DAY 69

Today I started off with playing a game called terraria to maybe get some inspiration for our game since the two games are very similar. I first noticed the sun placement and how it wasn't actually animated which took away from the immersive aspect of the game. After that I exited the game and began to work on some more particles. I began to work on a rain particle effect since I had already made a snow/ash one and it would be easy after creating that. I wasn't sure why but the rain was looking very weird and was being too sporadic and going in all directions. Jake and I worked on this together and found a solution that made it look quite good, but wasn't covering all of the screen for some reason. We stretched out the emitter all the way and it still didn't cover it. After christmas break I will try and make it look better, and who knows what I'll start on that far ahead in the future, maybe even a whole new game.

DAY 68

Today I worked on particles again with Jake. I started without him trying to make a rain effect. I made the shape of it to lines, adjusted the opacity, changed the colour, and speed, and a bunch of other things to make it look like rain. I imported it onto my desktop to save it, and it had this weird error message thing that I didn't understand and the program quit itself and nothing saved. So I had to cut my losses and move on. At that time Jake came in and we were playing around with it to try and make a fire effect or sun effect or something. We weren't quite sure what it was but it kind of looked like magic and Ty was intrigued. We werent sure how to implement it, but if you change the colour to a sort of brownish colour, we could use it at the player's feet to make it look like dust or something when they are walking. After a while of playing around with it we came up with a sun looking thing. Next class I will maybe try and make fire or something else.\

DAY 67

Today I played around with the particle maker program trying to figure out what to make. I wanted to make rain or snow or something falling from the sky but I wasn't sure how to move the emitter and stretch it out so that it looks like rain. I found out how after a while and I basically played around with it for a while until it looked good. I exported it and put it into my player object. It worked right away and looked pretty good but the snow flakes looked kind of big and cartoony. I went into the code and adjusted the size to make them smaller, and the alpha value to be more transparent. Then I adjusted the speed, and amount of the particles, so that it looked like it was slowly moving down; like snow does. After that it looked pretty good, but the snow went over the ground and didn't look very good. I tried adjusting the depth to make it go behind the ground, but nothing worked. So basically all I did was adjust the depth of each of the ground objects to -1, and that worked fine. I'm not sure if it looks better that way or not, but I'll leave it as it is. Next, I wanted to make fire, because fire is cool. I followed a tutorial but didn't end up finishing it due to the lack of time. Plus, it wasn't working anyway. Also, I got Simran's mountain background from him which we need to combine with Jake's original. Next class I will probably continue to work on particles.

DAY 66

Today I decided to scrap the text box idea as it was causing too many unknown errors within some of the ground objects, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I also noticed that when the mouse turns to the left and right, the player doesn't move towards that direction. So with Howie's help we took the code from the player's arm so they turn towards the mouse. Ty was working with particles and things which sort of motivated me to do what I did for the rest of the class: the same thing as him. I've had some experience with particles before, but not really enough to create exactly what I want within code. I youtube'd a few things and found a particle maker application for game maker studio. Basically you can adjust the particles how you like and actually visualize it. I wanted to try and make snow but I wasn't sure how to move the emitter. I was playing around with it and learned a bunch on how to maneuver it. This can be really useful with any particle effects we need to make in the future. Next class I will try and make something we can implement into the game.

DAY 65

Today I was going to work on fixing the three arms when holding a weapon and standing still issue, but Jake was doing arm and gun sprites, so I didn't want to make anything that's going to be replaced in the future. So I decided that in the beginning of the game, the player needs to react to the environment (being that he is surrounded in blood and there is bodies everywhere), as people do. We can't just have animations of that because: 1. That takes too much time. 2. It won't really explain anything and might be confusing. So I wanted to make text boxes for the reactions. As always, I went on youtube and found a video that would be useful. I followed through the video, and created a script, a text object, and a text trigger object. Basically what I want it to do is pop up when the player collides with the trigger, and scroll a line of text with a text box relative to the size of the text and such. The way the video did it was whenever the mouse clicks in a certain location, it spawns text, so mine is a little different. This might be why it created a few errors; one of which I fixed. Jake and Howie both tried to help me with this error but they don't know much about scripts, so they left me to deal with it. By the end of the class I didn't figure it out, so I will have to do that in tomorrow's class.

