DC1: Teamwork Reflections 25/03/14

I quite enjoyed working with this team, i found it easy to converse and pitch my ideas to the group. I was surprised how well we all got along and how everyone completed the work they were assigned, i have experienced poor teams before and found this team to be a quite nice change of pace.

I believe i worked well with the team to get the design stage of the assignment done. But i believe i fell short in presenting my work to the rest of the class as I stuttered and choked when it came my turn to take over the presentation. in hindsight i should have prepared better for the presentation.

I found that the team had little to no conflicts in the design stage as we tended to break off with our assigned partners and got the work done. I also think the the team minutes played into this lack of conflict as they recorded our assigned tasks and could have been used as evidence against people who tried to Skive their assigned work, a bit cynical but i don't think they were needed anyway.

DC1: Traversal Mechanism (Apparatus). 17/03/14

Wrecking Ball Legs

Incomplete Wrecking Ball

Complete Wreaking ball

Photos and Sketches of the Mechanism that was chosen to be used in the presentation. It was chosen for a number of reasons mainly being.

• It was Tested and found reliable
• it had a strong base once assembled
• it was accurate

It also had some Shortcomings such as.

• it had a short range.
• it would sometimes knock one of its legs out
• the ball would some times free itself from its connection to the chain

It also went through several minor unplanned design changes during its construction. Small thing like how some configurations of the legs would increase overall strength of the mechanism.

DC1: Refined Port Level 14/03/14

Departure

Gap

Arrival

The departure shows Mr sparkles being shot out of a cannon at the left hand side of the map. i had changed the slingshot to a cannon as it better suits a ball of fire better than a slingshot..

The Gap Depicts how the player could navigate the environment with a predicted trajectory drawn out. It also demonstrates how the player could use Mr Sparkles' Power of mid flight direction changing to avoid the water and the container to be able to hit the boat.
 
The arrival just demonstrates on how after mr sparkles avoids the obstacles he impacts into the target boat lighting it on fire 

DC1: Week 2 Team Meetings 12/03/2014

Meeting Date:	Meeting Time:	Meeting place:
12/03/2014	3:00pm – 4:00pm	S Block, level6, S-637

Present
Person 1	Ellen Hui
Person 2	Tom Donaldson
Person 3	Darien Brandt
Person 4	Kevin Lee
Person 5	Mitchell Hetherington
Person 6	Jack Christie

Decisions made:

Purpose of meeting
Decision made (What)	Reason for decision (Why)
Choses ‘Sparkles’ as Bird character, based on Ghost Rider.	Unique appearance and interesting powers and weaknesses that work well with chosen Terrain.
Chose Loki as Pig character.	Power allows for much variety.
Chose Wharf for Terrain.	Most aesthetically interesting of the various sketches and meshes well with chosen Bird character (Water = weakness, possibility of friendly fire, etc)
Chose Wrecking Ball for Mechanism.	Reliably accurate and (relatively) reliable construction, also allows for use of the squash ball and therefore it hits with greater force.

Project Progress

Project component	Status of component	Delivery date
Formulated story Loki kidnaps Sparkles’ children (because he’s evil like that) Loki confines them in cage suspended above water (Sparkles is weak to water) Sparkles must defeat Loki, save children	Complete	12/03/2014
Finalized Sparkles’ powers and weaknesses Can affect trajectory somewhat while in-flight via a swipe in a particular direction Sets nearby flammable blocks on fire on impact Weak to water Explosion means possibility of destroying the block his children are occupying	Complete	12/03/2014
Finalized Loki’s powers and weaknesses Starts game with appearance of another pig and their powers, when hit he reappears somewhere else in his normal form looking angry at having being detected Normal form is weak, but has all the powers of any form he is imitating.	Complete	12/03/2014

Assigned tasks

Task ID	Task description	Who	When
103	Refine Sparkles Sketch	Tom Donaldson	19/03/2014
203	Refine Loki Sketch	Ellen Hui	19/03/2014
303	Refine Terrain sketch	Mitchell Hetherington	19/03/2014
402	Refine Mechanism sketch/write-up	Jack Christie	19/03/2014
104	Sparkles Powers write-up/sketches	Kevin Lee	19/03/2014
204	Loki Powers write-up/sketches	Darien Brandt	19/03/2014

Unresolved issues

Issue ID	Issue Description	Raised by	Action required	By whom?	By when?

