Finished!! (again)

Finished today. Everything went perfectly and the game is online on http://seriousgames.ie
Finished everything that I set out to do.

Contamin8 is being entered into the Japan Prize
http://www.nhk.or.jp/jp-prize/english/index.html

within the hour :S

My google space is limited, having problems uploading :S

Full version

A full version with sound and fixed stuff after testing should be online within the hour. Meeting with Greg tomorrow to discuss the Game.

Testing

Some people (friends etc.) have been testing the latest build of Contamin8, a lot of things where brought to my attention, like some chicken and ham chopping board issues, the detail of explanation in the tutorial level pop-ups, never knowing what chopping boards to use (this point is included in the game now but is still up for debate as non- food safety people dont know chopping boards, but is it needed for people who have started a food safety course in DIT? - included in the tutorial level only as a happy medium), orders disappearing - there is no explanation of why this happens, or indication, the tutorial being short for beginners etc

Sounds

Sounds are in the game, I'm still waiting for the main menu/theme to be complete and a ham carving sound but other than that the game is complete.
The code is all set up to run when I get those sounds so its a 5min job.
I've uploaded the game to the http://seriousgames.ie Contamin8 page. This will automatically pick up the latest version that I have built.

Today

finished the tutorial level, have been working on it for a few days and also (in conjuction with Paula)
Ive also finished updating the contamination. It now is not just green, but green and red when uncoooked and red and less contamination when cooked to symbolise "reality of (green) vegetative microbial cells and a tiny number of spore forming bugs who survive cooking" -Greg

Woo

Major big bug fixed today. When the chicken is contaminated and all the pieces are on screen/in the bin there is no more pieces in the fridge, the contamination was showing still in the fridge for the fridgeChicken. This took awhile to find what was actually causing this so its a nice relief to fix it. phew!

Release Build

There was always problems with getting the release build working with the Playground Framework (even back in Summer 07) but yesterday I finally found a solution on how to fix it. The release build of the game will use code optimisation to run more efficiently and will emit debug information, therefore creating a smaller dll(better performance). There is no noticable difference in gameplay speed of the game but the loading time is quicker, shaving about 2 secs of the approximately 6 second load time. I'm quite happy I got this sorted!

How to use release build of Contamin8
1 Remove PFLIB_STATIC_LINK from your Preprocessor Definitions.
2 Change the Linker Input from pflibStatic.lib to pflib.lib.
3 Copy the pflib.dll from pflib/lib into the folder of your executable

The list of little bugs became bigger over the past few days but I tackled most of them over the weekend, its hard to believe the amount of little bugs that appear from different scenarios. Anyway I'm back on track and feeling confident about having most of the little things finished by the end of the week. Maybe :) These thing always go longer than expected.

so far

Coming to the end of the week and I've got most bugs sorted out and am working on updates. When I also get a chance (usually my own time) I'm working on a complete re-factor of the game.

Things still to do
- red contamination.
- sounds
- temperatures
- chopping board bug.
- contamination fridge bug.
- tutorial re-vamp.

Im back!

Im back working on Contamin8 for a month or so to fix little things, make the tutorial level a bit better and to add sound. I miss Paula :)

FINISHED!

Project is finish with 43,737 lines of codes (38,560).

Know issues
-------------
Contamination should scale down after being cooked.
Items are still clickable when the mouse is hidden.
No Clear Hi-Scores button.
Sound.
Temperatures.
Contamination in the fridge should be behind the fridge doors.

The end is near!

Lack of posting

Due to the demands of the project, blogging has been limited as of late, but the project is finishing up tomorrow and all is looking well indeed.

Tidying up

Im almost finished all the coding and at the moment am idying up the code and fixing minor bugs.

contamin8 Splash Page

mm tasty!!! Heres a look at the contamin8 menu.

Illustrated Sample from Menu (fish)

Fresh Fish (Trout) as they will appear in deliveries and fridge.

Single portion of fish for prep

Butterfly Trout (raw) ready to cook

Butterfly Trout cooked

*temperature gauges will be added later

At present, I am dividing certain objects into separate Portable Network Graphic (png) files to hand over to Brendan. These will include rollovers, menus, fridge objects etc. Above is a sample the clock states that will be animated during the course of each level. This image consists of nine separate png files. For our design we have created a stop frame animation from these images using the 'Sidewalk' excutable file accompanying Playground. It creates a single xml file and a single png file that can be controlled to correspond with gameplay.

kitchen development

Above is the latest view of the contamin8 kitchen. Since the last blog, i have been adding more details to the kitchen. Ive started working on the menus, refined the design of all the appliances, and finalized the kitchen layout. This meant returning to sketch-up for the final time to create doors (open and closed), lids for the bainmarie, a new chilled cabinet design, altering the cooker hobs, resizing the fridge and making slight adjustments to the location of objects. Each individual item was separated into single sketch-up files, altered and then exported as an eps to be rendered in illustrator. In illustrator I brought in each object as a separate layer to be assembled into the correct position. Some of these items will be exported again as separate objects from illustrator (as png files) for Brendan to re-assemble in different layers as he assembles the final game interface.

My Work - simplified...If only it was this easy!

Posting is down on my part, pretty much becuase I'm just coding away.
I've done the following - A class that overwrites and adds more to the Sprite class(TSprite), chopping board and food classes derived from the new sprite class and an Menu Order class. All these classes have all the functionality needed to be used in the game (besides for the mouse movement that is handled in the main game class - game.cpp). The click and drag ability is in use for the menu orders 1-4, the chopping boards, and nearly all food items(currently in progress) this includes all logic behind where they can and cant go and when they can go to different spots. Also included is the A. I. that handles the menu orders appearing and disappearing and the deliveries coming in.

Menu Squares

The squares(up to four) that will represent the orders coming into the kitchen, have most of there functionality working. To complete the functionality the order system will need to be created. Progress on this has started.

Total Line Count Update

6659 Lines of Code in 46 Files.
How boring is this post compared to Paula's nice picture.

Kitchen Makeover!