DAY 64

For the first half of the class I helped both Jake and Nick on their work. For Jake I helped him work on the water/blood object and sort of critiqued it a little bit while also helping to work on it. After doing that It looked quite good, but didn't have any movement to it when the player was in it. This takes away from the immersion but oh well, we are going to add a sort of splash effect when the player moves or gets up to a certain speed. I helped Nick work on a dodge movement, which ended up not working with me helping. After that I went to my own computer and worked on applying each of Jake's new player sprite images onto the sprites. For that I had to erase some arms and colour in some arms to be short. After that I noticed that the player had three arms when wielding guns, but this can be easily fixed by adding a variable that changes the sprite when wielding a gun and not moving, so it erases an arm. After that I wanted to make it so that when the mouse reaches a certain point above the player, it snaps to the left so that it doesn't make the player's arm look weird when moving around. I ran into multiple errors so I called Howie over. We figured out the that it would be easier to just have it so that the sprite changes to the left when the mouse x value is less than the player's x value, and vice versa. Overall this works alot better and now looks good. Next class I will maybe make it so the player doesn't have 3 arms when wielding a gun and not moving.

DAY 63

Today we watched a video that helped to create the water effects that we are trying to do. In the video, it is way too reflective and not really distinguishable as water so we are going to change it, or try a different approach. Also, it is not red, so we have to change that as well. After getting multiple errors, we kind of gave up and decided to import Jake's new running animation/character. In the midst of this our school went on surprise practice lockdown, so we crowded everyone in the office. We had to put each of the (left run sprite to the left side,etc.). Since the player animation isn't finished, it looks very broken. Next class I will try and get Jake to work on the animation, and then figure out what we are going to do with the water situation. We talked about it, and we think we should have the water/blood as just basically a reflective line, and when the player's speed is equal to a certain amount, and if he first touches it, it splashes, but isn't realistically rippling.

DAY 62

After about 30 days I finally get another chance to work on the cut-scene, and that is what I did today. I followed a tutorial to help get me more familiarated with timelines and such since I haven't worked with them for a while. I started by making it so that when the player is in the room, cutscene = true and the timeline starts playing. This actually didn't seem to work which isn't surprising because since when does anything I do actually work. But seriously, I have no idea why but when the player is in the room, its index is supposed to change to the sleeping bag one, and it doesn't. I think It may be because of Howie's weird "spawning" system. Since I don't actually have to place the player in the room to have it be there, this could be what is causing the problem.Also, I got Nick to work on a sort of sandstorm effect.

In other news, Jake wrote a story which relates to our game, and inspires me to take reference from it. It mentions the player waking up in a basement filled with blood to about the guy's knees, which is like Jake's concept art he drew earlier. I want to put aside the cut-scene for now and maybe try and get some blood water physics and such. It would be really creepy and awesome, and I think we could implement it into the beginning of our game, so I think that's what Jake and I will do next class.

DAY 61

Today I continued to try and figure out how to fix the view and make it look good. I tried a few more things that still didn't work, so I asked Howie and we figured it out together. He math'd it out and made everything relative to the size of the window and such. This finally worked and we got a view for both the outside and inside. I added the glow for the player and the room_dark object to make it cinematic. Also, I made it so that the screen follows the player horizontally but not vertically on the inside, and both horizontally and vertically when he's outside. I really like this feature personally. Also, I worked with Nick on a sandstorm/snowstorm particle effect. I think realistic snow or sand would be a really cool and immersive feature to the game. He followed a tutorial and then tried it himself on my computer. Once he finished we put it in the game and ran it. Actually, it didn't run. The game just didn't want to run when he put the object in the room. When it isn't in the room it runs fine. I think it is because there is no step event in the sand object, but I'm not sure why it would cause the game to not run. Anyways, inside the house looks very cinematic at the moment so next class I hope to start on the cut-scene finally, though I do want to make a sort of fade from the top of the wall into the darkness in the room.

DAY 60

Today I continued to work on the view problem and try and see how to make it not stretchy. I have no idea why it is doing this but I created a new room, and added all of the resources in. I set the room size to the size of the walls and floor combined so that it isn't a huge blank space. At first I didn't set the view and it didn't seem to be stretched out, I then set the view to the size of the room, and it did the same thing it was doing before: stretching out. I creating another room, and another, trying anything I thought would work. I don't understand why it's doing this. This whole thing has given me a headache. I might have to create a view object, this would be a lot better. I could make it so if the player is in the house, the view is smaller, and if the player is outside the view is a lot bigger. Also, when the player goes inside from outside and vice versa, the view zooms in and out. This would be ideal but I'm not sure how to go about this, I'll have to look into it once our game is more developed.

