A New Playtest!

  It has been so long since I updated this blog with any sort of post, mainly because this semester has been haywire. Anyway same thing from the last play test, below you will find two links one to download the play test game and the other to the survey I ask for anyone who plays the game to fill out. It goes with out saying that the results of the survey will be used for my capstone class and will be presented in front of the class.

Anyways with out further ado here is the dropbox link to the game, merely extract it and run the .exe you find inside:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/91y07rk8w9blzfz/Level1Playtest.zip

Secondly here is the link to the survey, please fill this out after you beat the boss of the level:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1anrkzKfOOt7fqPFe2RyLlZ6CfI4wvCQ3zkQpcwGseUg/viewform

  The game has prompts in the lower left hand corner tell you the controls so pay attention to them but if you miss them here is a quick run down.

A - Move left
D - Mover Right
W - When applicable switchs planes
Space Bar - Jump, press again to double jump.
Mouse - Aim
Left click - shoot.

  Thanks for helping us complete our play test stuff for this week if you have problems please contact the group member that referred you to the play test in the first place.

Christopher Eppes Bio

Hello,
I am Christopher Eppes

    I am an African American Male

 I went to Mergenthaler Vocational Highschool(Mervo) from 1999 to 2002 with a diploma in Carpentry. My birth is October 10-25-1983 born in Maryland general Hospital. I live in Baltimore Maryland a address is 1619 Abbotston Street.

I have an A.A. associates Degree in Computer Drafting and Design program at Baltimore Community College. I did most of my work with programs in CADD, Microstation, Inventor, 3ds Maxx, and Weather map creations to add to UB. I started at BCCC in 2004 and graduated in 2009.

I am a undergraduate student at University of Baltimore that is working on my Bachelor Degree in Simulation Design and Entertainment (SDE) major. I will be graduating in the Spring 2014 which is next semester proudly. I have created a game with my group recently for Capstone class this semester and will add the finishing touches next semester.

I am a employee at McDonald's restaurant as a crew trainer, cook, and register worker for my employers. I train employees to help with the work around the job. It is learning how to make the items of food on the table and screen, learn how to cook and lay food items on the grill, and clean up after themselves. Teach them how to work on the register to bring food up for customers. Show them how to take the trash out to the location it's at and clean the bathrooms, lobby and tables. I also help to lead them what need to be done and serve the customers if they the managers are doing something else when there not around.

I like to play video game on all the systems like PS2 and 3, Xbox 360, and the Wii and Wii U consoles ,which I only own a PS 2 and 3 but my nieces have the rest.I play football and sometimes basketball and look at both sports when they're on at different time. I enjoy anime and cartoons that are mostly action. Movie i enjoy too from all kinds of genre if it interest me.

I like to either work in making video games or I would like to be back in CADD again. I would like to see if I can put them together and have the best of both worlds.

Christopher Eppes thoughts and production on Oneshot

My thought this semester for the Capstone class came out good but was still frustrating in at the same time when doing the work. I was the OneShots 3D model designer to make the assets and level creator with one other person, Ossman. Brian was the music creator in the game, Jeremy was a designer in 3D models too and Ernest did most of the programming in the design of the game. I mostly did the 3D models from each level we were suppose to make, but I jumped to many levels that assigned to create. I created many assets then others that were big. I probably made 16 assets and one level. We wrote some of the documents for the the showcasing of the game over the course but I didn't offer much because I wasn't around the team much because I had other classes they didn't and 3 of my people in the group had other class together. There were so many assets that we still didn't finish seem to be to many to do that doesn't really need to be touched, but I will.
One problem I had was the lack of communication from all of us. We didn't really contact each other on the web or phone. I eventually did but should have been more. Another problem was no one really listen to other ideas I had and felt like I was under a blind sheet, so I stay to myself until something need to be address. It also felt like the game was made by one person giving ideas to the others. We all should speak and give our thoughts. I Also had work form other classes that I had to put in time for those projects.

I like the game we have now because I accomplished a step to make games later on. I want to be a 3d modeling but I would like to advance my in coding to. I have become a  3d modeler because of this and hope that it will help me to be better when modeling soon.

