Competition Entry

Central TAFE is running a "Make a Game" competition at Go3, and we intend to enter MiniTanks. As such Jordan and I have been working on getting MiniTanks into a better shape.

The first major change we have made is to remove the terrain randomisation functionality since we have been unable to get this feature to work correctly across a network (i.e. we couldn't get clients to get their terrain from the server). However whilst looking for a way to randomise terrain consistently for networked multiplayer I came across a resource for a terrain deformer object. So now instead of random terrain we have terrain which deforms from projectile impacts.

A very late development

Yesterday Jordan and I fixed the multiplayer issue in the presentation build. A wee bit late but it got done. It could have been fixed much sooner had we realised that at the presentation Alan actually fixed the problem in the version he was trying out; sadly we misheard what he said and thought he had only told us how to fix the problem, and his fixed version was lost forever when the computer was ghosted.
Nonetheless we finally got around to fixing the issue, in remarkably little time; after we rediscovered what it was (yes, we also forgot what Alan said the problem was).

Any which way we do intend to continue work on Minitanks, as our schedules permit, and have started a list of what needs doing.
Currently the list is as follows:

• Fix the issue with players own projectiles killing their invisible player object: by offsetting it's mount position.
• Fix the faulty terrain collision that occurs when a tank moves too fast: by placing a second duplicate terrain object just a little below the original, and having a bogged/broken down effect occur when a tank collides with the second terrain object.
• Add a debris object for destroyed tanks: a suitable test debris object already exists within Torque.
• Fix the animation of the Tank Treads: ?
• Make the minefield visible: textures?
• Add the Hover Tank: export/import DTS and create new datablock
  
• Add custom projectile for the missile rack: create new DTS and import it.
• Adjust datablocks for each type of tank: balance the tank types.

Finally we would like to make different versions of the game for the server and client. To do this the following would have to be removed from the client version:

• Terrain randomisation
• Random environmentaly object placement

Most likely we won't get all of this done but we will end up with a more complete version of Minitanks.

Not the End...

fortunately for you guys - this isnt a conclusion to minitanks. Its just a Pause. Later i will look at areas we can publish the game and would be happy to have any of you tag along.

And unfortunately for you programmers being the type that you are, you wont be able to leave the code along - always wanting to tweak and go back and see if it can be improved.

:D

The End

Yesterday Tim had those of us who where in Mark's classroom sign the assessment sign-off form, thus bringing an official end to the Project class.
It's certainly been a very interesting class, in particular the way it showed how the skills we have learnt throughout our courses may be used in a real world working environment. Also impressive was the results that can be produced through a group effort, the results of which seems to me at least to have been more than the constituent individual efforts would lead you to expect.

I wish to thank: all the lecturers who gave advice on the technical aspects of the project; the attendees of both of our milestone 1 presentation and the final presentation; and an extra special thank you to Tim who gave us the initial concept, constant encouragement, and kept us on track when we started to lose focus on the end goal.
Finally I want to thank the entire MiniTanks team, both the programming & networking halves, we couldn't have achieved what we have without your dedication, skill, and hard work.

gw team. wtfhaxlolroflcopters.

R.I.P Minitanks.

Those Chickens

Finally, we can all start counting those chickens....

1,2,3,4,5,6...


Well done to us all

Worth it

Well done everyone with today's presentation yes some of us were nervous and shaky, mentioning no names...(TERENCE)

lol dont worry i was nervous as much as you if not more but yeah glad presentation over and good stuff networkers and programmers.

Wasnt easy but was all worth it at the end.

Dizzy

Final Presentation

I wish everyone the best of luck with the preperation for tomorrow, the networking documentation is finished and the presentation is ready to go, see you all tomorrow around 8:30 to organise all the little bits and peices and have a few practice run throughs to boost the confidence. All the hard work will be worth it in the end.

Update on GUI

Most of the GUI has been done.

The gui now has the "character Select GUI", there the players can pick what body and turret they want. The "Team select GUI" has also been done.

So players can pick what colour they want to choose, then they will be spawned at their base.

Just saying thanks to Brett for the help. THANKS! :D

I am now working on my presentation for wednesday.

Dhiren

HUD

I had some free time so I added a HUD, I think I remember Tim making one but I don't where that is. The HUD does not work yet, I plan to do that tomorrow when the programming side of the team meet to practice our speech.

Also, I have an older version of the game so the sky box is actually a different image thanks to Tim and Brett.

The End is Nigh

Tomorrow (Wed 26/11/08) we have our practice run, and next week is the Final Presentation. On the Programming side we still need to finalise our documentation and merge the changes we've each made into the final build. We haven't even started on the actual presentation itself.

Since my last post I've continued working on the documentation, started a Microsoft Office Project document, implemented Matt's changes he posted here, fixed the mounting of a player in a tank, and fixed the pink screen of death.

Counting the Chickens

We attempted loading another DirectX to avoid the runtime error we were having when the .bat file loads up, but with no luck, it would not load at all.

After going back to the original form of the cluster, we tried a script with the runtime error line commented out, no luck, it error still appeared.

Still waiting to count those chickens....

Running Cluster

We got a two node cluster running with the minitanks game with about 7 players. There is just one error we are trying to fix so that the cluster runs smoothly without intervention.

No news is good news!

No news to report here captain. Just done some documentation work today, and pretty much completed my slideshow presentation.

Changes

Hey guys, I can't make it in today but I've compiled my changes into a text file in case you want to add them to the demo.

http://bur.st/~ripe/changes.txt

• Fix: Terrain alignment issues
• Added: Bases
• Added: Player controlled tank (node 0 still needs to be moved)

I'll be in tomorrow so if you want me stay behind to do anything that's fine.

The Exciting News

We have finally got the .bat file loading fully in the Vm-Ware cluster. We have had it running a couple of times, ( & made backups), but have not try it with the game running on a number of clients.

Hopefully come Wednesday, everyone will be blowing each other up, but until we see it happening, I'm not going to start counting our chickens....

Some Exciting News?

Hey guys, i do believe Mark and Terry have some exciting news for us. I wont steal the joy away from them and i do hope they post it.

Progress Report

Work on the programming side of the MiniTanks project continues to progress as we near Milestone 2.
Code for the bases is now ready to be implemented in the main version of the game thanks to Matt's hard work.
The team selection GUI has been refined further and now offers the functionality we desire for the end product.
Interim models have been successfully implemented in one build and mysteriously failed in another copy of the same build. Due to time constraints we do not have time to investigate the cause of the failure and as such we will use the successful build as the main version adding elements from other builds to it. The final models continue to cause great pain due to their complexity.
Documentation is moving forward with in depth Technical Documentation of the Random Terrain system being completed and some very small progress on the Game Design Documentation.

As of next week we will formally be stopping all code work to focus solely on documentation and the presentation. It is our intent to use the milestone 2 presentation as a practice run for the final presentation and as such the time between Milestone 2 and the Final Presentation will be used to refine or revise what we present at Milestone 2.

Presentation and Documentation

I have made some good progress on the presentation today and fixed up the documentation a little as i have gone through it slowly. The presentation is going to be divived between us as disscussed in class. Its up to each of us to write our own talk and add our own information for our own slides. For those who want to do work at home, theres a copy of the presentation and documentation on the shared drive. Next week we will add in the prepared stuff.

Bases

Bases have been added. Each base is represented either by a blue or red smoke effect. Positions are completely random every time the map is reloaded. It also keeps a set distance between the two points to make sure the bases don't spawn right next to each other.