DAY 59

Today I tried to fix the weird thing it was doing with the view. I thought it was something related to the view thing I put in the player object that Ty gave me yesterday, but it wasn't because when I deleted it, it literally changed nothing. I tried so many different things I can't even recall what I did. I think I may have to create a whole new room, or maybe create my own view/settings. Also I'm not quite sure if Stephen is apart of our "team" anymore because he seems to be creating his own game so I'm not sure how that contributes to ours. Simran is working on mountains or something, I'm not actually quite sure. Howie is working on music still, which is going very well since he is a magician. Jake did a bunch of different corpses during his spare time yesterday and also did a concept art picture which looks really cool, and I suggested that we use that in our main menu in the future. Next class I will create a new room and try and fix the view.

DAY 58

Today I tried to implement parallax scrolling with Jake's background. Also, he completely lost the background that he made 5x bigger than the normal background, which is extremely unfortunate. Anyways, I basically took Ty's code for the parallax scrolling (with his permission) and attempted to pull it off myself. This obviously didn't work because why would it. I didn't manage to get a screenshot of it but the layers were upside down and everything was messed up. Also now the view is stretched out for some reason. I have no idea what's going on anymore, parallax broke everything. It's ok though I think I may know how to fix it. I'm just kidding I have no idea on how to approach it, I'll have to bug the genius Ty to figure out how to make it work. Also, Jake thinks that the story needs to be changed since we changed the game to a platformer so it changes everything. I'm not sure if I agree with it but if he comes up with a good idea I'm willing to give it a chance. Tomorrow I'll attempt to fix parallax scrolling.

DAY 57

Today Nick wanted to join in with our work as we showed him the game and thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his whole life. Basically the majority of the class I showed him the game and a few of the Game Maker basics. He tried making a tree but it was sort of sub-par to our original one, so we scrapped it. It's ok Nick you did good. After that I continued on my work and started on the cut-scene, which is going to be quite a bit of work starting from scratch again. I started by creating a few variables for it, I'm going to need more though. I made it so that when the cut-scene starts the player index should be the sleeping bag, but it didn't work so I'm going to need a variable that changes it in the player object. I also got Jake to work on animations and such. Below is a picture of Nick in science class.

DAY 56

Today I worked on the lighting within the room. I kinda want to create light coming from "outside" through the window, but it would be kind of hard. Something to do later on though. I worked on the lighting and aesthetics for inside this house. Jake and I tried to make it so the city background was behind the window, and you could see it from through it, but it kind of broke after that. He clicked the "delete contents that are outside of the barrier of the room" thing and it really broke as you can see in the first of two images below this. I had to find out what it was that was breaking it first and then fix it. I deleted all of the contents of the room pretty much and restarted. After I fixed that I made it so that the light emitting from the player is duller and more subtle. I also put barriers as "walls" to make it so the player doesn't fall through the world. Next class I will try and attempt parallax scrolling with Jake's background maybe, that or the cut-scene.

DAY 55

Today I worked on the aesthetics of the house room essentially. I had to get all of Jake's wall tiles and convert them from a .psd file to a .png file, and then I took both of them and put them together in photoshop, exported it, and imported it into game maker studio as a tile sheet. I added them into the house, and put cement objects as the ground. I wanted to make it look good since I'm begining the cutscene in the house, so I made a widescreen foreground the same size as the view of the room, and made the widescreen 49 pixels wide. This made it look a little more cinematic, but I still wanted it to look better. I added a slight glow to the player when in the room, and also a dark foreground to make it seem darker. The end result looks kinda weird because the glow is overtop of the player, but underneath of the black background. Next class I will fix this and continue aesthetics. Also, I want to maybe make the glow so it stops at the ground and isn't spherical, sort of semi-spherical.