Ossman Malik-Thoughts on the Semester

Posted on behalf of Ossman Malik,

  Overall, I think our group accomplished a lot of hard work. We each put in effort to create the entire game. Our group consists of five members including Brian, Jeremy, Ernest, Chris and myself. Chris and I were the 3D modelers, Brian was the sound editor, Ernest was the programmer, and Jeremy was the storyboard writer. As the semester is approaching to an end, I think everyone did a good job to make everything look more realistic. For instance, when I am modeling objects, heavy machinery, and ramps I look at images for references and I have to make sure when creating the models they look clean and presentable enough to be put in the game. When a 3D artist models objects, he should rotate around the object enough times to make sure that he created each and every corner perfectly. Even though it does take me a few hours to build each object, I think I am beginning to enjoy modeling because it this is specifically what I want to do when I get a job. As I finished modeling an object such as a stack of palettes, it looked exactly like a stack of palettes because I spent hours working on that object. Along the way, I know it is taking a long time to model everything and it does not quite look anything like a game yet but when this work along with everything else is completely finished it will look a lot like a real video game and everyone will want to test play it.

  In my opinion I think the most difficult part of this project is programming because with programming you cannot make a single mistake when writing code. When you debug your code you have to make sure the code is written perfectly because if there is just even a slight error in your code the program will not run at all. Also, I think that programming takes the most amount of time to build a game because you have to understand where each and every line of code needs to fit in a proper place whereas, with any artistic jobs in the field you are given more creative freedom such as animation in which you have to see how to get the pixels moving frame by frame in order to get something like characters moving in the game, or even sound because with sound all you would really need to do is get the appropriate effects into the specific enemies, character, or objects and you would need to edit the speed of the sound. For instance, you need to make a splashing sound if a character jumps into the water. The splashing sound should last about 3-4 seconds, or if the character makes a smashing sound the smashing sound should be about 8 seconds. Overall, when we get into next semester I am hoping that when we are working on our game we will have all the models put into the game and the game will start looking like a real game when we get closer to the finishing touches.

Ossman Malik Bio

Posted on behalf of Ossman Malik,

  My name is Ossman Malik. I am a Pakistani-American. My parents emigrated from Pakistan in 1986 but I was born in the U.S. in 1988. When I was about 4 years old I started playing video games and my first system I started playing was the original Nintendo. I have enjoyed playing video games so much that when I got to near the end of high school I wanted to also create video games as a profession. I started this major first at CCBC went there for a few years and then got my associates degree. I then transferred all my credits here at UB because this program is over here and I am hoping to finish my education by 2014. After I graduate from UB I am hoping to get a job in 3D modeling because I enjoy art in the gaming field so I will have to practice the skills in my spare time in order to get the 3D modeling job.

Ernest's Thoughts on the Production of One Shot

This semester was stressful cause there were so many things due at the same time. I couldn't devote too much time to any one project. For this project, I played the role of programmer which gave me a lot of work to do early in the design process. The engine for the game is not all the way finished but it has come a long way from milestone to milestone. Getting the Unity 3D engine to work on a 2D plane proved to be difficult. I had to stop and go back to things I got stuck on many times. For example the arm rotation of the player character wasn't always perfect. First I tried to use Input.GetAxis(MouseY) to affect the rotation, but it would just constantly add or subtract from the rotation based on the mouse’s vertical movement. This caused the arm to not follow the mouse cursor correctly. After a lot of research and about a week later I found Quaternion.AngleAxis() which gave a one to one aspect ratio of following the mouse. Another challenging aspect of this semester was communication between group members. Sometimes I didn't always know what was needed for a certain milestone or what everyone else was working on. Most of the time I was working with objects made within the unity engine. Getting things to work when models from other group members were introduced took more time than I thought it would. Lack of communication also prevented something from every group member showing up in the build. I believe only work from three members showed up in the build for the final milestone. Getting this project done will help me fulfill my portfolio goal of building a game engine. I coded everything including the character movement, enemy AI, physics, and more. Hopefully after completing the engine I can dive into other design aspects of the development process. With the winter break and a whole second semester ahead of us, I hope the group and the project will come together nicely after a much needed break at the end of this semester. Also I am looking forward to building my portfolio next semester for potential employers.

Ernest Roberts Bio

Current Student in the University of Baltimore's SDE program. Previously studied game development at Full Sail University. I've made applications using Visual Studio, Adobe Flash, Processing, and Unity. Utilizing C++, C#, Actionscript, Java, and Javascript. My main roles while studying games have been programmer and designer. No online portfolio.