Week 3. Working on adding assets.

This week we are trying to add more content to the game. I'll be adding in more programming and items to the shop. Mostly just adding the units at the moment because the items are being finished. As well we are working on adding in some restrictions to the units to allow only specific units to use specific items. This will need a small HUD update, which I'll be working on soon enough.

Week 2. Working with comments.

This week I'm working on fixing some of the comments we got during the week 8 presentation. Other than that, there isn't much new stuff to repair due to QA comments. Many of the comments were about how we didn't have anything you could actually command at the moment. As well some were due to confusion. This was to be expected because there isn't a working help button. That will be added nearing the end due to screenshots and small new features that will need to be explained.

As well as the comments, I am trying to work some on adding in the new features and items we will have in the shop. This unfortunately requires item submissions from Wes, which means I'll have to get to that later on when I receive them.

Week 1. Begin part two.

This week is my first week back from vacation. It was nice to finally have some time off of work that needed to be done, but now its time to start up work on the project again. The first thing to do was to set up a new statements of work. We ended up mostly with the same list as before with only a few things done. The reason of course, was because we had planed for this to be a two parter and there was plenty of final things left to implement. The weeks off to a slow start, but that's fine because what needs to be done right now is getting everything set up to work on again.

Week 7. End of part one.

This week is the end of the work that we are doing for the class this section. I look forward to the break, and I don't mind the idea of working on the game on and off over vacation. It's good to be in code again, so it'll be fun later. Now it's just figuring out what needs to be done then.

The presentation went well, and I think we did good. There was a few tweaks that needed to be done that were not in yet, and a few things that need to be added to the list. But all in all, it was fairly easy fixes. Now we just have to finish the rest of the game, as well as add a few cool new features here and there.

Week 6. Closing up work.

This week we had to finish a lot of stuff for the project. A lot of the AI and level work needs to be done. As well as porting in sounds to make the game feel more finalized. As for the menu however, I have pretty much covered all that I need to cover. All that I have left to technically do is the help menu and make more achievements for the game. But with them being end game stuff I'm not sure if they will be completed for this half of the project. The reason is that achievements and help may change as new features start to emerge from later work. Something that would really change the help menu is an idea about groups of penguins working as a team. Should team stuff be implemented, it will need a different help menu. So that may not go through this half because it will be demonstrated by us and isn't finished enough to be completely concrete.

As well the help menu will be pulling pictures from game play. So we need finished stuff to show how to use them and what needs to be done. The good thing is that our game may not really need a help menu because it is fairly intuitive. So long as you know that the mouse is the only control, you shouldn't have to much trouble playing it.

Week 5. Tooltips.

This week was interesting. I did a lot of work to get the shop up to par, and I feel I've done a pretty good job at the moment. After finishing up the last parts of the shop I moved on to my next difficult task, tooltips. I wasn't quite sure how I would go about making it, but I found a tutorial of sorts that helped me come up with an idea of what I had to do.

That picture looked a lot like the image I made above.

The back has two movie clips. One called TooltipBack and one called TooltipFront.

The text is HeadingTxt and BodyTxt.

The code that I wrote looked like this:

//Code for mouse movement
mouseListener.onMouseMove = function()
{
 if (_xmouse + TooltipBox.TooltipBack._width <= 800){TooltipBox._x = _xmouse + TooltipBox.TooltipBack._width/2;}
 else {TooltipBox._x = _xmouse - TooltipBox.TooltipBack._width/2;}
 if (_ymouse + TooltipBox.TooltipBack._width <= 600){TooltipBox._y = _ymouse + TooltipBox.TooltipBack._height/2;}
 else {TooltipBox._y = _ymouse - TooltipBox.TooltipBack._height/2;}
}

//Object that the tooltip shows information on.