DAY 54

Today I worked on trying to apply the ground effect to each bullet. I started by adding them to each bullet object, but for some reason the bullets stacked up or something, and the splatter effect emits from the air. So I made it so the particle effect was in the ground object instead, and adjusted the height to where it looked good, and after that It seemed to work. Then I needed to figure out how to change the colour from red to brown or something. I set it all to 10 because I was just playing around, and it changed to a blackish colour, which isn't bad looking for now. Later I can change the colour of it for each ground object depending on the colour of the ground. We don't have many ground tiles at the moment so I'll work on that when we do. Also, I wanted to start the cut-scene so I asked Jake for his indoor wall background, and also the outdoor background. I put in the outdoor background and realized it's a little tall so next class I might need to shrink the height to make it look better. For the screenshot below I adjusted the height, and it looks quite epic. Also Howie made a really awesome ambiance song. Each of us listened to it while staring at the outdoor background and it was quite epic and immersive.

DAY 53

Today I tried multiple things to try and make the bullet glow look better. I tried to stretch the glow out to make it look non-spherical but all that did was un-align the glow and it looked worse. I tried a few other things and then went to photoshop. Basically all I did was make the opacity lower so it's not as intense as the player glow, and that seemed to looked quite good. Though It does almost look like a flare gun; I still may have to decrease the opacity a bit, but on to more important things. I also made it so when the bullet hits the ground, it destroys itself and creates a particle effect which is right now the blood effect. I just have to change the colour to brown or green and make it more suttle. I made some critiques to Jakes background, which he added grass and greeny stuff to which looks really good, good job Jake. Next class I will maybe work on the cut-scene after I tweak the ground spatter.

 

DAY 52

Today I started working on the collision with the floor objects I made. It wasn't quite working so I made it a parent to the wall object Howie used for the floor. It still didn't work so Ty suggested I use the ground objects just as tiles and put an invisible collision box over top of each tile, which would be sort of tedious, so I found another way. I just checked the physics and solid options on each object which worked quite well. After that I moved on to lighting effects. I put in the night cycle and right after found out that Howie made a cool looking bullet trail effect. I then had to figure out a way to make it light up the world when it is night time. I added Howie's objects into my game and they worked fine, though in the dark it looked weird. I changed the depth to go over the darkness for the bullet, and that looked quite good, but it still needed some more lighting. I went into the night cycle object and duplicated the glow from the player and added it to each bullet. This looked better but it needed to be smaller to adjust to the bullet, and the shotgun bullets are way to bright. I duplicated the glow sprite and edited it a little bit to match the bullet, but I still need to play with it to make it look good. I also made some judgments to Jake's background to make that look better. Tomorrow I will adjust the glow to make it look better.

DAY 51

Today I tried to combine my files with Howie's to try and solve the issue of nothing working in my game. I transferred a few things to his game, launched it, and it broke. This is why last year what we did: have 1 master game file on 1 computer and everyone transfers what they just did to it, is a way better approach to multiple people game development. So I decided to cut my losses and just switch over to Howie's game completely. So I did that, but still saved my old copy just in case. This way is alot faster than trying to solve the problem manually. I put in all of my tiles and stuff, so It is all organized and up to date with all of the recent work. I got Jake to also work on the buildings to make them look deteriorated and broken, he did a good job in doing so. Next class I will add all of my tiles into the room and make it look good, and add some lighting in.

DAY 50

Today I began to get re-oriented with game maker. It's only been a week but I have to figure out what I'm doing now. So I started to work on the cut-scene when I realized I need to actually figure out the player movement, which for some reason isn't working. Howie was a little late to class so I went to his computer, copied the player movement to the dropbox, and put it into my player step event and create event. This broke it even more. I started to troubleshoot everything I thought would work. I copied Howie's player object into my game; it didn't work. I tried messing with the collision masks of the ground sprites, collision codes with the player and the ground, and everything I tried; still didn't work. I wanna delete the game and restart please, Anyway, i'm not quite sure how to go about this problem. I might just have to look into every line of code until I spot the issue. That's what I'll leave for tomorrow Justin.

DAY 49 - REVIEW WEEK [FINAL]

I still wasn't able to place any sort of buildings like a canteen, sick bay, greenhouse, or anything for some weird and annoying reason, but I still managed to survive pretty far without them.

I build a whole bunch of water and power collectors surrounding everything, I think that's the reason everyone survived longer without a canteen. Throughout the whole game everyone was low on water though. I also built a landing pad for trading ships to come and go which produces more resources. This was useful and kind of cool.

