Like a boss

Small update. I made a bridge. So look at it.

Go Go Gadget City

We're coming along. If you read my partners blog you will see where he is. I'm about in the same place. Things are going well. We are both on schedule with our seven items for this week. Here are a few images of what I've accomplished so far.















I'm on a boat...

Awesome Town

So for a small post I decided to show you our city layout.



That's our city.

Two to Tango

I'm sticking with the art track and I've gained a teammate. Mr. Joe Serra. We've decided to make a city. This city will be pretty big. It will contain a city, a residential area, a park, a factory, and docks. We've listed all the items that will need to be made. Which are right here:

City 23 Items:
Under 2500 Polys
One Landmark Building. Center Node. Tom
2 Medium Buildings: Split
2 Smaller Buildings: Split
1 Church: Joe
3 Houses: Tom
Under 500 Polys
Streets: Tom
Streetlights: ­Joe
Traffic Lights: Joe
Fire Hydrants: Tom
Dumpsters: Joe
Trash Cans: Joe
Garbage bags: Tom
Sewers: Tom
Mail Boxes: Tom
Flag Pole: Joe
Street Signs: Joe
Telephone Poles/Wires: Split
Pipes/Gutters: Joe
Traffic Barrels: Joe
Barricade: Tom
City Trees: Tom
Bus Stops: Tom
Both do general trash/debris
Vehicles: If time…Split


Park 13 Items:
Under 1000 Polys
Statues: Joe
Fountain: Joe
Gazebo : Tom
Under 500 Polys
3 Trees: Tom
Bushes: Joe
Shrubs: Joe
Benches: Tom
Park Sign: Tom
Cobblestone: Tom
Bird Bath: Joe
Flowers General Plants: Joe
Bridge: Tom

Gate? Wall?: If Time


Factory 10 Items:
Under 2000 Polys
Giant Building: Joe
Freighter: Joe
Bridge: Tom
Under 500 Polys
Smoke Stacks: Joe
Office: Tom
Docks: Tom
Silo/Tanks: Joe
Coal Piles: Tom
General rubble: Split
Scraps: Joe

We've also laid out a schedule for us. This is shown here:

23 Days 23 Items
1 Item Done Everyday. Done Means Model, Texture, and Exported for TGA.
2-17 Tues: Start Splitting up the work/Laying out the city
2-18 Wed: Work on Items
2-19 Thur: Work on Items
2-20 Fri: Work on Items
2-21 Sat: Work on Items
2-22 Sun: Work on Items
2-23 Mon: Work on Items
2-24 Tues: Have 7 Items Done
2-25 Wed: Work on Items
2-26 Thur: Work on Items
2-27 Fri: Work on Items
2-28 Sat: Work on Items
3-1 Sun: Work on Items
3-2 Mon: Work on Items
3-3 Tues: Have 14 Items Done
3-4 Wed: Work on Items
3-5 Thur: Work on Items
3-6 Fri: Work on Items
3-7 Sat: Work on Items
3-8 Sun: Work on Items
3-9 Mon: Work on Items
3-10 Tues: Have 21 Items Done
3-11 Wed: Work on Items
3-12 Thur: CITY DONE AND PUT IN TGA!
3-13 Fri: Adding Detail.
3-14 Sat: Adding Detail.
3-15 Sun: Adding Detail.
3-16 Mon: Adding Detail.
3-17 Tues: Adding Detail.
3-18 Wed: Adding Detail.
3-19 Thur: DUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


all dates are subject to change. :)

Arty McArtArt

I just ate a grape and I...


I'm feeling the art track this time around. I want to do a city area. I'm not sure right now if I want to do a big city, or if I want more of a town feel to it. I'm leaning toward a downtown area with a neighborhood on the outside of it. I'm looking for reference images right now. Once I have a good feeling about what I want I'll post them here.

You shouldn't have done that...he's just a boy.

Telekinesis Post Mortem

The Good
The best thing that I can say about this project is that in the end, I got the basics of what I was going for. In the game you’re able to pick up and levitate an object. You can rotate this object around you, and walk with it. This was the main goal of my project. Having accomplished that, I feel that this project was a success.

The Bad
There were a lot of things in this project that went wrong. As I said before I had my basic expectations laid out for this project. However, like any project I do, I like to go above and beyond. I wanted to have good weight detection on all the objects. I also wanted to lay out a bunch of little puzzles that would demonstrate how you would use this power. The problem came about when I realized that telekinesis is very difficult to program. The start of my problems began with my good friend math. I knew that programming this would require some math. However, I didn’t take into account how much math would be involved. In high school I only got to geometry. The math that was needed for this project involved calculus.
After I learned the formula I needed to calculate rotation, I had difficulty putting it into the Torque engine. The formula needed me to acquire the angle at which my player was rotated. Getting this information from Torque was easy enough to do. It was the last variable that is given to you by the getTransform function. This variable in Torque is flawed though. The angle works the way it’s designed to from 0 to 240. However, after 240, the angles go back down to 0. This took me a long time to get right. After a lot of researching I finally found a fix for it.
When I put everything together it still didn’t worked like it was supposed to. The objects would teleport behind you and then rotate like normal. This was another block of code that took a long time to figure out. I started to think that it may be the formula that I have that wasn’t working. This is when I began to look up the formula again. As it turns out, there is at least six different ways to rotate something around a given point mathematically.
After everything was solved for the basics of telekinesis, I learned that the way I was going about moving the object made the collision not work. This made me a sad panda. Time became the deciding factor in whether to fix this or not. Unfortunately this wasn’t fixed in the final version.

The Ugly
YOUR FACE!!111!!!ONE1!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

What I Learned
Calculus. Well not all of calculus. I did learn how to use sin and cos effectively. I also learned that sometimes I cannot go above and beyond, and I’m stuck with just the basics.

What the Future Beholds
I would really like to implement this into the engine. If I can recompile the engine to use telekinesis automatically, I believe that it would fix my collision problems. It would also be good practice for recompiling the engine to do what I want it to. That way I will no longer have to fight so hard with Torque. If I do have the time to put it in the engine, and it works well, I’d like to upload it as a resource to the Garage Games website. I haven’t seen anything like this up there, and I feel like it would be good exposure for me.

I'm Done

It's not everything that I expected. However, I got telekinesis to work. GOOOOOOOO ME!