11:21 PM 12/11/2004

Today was Beta Reviews. That's when the teachers all tell us the things they didn't like about the Beta version of our game so that we can fix whatever was wrong with it. When we actually sat down, all they really could do was nitpick. Mind you, the reviewers (John, Justin, Joel) said that when they're at the point where all they can do is nitpick, then you know you have a good game. Their comments were little things like having different reticles for the different spells, or fixing minor bugs in the HUD and things like that. Fortunately, we'd actually fixed all the bugs that they had listed over the 2-day period since Beta. The most important note that was made was the fact that the combat system doesn't _feel_. It's as though it just doesn't respond to you. When Player A hits Player B, B does the stun animation, but you barely notice. There's no particle, no flash of light, no numbers popping up to tell you how much damage you did. Right now it's like a bread sandwich, the combat needs some substance. I suggested the incorporation of a pain flash into the game and the techs thought it would be good. Assuming Peter finishes the particles, we should do well to use that in combination with flashes, and maybe an RPG-style number pop-out for damage. Oh, and we also were told by one of the reviewers that our game is the best MMO to come out of our program in the entire time that he's been teaching here - which amounts to about 130 presentations or so. Forgot to mention that.

I'm also coping with the fact that a lot of my code is slowly fading out of the game. As it stands, there's no way I can balance the spell / skill leveling in time for the presentation in 5 days. However, the party system and damage functions should make it in, time permitting of course. I gave Jeff my Gameplay Sandbox and tomorrow I'll pick up the revised Fikk model and put them in so I can start using the AIs.

The AI was finally integrated today, they follow their scripts as they should. All that remains is adding additional objectives and manipulating their script files to make them a challenge. I'm tired. We meet tomorrow at 2 p.m. to finalize all of the new code we're putting in. I also need to edit the wavs and convert some songs to mp3 format. The code is getting chilly, seems like it might freeze over some time soon …

12:10 AM 12/13/2004

We're finalizing the game today. A code freeze occurs tonight. We're locking the code and fixing the bugs so that on Wednesday we have nothing left but the presentation to be concerned about. We've integrated the new (crash free) AI and the particle engine is being added in as I write. Since the last log the inventory screen has been finished, as has the character creation screen, combat log, and chat system. They told us not to add any more features and just polish … but there's nothing saying we can't do both now is there?

We had a few people connecting to our server earlier today. We have yet to get more than five people to log on at once, so our max server load stands at that for now.

For some reason I feel as though I'm the only one concerned about the project now. There's still a sense of urgency here, but I'm the most urgent of the four of us. Tonight I go back to my Asset Director role and find some cursors for our game to use. Tomorrow I'm editing the audio files so that they cue up closer to how they are meant to, and I'll see to it that we re-export the cave level. I might even see about Rory putting in a jump animation into the Fikks. That was missing from the last export. Right now the big deal is getting all the assets into the game. All these artists have high expectations for what we're going to do with their artwork, it's my obligation to them to see that their work is not in vain.

8:28 PM 12/13/2004

Today was a decent day. FullSail has a number of accolades that they give students in addition to Salutatorian and Valedictorian. I found out this afternoon that I was voted the Advanced Achiever by my class. What I gathered from querying the teachers here is that it's a combination of Most Likely to Succeed and Most Likely to be a good Class Commencement Speaker. The speaking part is nothing catastrophic, I'm quite comfortable with speaking in front of large groups … it just means I have to come up with something to talk about between now and the presentation date.

Particles are acting funny in the game; they aren't quite exploding correctly. Not trailing correctly, it also seems like they render on top of each other, even the transparent parts. I'm growing impatient with a lot of things about this project, including my group. It feels as though I'm the only one concerned with the stability of the project. But I suppose that's my job.

Nothing to talk about right now.

12:52 AM 12/15/2004

Today is the big day. Or rather, tomorrow is. I can't say that I've ever been more nervous about anything in my whole life. A big issue for me up until a few hours ago was the AI. After an integration they stopped strafing. Turns out that the engine was clearing a movement Boolean that wasn't being cleared before. It took two lines to fix.

I left JeffJeff's @ 12:00. I have been trying to keep my mind off the game. We were bug squashing for most of the night, and I set Twelve o'clock as my ‘leave and stop thinking' time for the night. My computer is off to quell temptation. This entry is actually being written in a notebook.

The presentation tomorrow is two parts; first a powerpoint song and then a game demo dance. With the code pretty much finished, we've all had time to rehearse our speaking parts for tomorrow. In the back of my head, there's that concern that the game might crash. But that's always there. I trust now that JeffH fixed all the major bugs that we found during playtesting.

10:51 PM 12/15/2004

Final Presentations were today. Jeff Marr picked me up in his hunter green Eclipse and we headed over to McDonalds and picked up some breakfast value meals. I've been eating there way too often. For the last month or so, my refrigerator has held a total of 4 things: a family size tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, a package of instant grits, parmesan cheese, and air.