I also got an "achievement" kind of thing that showed that I survived for 24 hours on the planet which was kind of cool.

After about 20 minutes, my colonist's water levels were getting very low and I knew death was inevitable. They began slowly dying one by one and then after 10 minutes they were all dead. 

In conclusion I enjoyed this game when I wasn't stressed about my resource levels being low, which was almost never. Don't get me wrong though, it is a pretty fun game. Tomorrow we will go back to working on the game once again finally, and I can finally work on the cut-scene.

DAY 48 - REVIEW WEEK [4]

I missed yesterday due to having to do Grad-Trans practice presentation so I will be making 2 posts today to help make up for it. I started off with Planetbase just restarting my whole base because everytime I started it, they would run out of resources and die.

I began by building everything the largest they could possibly be built, to maximize production. After building all of the essentials and everything, a meteor came and directly hit one of my workers and instantly killed him. This was very unfortunate but I managed to keep it steady without him, I placed all of my resource collectors around my buildings which was a very bad idea because I couldn't then place any more buildings because they were blocking the path. I then had to delete a few of my collectors to place the buildings. This caused massive production failure.

Good thing I saved a while back so when everyone dies I can go back to that save. Anyway, In conclusion; it takes many tries and deaths to get a handle on the game and fully understand it.

DAY 47 - REVIEW WEEK [3]

So I began on playing the actual game today with no guidance besides my previous knowledge from the tutorial. I started off building the essentials - Air lock, food, water and power generators. Once this was done I built some bunk beds and interior things for the cafeteria thing.

And then it all went to crap. Everything needed oxygen, and the oxygen generator needed power, and the small power generator was trying to power everything at once which didn't work, and everyone died.

Thankfully I saved, and continue from where I did, choosing how I built my base more wisely. After a few more times of people dying, I started to get the hang of it and was recognizing the pattern that they were all dying of oxygen loss. 

I then started building larger power and water generators which benefited me immensely. A suggestion would be to do this from the very start to avoid problems and have more resources. I also built a mine, a landing pad, and a few other buildings. My base was cluttered with small generators though which made it unorganized. That's one suggestion to my future self when playing this: Be organized. Have an area for water generators/storage, and power generators/storage. Then you can build the rest somewhere else.

DAY 46 - REVIEW WEEK [2]

I had to make a double-post today as I was missing on Monday. So I got into the game and began playing the tutorial. I landed on the desert planet it looked like for the tutorial, and began building an oxygen thingy to keep the settlers alive and so they can breathe. Then I built a canteen which is a place where the settlers can eat and drink, and a few other places and this is what it looked like:

After it got me to build a numerous amount of buildings it then got me to build specific things inside them: in the canteen I built a fountain and tables and a food dispenser thing, in the barracks it got me to build beds, and in the sick ward I also built some beds.

It also takes some time to build the things you ask the builders to do, and you can speed up the time to do so. I also like the animations of them bringing the supplies for the build, and then it just erecting from the ground magically, It's quite satisfying.

DAY 45 - REVIEW WEEK [1]

Today I'm sort of switching it up a bit; I was told to basically take a week off from working on the game to review another one called Planetbase. It wasn't really my preference as to choosing this over our game, but I got back after missing a day and they were all doing it, so I guess I am too. This game looks somewhat intriguing probably due to the similarities to a game I used to play called Civilization 5. There are three planets and the player must build a base to essentially keep the "dwellers" alive. There are a variety of different people who can live there:

Basically you control everything on the planet and have to keep the people alive, survive from disasters such as storms and things. The three planets each have their own specific atmospheres; Gas giant, frozen, and desert. The different planets each have different environments and weather and such which can influence how you play. I feel like everyone who plays would need to develop an ultimate goal to achieve, otherwise it can seem kind of pointless.

DAY 44

Today I wasn't at school once again due to me having my N driving test, and didn't have time to go to school, so I quickly did some work from home. I didn't quite like my wood plank tile so I used my grass/dirt tile and layed it over top of it. I then erased the grass part and blended it with the wood tile to make it look like there is dirt underneath of the wood. This looks a little better but I think I need to tamper a bit with the wood to make it look more woody. I communicated with Jake via text and told him to continue working on the background, and he did. Though he said he was reviewing a game called Planetbase whatever that means. Tomorrow I am going to finally be in class so I can get Howie's movement code in and critique Jakes background which I'm excited to see. Also I'll try to work on the cut scene a bit, which shouldn't be too hard now that the game is a platformer.