Team Minutes Week 2

The bird Mr Sparkles designed by kevin was chosen. Mr Sparkles is a ball of fire that can be shot at the Pig to light them or objects around them on fire,He also has the ability to somewhat change his direction mid flight to allow for better navigation to the target. Mr Sparkles main weakness is Water surprisingly enough. 

For the Pig. The design of ‘Loki’ was chosen whose power is that of creating illusory copies of himself randomly on the map to confuse the player. he is generally weak to physical damage but unlike his illusions he Requires a direct hit from the bird to kill him. 

My Design of the port was chosen to be the Enviroment to be Further refined as it contains water, the weakness of the bird. I was also asked to go and redesign some aspect of it to incorporate some mechanics thought up in the Team meeting.

The changes to my drawing were mainly limited to moving the container further out over the water, such that if the player was to hit it the container, It would fall killing hostages inside of it leading to a mission fail  

The wrecking ball was also chosen to be our apparatus as it was deemed to be more reliable stable and accurate over the other designs  

I was also tasked with Drawing a Departure, Gap and Arrival Scene to be used in our presentation. 

DC1: Enviroment Sketches 07/03/14

Powerlines

Highrise

Port

As agreed upon in the first team meeting, Jack and I were to Draw three environment sketches each with the theme of a city scape. one of these sketches was to then be chosen to be further refined into our final environment.
 

DC1: Enviroments Idea Stage 05/03/14

Floating islands Map

Asylum birds

Submarine Birds

these are some early environment sketches. mainly to help with deciding on which theme the team should go with and to help me visually pitch ideas to the group. These were all drawn before our first official team meeting but they were useful in our brainstorming session even if none were actually chosen.

The First Sketch is of a floatings islands map in which the player could damage other floating islands and make them fall on top of the pigs floating island.

the Second Sketch doesn't add much in the way of new mechanics and more just a theme idea, That of the birds and pigs fighting it out in an insane asylum. with the birds being straight jacketed patients and the pigs as orderlies.

The Third and Final Sketch is an Underwater Submarine level in which the player must destroy the Pigs submarine while also defending from attacks by the pigs own submarine.

DC1: Week 1 Team Meetings 05/03/14

Meeting Date:	Meeting Time:	Meeting place:
05/03/14	3:00pm – 4:00pm	S Block, level 5

Present
Person 1	Ellen Hui
Person 2	Tom Donaldson
Person 3	Darien Brandt
Person 4	Kevin Lee
Person 5	Mitchell Hetherington
Person 6	Jack Christie

Decisions made:

Purpose of meeting
Decision made (What)	Reason for decision (Why)
Chose Super Hero theme for Bird characters	Super Heroes and Villains give a wide scope of fantastic abilities and weaknesses as well as interesting opportunities for character designs that the other candidates did not provide.
Chose Super Villain theme for Pig characters
Chose Cityscape theme for Terrain	A Cityscape themed level goes well with the chosen character themes and allows for a number of interesting hazards and motivations.

Project Progress

Project component	Status of component	Delivery date
Bird character brainstorming/sketching	Complete	05/03/2014
Pig character brainstorming/sketching	Complete	05/03/2014
Terrain brainstorming/sketching	Complete	05/03/2014

Assigned tasks

Task ID	Task description	Who	When
102	Brainstorm/sketch Superhero themed Bird characters + think of abilities/weakness	Tom Donaldson, Kevin Lee	12/03/2014
202	Brainstorm/sketch Super-villain themed Pig characters + think of abilities/weakness	Ellen Hui, Darien Brandt	12/03/2014
302	Brainstorm/sketch Cityscape themed terrains + think of hazards/motivations	Mitchell Hetherington, Jack Christie	12/03/2014
401	Brainstorm/sketch new Mechanisms and/or refine designs for current Mechanisms	All	12/03/2014

These are the team minutes for our first team meeting. with everyone in attendance we decided on The overall theme of super heroes and cityscapes and the allocation of tasks in the group. I was assigned with jack to design the ‘gap’ or level map so to speak. 

As a result of the Meeting Jack and i set about brainstorming ideas the appearance of the cityscape and agreed to have some rough Sketches done by next week.