StorageItem7.onRollOver = function()
{
 _root.attachMovie("Tooltip", "TooltipBox", 50);
 TooltipSetup("Fire Ball", 0x0073b5, "Attack Damage = High\nAttack Speed = Low\nAttack Range = Medium", 0);
}
StorageItem7.onRollOut = function()
{
 removeMovieClip(TooltipBox);
}

//Setup function
function TooltipSetup(A:String, B, C:String, D)//(Heading text, Heading color(optional), Body text, Body color(optional))
{
 TooltipBox.HeadingTxt.autoSize = true;
 TooltipBox.BodyTxt.autoSize = true;
 TooltipBox.HeadingTxt.text = A;
 if (B == 0) {TooltipBox.HeadingTxt.textColor = 0x000000;}
 else {TooltipBox.HeadingTxt.textColor = B;}
 TooltipBox.BodyTxt.text = C;
 if (D == 0) {TooltipBox.Body.textColor = 0x000000;}
 else {TooltipBox.BodyTxt.textColor = D;}
 //Set box and word max width
 TooltipBox.HeadingTxt._width = 300;
 TooltipBox.BodyTxt._width = 300;
 TooltipBox.TooltipBack._width = 310;
 TooltipBox.TooltipFront._width = 300;
 //Adjust text to left side
 TooltipBox.HeadingTxt._x = TooltipBox.TooltipFront._x - TooltipBox.TooltipFront._width / 2;
 TooltipBox.BodyTxt._x = TooltipBox.TooltipFront._x - TooltipBox.TooltipFront._width / 2;
 //Adjust textbox y when multilined
 if (TooltipBox.BodyTxt._height > TooltipBox.HeadingTxt._height)
 {
  TooltipBox.TooltipFront._height = TooltipBox.TooltipFront._height + (TooltipBox.BodyTxt.textHeight - TooltipBox.HeadingTxt.textHeight);
  TooltipBox.TooltipFront._y = TooltipBox._y;
  TooltipBox.TooltipBack._height = TooltipBox.TooltipBack._height + (TooltipBox.BodyTxt.textHeight - TooltipBox.HeadingTxt.textHeight);
  TooltipBox.TooltipBack._y = TooltipBox._y;
  TooltipBox.HeadingTxt._y = TooltipBox._y - TooltipBox.TooltipFront._height / 2;
  TooltipBox.BodyTxt._y = TooltipBox._y - TooltipBox.TooltipFront._height / 2 + TooltipBox.HeadingTxt.textHeight;
 } 
//Adjust to distance to screen sides
 if (_xmouse + TooltipBox.TooltipBack._width <= 800){TooltipBox._x = _xmouse + TooltipBox.TooltipBack._width/2;}
 else {TooltipBox._x = _xmouse - TooltipBox.TooltipBack._width/2;}
 if (_ymouse + TooltipBox.TooltipBack._width <= 600){TooltipBox._y = _ymouse + TooltipBox.TooltipBack._height/2;}
 else {TooltipBox._y = _ymouse - TooltipBox.TooltipBack._height/2;}
}

The result of the code is what is below. This code creates a tooltip box from where the mouse is and adjusts it to deal with the screen and more text. Only the body text can expand, which means you have to have a header that can fit within the textbox. Another good thing about the code is that there is an ability to pass to the function color choices. As shown below, the TooltipBox.HeadingTxt.textColor was changed to make the header blue.

Week 4. Menu work.

I've been working hard on my menu lots of times this week. In fact I feel like I'm a little ahead at the moment. While I may have more difficulty making more work with what I have at the moment, I think this is good because it allows me to refine a few more features of my menu and HUD. Something I've been thinking about is tooltips for the achievements and the shop. This means that rolling over the button will allow you to see information, as well as how to get the item you are looking at.

I've also ended up taking more of the shop task as part of mine, mostly because I felt like the feel of the menu should be very consistent. When I saw it last, it seemed against my basic flow feel. But the good of this is that I will have control of the flow and Wes will be able to work more on the characters, their weapons, and possible animations(a newer idea to come into play). By also taking in the shop I will now have to come up with a plan for the buttons and HUD/UI for the shop, but I've got something in mind.