DAY 43

Today I was really sick and couldn't make it to class, so to make up for it I am working from home. I couldn't do much as all of the tiles I've been working on are on the school computer, and I haven't linked them to dropbox yet, which I should do.  I worked on creating an indoor tile like a wood plank kind of in Photoshop. It looks somewhat weird and i don't know if I like it. I don't know if I should have dirt under the plank then fade it to black or just tweak it a bit. I could just have the cement as the indoor tile seeing as though its post apocalypse and all the houses are poor. I also texted Jake to work on the background for the outside because it's going to take a while to do. Next class I will try and get Howie's movement code, and work on the cutscene hopefully.

DAY 42

Today I worked on the cement tile. Jake sat beside me and constructively judged a few things to make it better. I made it go from black to cement, though I feel like I want to add dirt underneath the cement to make it blend with the dirt. I made a seperate tile to blend the grass tile with the concrete tile, but I'm not sure if I like the transition. After that Jake and I talked about different styles of floor tiles, and which would look best, using Photoshop to express our ideas. After that we talked about having parallax scrolling with the background; having the mountains or city in the background moving and making it look awesome like Ty's game. Next class I will try and make an indoor tile and tweak the cement one.

DAY 41

Today I had absolutely no time to do work so I talked with everyone about the game. I was busy doing grad photos all block so all I did was reminisce with people. Jake wanted to make it so when the player is turned, the sprite turns completely 90 degrees. I think that it would look really weird doing this, though realistically speaking the player right now is running on an angle, but that's ok, it's a video game. Next class I will make some new tiles and refine the cut-scene a bit.

DAY 40

Today we talked about what to do with the game and the story and such. Also Simran bought me battlefront for my birthday, I'm not sure why I put this in the blog but why not. I also worked on blending the ground tile with the black ground to make it look better, and made it look better when it repeatedly tiled so it blends with itself (with the help of Jake). Most of the class we talked about how making parallax scrolling while the player moves, kind of copying what Ty did, though it looks cool and I will credit him if he wants me to. Next class I will work on some new tiles such as concrete or something. Below is a screenshot of what the blended tile looks like.

DAY 39

Today I began recreating my tiles into "platformer mode". I took some inspiration from a game called deadlight, and suspect I will be continuing the inspiration for alot of other things. I really like the style of this game, and the parkour in it is really cool, so that's why I want to implement it into our game. I got Jake to work on the inside walls for the house, and some grime and dirt to go with it. After he is done with that, I asked him to create an outside background, which is going to take some time but I want it to look really good. I created a grass tile for outside and that's pretty much all I did. I'm going to make it go from grass, then dirt, and then black as it gets farther down. After that, the inside walls should be finished from Jake, and I can begin on the cut scene; where I last left off in the "old" game. I can finally post some visuals relating to what I did also:

DAY 38

So today we discussed the major decision with the whole group with our mini "meeting". We discussed the pros and cons of it and decided to make the major decision, and convert our game into a platformer. This is going to take some major changes and fixes to go with it, but overall it should be beneficial. Here are the things we can accomplish with it now being a platformer: Way better lighting, A really cool looking background and foreground, parkour maybe, and it just ultimately looks better. Jake and I got started with converting it and what we did was add a ground and the house. I got Howie to work on zombie and player movement. Jake and I worked on making it so when the player is colliding with the door of the house, and pressing E, it switches to another room. This is pretty much all we did as we spent a majority talking about the change. I'm still not sure what Simran's role in the game is but he has to start doing something soon. Next class I will continue on the progress, and create some ground visuals since all of my tiles are now rendered obselete.

DAY 37

Today I fixed a few errors, and create a few more. This seems to be what I do on the daily, but it's OK I'm making progress. I'm trying to create a working timer for the black to project itself for a few seconds then unproject itself, which should be easy but since I can't really see anything in the room, it's hard to tell if it's actually working or not. I got Jake to work on the zombie walking animation which still looks a little fast, I want it to be a slow movement. I'm still trying to work each of the errors. The problem is now within the cut scene, which is better, but still a problem. Next class I will work out these errors, find out a better way to make this timer maybe, and then work on cut scene movement. Also, this happens (Below) due to the object not destroying itself when in collision with the player, which is easy to fix, but it looks kinda cool. At the end of class Jake and I were discussing about changing the game into a platformer, which is a big decision, but can be very beneficial; better lighting, parkour, awesome physics, etc. We aren't sure if we are going to yet because it would be a huge change but it is an option at the moment.

