Post 24 - Milestone Three

We arranged to meet at the university for a prep meeting at 11:30. Jon arrived on time, but
Chris was unable to meet us until 12:40. We discussed the presentation, who would talk over each section and looked at some final changes which Chris had made. We created the files, burnt them to several CD and set off to present our milestone three.

The presentation went quite well. I feel that we all contributed towards its delivery and demonstrated the product with all of its features. We answered any questions and took on board any feedback we received. The majority of the client panel approved of its format and were pleased with the outcome. It was mentioned that "it was ok that it was an activity, rather than a fully fleshed out game" and that it was apparent that it was a product, which could have more elements added to it. I was pleased with the feedback and discussed with the group the individual submissions process.



Here is a link to milestone three presentation:

http://prezi.com/btvxlyz9g2yl/group-07-collaborative-practice-milestone-03/

 

Post 23 - Week 11 Meeting

We arranged to meet up on Monday the 6th of December. All three team members participated in the meeting and was primarily organised to run through the final presentation that I had been tasked with making. We edited some of it, added the legal and ethical slide and then moved on to discussing the game. The final version of the game has now been optimised even more and Jon has now added an additional 'arm tool' so that the activity is less violent. It was working really well, but Chris was tasked with looking into exporting the game as an exe file (stand alone application) and to tweak the textures. In this blog are a couple of pictures of the game on Monday.

 

During the meeting, it was agreed that more information on our product's market and its place within it needed to be confirmed and included into the presentation. At this stage, its place lies within the downloadable content (game) and I looked into XBox Live Arcade (game could be downloaded from the Portland Quarry and Stone Trust) and the notion of it being in a 'kiosk' form in or near the PQST headquarters / museum. The kiosk could also be made to be portable so that it could be placed in towns, or in the Portland Quarry.

When the presentation is finalised, I agreed to send the team a link to it, but at the end of the meeting it was almost 100% complete. 

Post 22 - Week 10 Meeting

On Wednesday the 1st of December, the group arranged to have a meeting with the client about our product. At this stage, Chris and Jon have been looking on both the lag issues and the 'cannon ball' method of knocking the building down. Luckily, with our collaborative efforts, the game now runs at an acceptable speed. Chris looked into the problems and altered the object properties to make them more efficient. I streamlined the building by taking out unnecessary detail and objects inside the building, and Jon experimented with the firing mechanism. The result is a working game, which has a first person firing mechanism. This was then altered into a 'tank' or 'cannon' style system. We had a meeting with Brian Larkman, who gave us a couple of suggestions about how to improve it. These included changing or adding another 'knocking mechanism' such as a finger, thus reducing the element of aggressive destruction and focusing on the educational element. Unfortunately, Jon was unable to attend due to the heavy snow, so me and Chris sat down and wrote out what we needed to do. The list includes:

-Texture the Cannon and cannon ball

-Improve building textures by making them look more like Portland stone and increase coverage.

-Create an additional knocking mechanism (such as a finger)

-Look into an 'undo command during game'

-Attempt to make the game into an executable format (thus eliminating the need to run Blender)

-Look into marketing research, such as the product's place and use.

Jon was later filled in and suggested that we have the game completed by the weekend.