Lit up permanently when selected (clicked on), until any other button is selected

• Selection Arrows
  - Appearing left of the buttons when hovering mouse over them

          - Lit up and placed permanently when button is selected, until any other button is selected

• Title logo
  - Randomly turns on and off every half second

  

Background Image

Drawn by Henrik Forsman. It's a picture of the room the player starts in the first level of the game.

Main Buttons & Selection Arrows

I think it's unnecessary that we need buttons that turns on and off as well as selection arrows. For selected buttons, it would be just fine if they were permanently lit up. The arrows are unnecessary in my opinion, I'm following Theodors and Henriks direction however.

Title Logo

It took a while to make its on and off cycle balanced. It easily got too sporadic or inactive. I've tried to implement a buzzing sound that plays while it's lit.

The idea behind the menu's design is that anyone who's watched 50s or noir films or anything inspired by them will immediately recognize the style and be put in the game's atmosphere, even before playing.

Comments

I'm starting work on the options tab and the sound manager. I'm not really happy with the amount of content I've managed to implement so far. My lack of experience is no excuse.
The rest of the team worked on the first playable version of the game, while my work isn't even one the main priorities of the project.

The sound manager will probably be easy to program considering how simple SFML is to work with. After I'm done with that and the main menu, it's uncertain what I'll work on when it comes to programming. Since I'm given the roles of level- and sound designer, it might be time I start acting them.

The start and lack of Progress

Ever since we received our assignment in programming, it's been a mess. My lack of concentration, experience and patience has left a big blank in my work.
All throughout the holiday weeks, I haven't been able to make much progress. Not only because I forgot my earlier work and files, but because of uncertainty. I had no idea where or how to start. The Engine? Sprite manager? Particle effects?
Mostly graphics and sound-work were among the things I could contribute, even though it's programming what I'm supposed to contribute with. My group member ended up doing the majority of all the work.

Now that I'm back in Visby with my old files, things are starting to pick up. I managed to implement a sound manager and further worked on the graphics. The sound manager is mostly based on what assistant Jerry showed during a presentation.

Still, I'm almost as uncertain as earlier. I obviously need to refresh and repeat on earlier learnings. I feel as if I haven't fully grasped how SDL works. Not quite the time for this realization, since we only have about two weeks left on our assignment. Nevertheless, I will make the most of my efforts.

Motivation - Why Game Design/Development?

For a long time I've always had a lot of ideas and scenarios popping in my head and constantly developing. All this time I've hoped to one day be able to put them on paper or/and screen. I've been writing and drawing every change I've got, but without enough motivation to continue and get better.
I realise that there isn't really anything special about this, a lot of people have ideas they want to put into practice. That is what made me put down the pencil for a while.

One year ago, I was introduced to a course in Basic Game Design at a public college in Vetlanda, Småland. In a introductory course that lasted 3 days, we were given the assignment to create a space shooter. We were asked: what would be your space shooter? That question gave the spark for a whole new universe of ideas and inspiration.
So I spent a whole year at the full course, doing one of my new favourite activities: Making games, unfinished and full of flaws but games that are mine and came from my mind and hard work spent. 

One game in particular made me realise just why I want to continue in this field. A game I developed with a fellow student. I made the graphics and he programmed, a horror game. It didn't have any legit scares but during our presentation, our fellow students eyes widened and moved towards the edge of their seats in complete silence.
With basically a 2 week prototype, we had successfully created an spooky and unnerving atmosphere. After the presentation, they demanded that we make this into a full fledged game. 

The game can be seen in my YouTube clip shown below. It's a montage of all the small 1-2 week projects I did during the year. The horror game is shown last.
  

Download Link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?2voaihs6t09igzr

The major problem with the course however, was the lack of opportunities for playtesting. And I mean playtesting by people other than yourself. I feel that I can't really improve unless I receive proper criticism and reactions from players that doesn't have any ties to the development itself or have any strong relationship to you. Ties like that get in the way of proper criticism.

That is what I received when I let some people play my 4 week project. "Desperate at Dusk", an adventure game meant to put yourself in the shoes of an immigrant, forced to crime.

Download Link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?mr3l1122859b192

I recieved tons of criticism in terms of design and narration. As well as learning a great deal as a project leader, from a slew of mistakes made. This has given me strengthened resolve to get better and create more games.

Better went the 6 week project where I simply took the role as graphics designer.

This received much better response and our programmer/project leader did an outstanding job. This project has taught me the value of good communication and teamwork. I had a lot of fun, working with very talented people on this game.

Download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/s1ci04dx4e4jzx3/Magnesia.exe


Please feel free to give comments and criticism. But instead of plainly saying "it's good", "it's bad", "it's horrible" or "it's aweosme". Tell me what exactly makes it good or bad, which parts and what needs to be improved. I learn a lot from comments like those.

Greetings

I'm a Swedish student in game design and -programming at Uppsala University, Campus Gotland. Last year I finished a one year course of "Game Design" at Ädelfors Public College. I was inspired to continue my studies and work in the field and Campus Gotland seems like great place for just that.

I've spent the first five weeks of the program's first two courses:  
"Game Analysis and Game Design - an Introduction" and "Written and spoken communication".

Here are my experiences so far:

Game Analysis and Game Design - an Introduction

The main reason I came here was to get more opportunities to make games and get more experience. But apparently since Gotland University got merged with Uppsala University, there needs to be a certain amount of theoretical studies and research in every program and course.
That's exactly what we've been up to so far. Not so much research per say, but definitely a lot of theoretical study.

I'm not exactly complaining, the course and its studies fills an important purpose for all the aspiring game developers here (me included I hope). Not to mention that the course literature are interesting to read and well written by one of our guest teachers: Ernst Adams. He's made a name for himself in both game development and -education and it definitely shows during his lectures.

There was of course two short and easy assignments, but s**t got real recently when Adam Mayes (brilliant teacher) announced the course's main assignment.
A full fledged concept document, that we'll have five weeks to complete. I heard most of my fellow students gasp and swallow in terror for this seemingly huge project they were about to undertake. As for me, I'm really looking forward to it. This is what I came here for. Although there won't be (much) production involved, I can finally start designing "proper" games.
However, I'm not fond of the amount "professionalism" and marketing strategy that Adam put an emphasis on the assignment. I definitely understand that it's very important, but this early for the first year students? Most of them are fresh out of high school and we're asked to act as professionals after five weeks.
Either way like I said, I'm really looking forward to get to work.

Written and spoken communication

This course is mainly to help us write papers and make vocal presentations like proper academic students. It's been going really well so far. The lectures gives invaluable advice and the seminars allows us to make use of them.
The assignments feels almost too easy (which doesn't bode well for me).

The state of my group however bothers me. We never seem to have enough time to finish the obligatory critique on some of our members' written assignments during the seminars. The solution would be to finish them outside the seminars and that's where the problem lies. There never seems to be any proper communication in our group. The only means seems to be through a Facebook Group, but most of my group members aren't very active there and never upload their assignments even though they've agreed on doing so on multiple occasions. I've reminded every chance I got, but to no avail.
I'm worried that my group members might be lagging behind on the assignments because of this.