Update #3

Hello again!

First off, we wish you all the best in this new year!

In this new update we mostly have fun stuff to talk about. The main reason: We had Christmas break and haven’t done the amount of work we should have done in those days. Shall we put the fun stuff before the serious again?

Let’s face it, Christmas break is the time to spend a lot of time with your family and friends. And that’s exactly what we did. We had planned seeing the Star Wars movie together, but we had some... Substantial hiccups concerning trains, train stations and the occasional mistake in the use of both of these caused said problems, however, we did see the movie! So let’s just stick with Thomas and I went to see it with another friend on the first Wednesday of the break and then Max, Joep, me and 3 other friends again the past Wednesday. Without giving spoilers, the film is better the less you know about the previous six films.

After the break we scheduled two meetings, one on Tuesday, one of Thursday. Tuesday was with the complete team for a change and this resulted in a socket crisis. Those rooms have only three sockets and with six laptops that’s not enough. On Thursday Christina and Giannina stayed home to work on the project there.

Max spent this week modeling the Koopa Troopa and when he was working on the foot on Thursday something happened that wasn’t supposed to in the first place. Every vertex in the object was pulled outwards and the foot looked like a big sea urchin. In case you don’t know what that looks like:

Koopa Troopa, a work in progress.

And I had to delete the fist of the Bullet Bill multiple times because for some reason it kept getting all messed up to the point of no return. Even CTRL+Z didn’t do the trick anymore.

But this is what that looks like right now (unfortunately still without textures):



And the said Goomba without textures, because those are still messed up:



Of course we have a fireflower as well, to help our plumbing friend defeating said above foes.

Distractions were a major thing this week. Big and small. A bird hopping around on the roof of the neighbour building, text messages, hunger and funny bugs(the computer type not the insects).

Enough chit chatting, let’s give you a heads up on where we stand at the project. Giannina has finished her models and the other 3 artists are working on the last models.

With the code we’re kind of stuck until the collision works the way it has to. After the collision works properly the code can be finished and tested, because to test the level implemented we need to have the collision working. How else will we know that jumping on a Goomba actually kills it and not Mario? Or check if the Koopa shells don’t slide through the wall instead of bounce off of them.

The collision is priority number one as of now. In the meantime we are also working on creating and loading three dimensional levels through a simple text file. Mario’s opponents are given some basic brain function by adding the AI to these foes, making the game just that little harder than it would be without AI.

Giannina has finished her work as an artist and has joined Joep and Thomas as a programmer. She is currently working on the code for the player and enemies and help is much appreciated!

We’ve had a meeting with Maarten, our tutor, today. It was a short meeting where we analyzed what promotional work needs to be done before the symposium. We will need posters, flyers, a trailer and a dvd box cover. Max had a good idea for the trailer, but you will get to see that when it’s all ready and pretty. But, to give you some sort of idea of what it’s going to be like: it will involve, and I am in fact authorized to say this, Mario. And that's all you're getting for this update, but tune in again in two weeks for more!