We arrived at the Enzian and set up our game on the test machine. The release build crashed because of a network issue and the debug build ran slowly. However, as always, we came prepared. As I noted on prior journals, we have had a number of problems with the router the school uses, and we just brought JeffJeff's wireless router with us to the presentation and used that instead. Code Fusion also used the router for their 3D Hover Racer game; I believe they had similar sentiments. So, we ran the game on the safest system, our own, and used our own router.

After that, I took a few moments to 'ruminate' in the lavatory. It was a strange place because the Enzian is a sort of independent theatre, and as such they have all sorts of movie photos framed on every wall. My stall was subject to a faded Charlie Chaplin picture and a close-up shot of Alfred Hitchcock pointing to a pocket watch he had seemed to just pulled out of his pocket, with the time 7:20. It was quite odd, I attempted to get some higher meaning out of the time being there, but it...was really just a picture. It reminded me that I had something I needed to do today.

Just before the first group presented, all of Funk 'n Games (that's our studio name) were brought outside for a nice hype up pep talk. Liam Hislop reasserted the progress that we'd made in the past year, and in the past 3 months. He also made a joke about frenching some guy, but I made my best effort to forget the details of that statement. It had a noticeable impact on the others, I think it made us feel a lot better about presenting whatever we had, regardless of the progress that each of us had made.

We ( Codus Vivendi ) were the third group to present this morning, after Element X [ "They came from Planet X" ] and N20 ["1094 Racing"]. In retrospect, I think it was good that we went that early. The idea of the game doing something funny on the huge 30ft square screen in front of scores of people troubled me so.

The powerpoint part of the presentation went swimmingly, without a hitch. I made a few jokes to loosen up the crowd that coincided with the slides, and I actually think it made the rest of my group a little more comfortable talking to a room half filled with strangers about what was their life for the past three months.

And of course, after the powerpoint comes the game demonstration. I just pictured a big message box popping up on the front end menu saying "Bill Gates doesn't like you and needs to shut down" <Send, Don't Send>. But that didn't happen. In fact, nothing happened. The game started up with no problems. Maybe I've been watching too much Yu-Gi-Oh, but for some reason the phrase "Trust in the Heart of the Cards" flashed through my head and I knew everything would be alright. JeffH logged in, and stuck to the script we all talked about. He ‘pulled' some Fikks to the Fighter's Field where JeffM and Peter were waiting. They had a lovely medieval frag fest and a few of my teammates actually died at the hands of the AI. Normally, that would be a bad thing, but that means that my little Fikksies were written the right way. And that I liked.

During a break, I talked with a number of people. Many of them told us that it looked like a commercial game. I spoke with Dave Arneson, my former teacher for the Rules of the Game class about our game. If you know that name, he was the co-creator of the original Dungeons & Dragons. Some months ago, I spoke with him about the gameplay algorithms we would be using for spell / statistic leveling. He was visibly impressed and expressed an interest in seeing the final version of our game, with all the gameplay algorithms implemented and balanced.

There were also a few "dude, you had the best game"s from the people that had no desire to practice restraint. I just smiled. I knew that to be true from the very beginning, and I even told JeffH that back in May when we first started talking about our game. I just spent the last 3 months waiting for everyone else to realize what all four of us knew from day one.

When I got outside, after the very last presentation, I socialized with the people. A number of my classmates are going on from our associate degree program on to the bachelor completion program to get a second degree. The Jeffs are going on to the bachelor completion program, but Peter and I are not. When asked, I stated my plans to get into the job market as soon as possible. Peter and I both have Bachelor Degrees in Computer Science that we received just a few months before we enrolled at FullSail. The road ahead for the four of us -- as well as the rest of our studio -- is an undetermined one. We know where we want to go, but aren't certain how to get there.

This journal has two purposes, the first is to tell all the forum lurkers and gamedev.net one of the many ways they can get started on their path. The second purpose is to help us where we're going. It is my sincere hope that this article can be a reciprocation to all those involved in our project over the course of our development cycle and give them all the recognition they deserve for being a part of what was easily our magnum opus.

11:30 PM 12/17/2004

Addendum

This is the final final entry. The prior entry was the end of my coursework at FullSail. Today was the graduation ceremony. As the "Advanced Achiever" award winner, it was my task to be the commencement speaker for my class. I only had 5 minutes to speak, but did my best with the time I was given. I noted where we started, what we learned and where we ended. In a year we moved from a text-based RPG tutorial to a full out 3d game written and designed by us. In another year, I believe we can continue to expect great things from all of these graduates, and there's no reason for anyone there to prove me wrong. A number of the people I called my friends walked across the same stage that I did with the biggest smile on their face. There is no doubt in my mind that our experiences (both social, and experiential) at this school will aid in our lifelong dream to become game programmers.