Monday Moogle Mooching Mobsters

Okay, there wasn't a whooooooole ton of new topics this week as a contrast to last week.

Ben was absent for today, though he was in touch to let us know why and is continuing his work. Also, Ben, if you're having any troubles with software or anything else interfering with things just give me a shout and we can always change things up a little :).

Anyway, we were introduced to Anthony's candlestick minigame design and it looks promising. We discussed how feasible it will be to create in Game Maker and some of the changes we might need to make to it.

We were fiddling around a little with Game Maker and I think there are one or two bonuses to version 8 compared to 7 (which is what the university pcs currently have installed). This might be worth looking into as Simon and I were trying things with how clean the edges on the sprites were so we might have even BETTER looking shiznit by the end of this.

Otherwise, everyone has plenty to be carrying on with for now and a few additional tasks that we can spread between us:

CHRIS -

• Editing the virtual museum character sprites for the walking animation, to reduce our protagonist's hip swagger..
• Tweaking the virtual museum camera to zoom closer in, therefore encouraging the player to adventure more since they can't see everything on screen at once. Let's us show off more detail too.
• Setting up a template in Game Maker for the spoons minigame ready for Ben's artwork.
• Experimenting more with 3ds Max (as we'll never keep him off it).

SIMON - 

• Continuing work for the 'odd cutlery' minigame.
• 3ds Max work with engravings and the M logo. Kinda of continuing what Chris has been working with (for variation).
• Finishing off the drawer minigame once I complete and send the final images.

BEN - 

• Continuing working on the spoons design (which looks awesome from the below post I might add).
• Continuing the cleaned up designs of a few NPCs

ANTHONY - 

• Coming up with the questions for the Quiz NPC based on the information on the previous blog posts research.
• Trying out some designs for candlesticks ready for the minigame.
• Looking into sounds for characters or background music for parts of the game.

JOHN - 

• Finishing drawer feature images, including the object's individual details and the "congratulations" screen after you find the Turtle piece.
• Posting further info regarding educational games research.
• Creating background images for the candlesticks minigame, along with some candlestick designs.
• Looking into sounds such as characters and music for the game if time allows.

Aight, so on with the show.

On a final note, if everyone is available during the Easter Break, I'd like it if we could still meet up once a week and carry on with some of this work. Also if possible I think we should aim to have the minigames all at a near completion stage by midway through the Easter Break, just to make sure we don't run out of time.