DAY 36

Today I managed to finally draw out a black background for the cut scene. I put it in the draw even for the player basically as: draw a black foreground over the screen if room_house = true, and then start a timer for a bit, then clear the black background. I wish this was as easy to do as it sounds. I do have it so it draws the black background, though I think it starts the timer when the game initially starts. The timer is basically a few variables adding 1 until equaling a certain number, then clearing the black. I still have to play with some things to get it to fully work at the moment, but right now I'm happy with today's progress. I got Jake to work on the significant other in the sleeping bag also, so I can implement that into the cut scene as well. Next class I plan to fix up all of the small errors I created today, and get the timing right with the black, so I can get some movement into the cut scene. I would put some actual game visuals here relating to what I did today, but it would literally be a black screen, so here's some code:

DAY 35

Today there was only about half an hour in class to do work due to it being a half day, but I managed to do a few small things. I'm going to put the draw a black foreground in the player event if they're in the room house, and then wait a few seconds, undraw it for a few seconds, then redraw for another few seconds, and undraw forever. Hopefully this will work instead of trying to draw something in a step event. I tried to make it so when the room starts, the sprite_index of the player is = spr_sleepingbag, and then once the significant other disappears (I'll create a variable), the index is changed to the player, and the sleeping bag without a player in it, will be "instance_create"'ed, and the player will then walk out the door. I will try and do all of this tomorrow hopefully. I don't have any visuals today as all of what I did was in code, tomorrow I will though don't worry.

DAY 34

Today I was only here for about half the class but I tried to get as much work done as possible. I attempted to try a different method to drawing a black foreground for the cutscene which ultimately still. didn't. work. Why is this so hard I may need help. I tried having it so that if an alarm goes off, the draw event in the room glow object draws a black background on to the foreground. I am not sure why this still didn't work, I may have to change what I'm doing.

DAY 33

Today I wanted to make it so the player and his "significant other", start the game by sleeping in their sleeping bags in the house. Then it fades to black for a few seconds, goes back to the room, the player still in his sleeping bag while the "significant other" is gone from theirs. The player's sprite is then changed to their normal one, and they get up and run to the door, stepping on a sensor then triggers a text box that says "Where'd they go?". Then the room is changed to the outside and a bandit is standing there. Then the widescreen goes away, the cutscene ends, and the bandit runs towards the player and the game begins. I started with trying to get the black fade in the foreground of the room, and created another timeline for that. Though there is only one event for timelines: the step event. This means that I can't draw anything, and have to set an alarm or something to draw it for the timeline, which I tried and still didn't work. The problem is that we have waaaay to many alarms in the player object. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to go about this. Also, I implemented Jake's "Kitchen Kit" with hardcore fridges and ovens. Next class I will continue working on the cutscene and hopefully figure out an alternate way to draw a black background, the rest is quite easy.

DAY 32

I couldn't figure out why the cutscene just wasn't playing while the player was inside the house. I had a variable for cutscene, and a line of code in the player, so that if the player is inside the room, the cutscene = true, and if cutscene = true, play the cutscene pretty much. Though this wasn't working, and the player was just standing still in the room. I got it to work though and I'm quite happy with it. It's just a test though to see if it would work. Whenever the player is in the room, he walks to the left, and down a bit, and then stops, then the widescreen goes away and you can move the player freely. This is good because before I couldn't figure out how to lock controls while the cutscene is playing. For the actual cutscene, Ill have a scene of the player and their significant other both sleeping in their sleeping bags, then it goes to black, and goes back to the same room, though the significant other is now gone. The player gets up, and runs into a sensor which shows a text box displaying something like this: "What the heck happened oh no she/he is gone ahhh". Tomorrow I will work on that.

DAY 31

Today I fixed the light problem in about 5 seconds and then began to work on the cutscene the rest of the class. I reapplied the cutscene to the player, and made a variable for cutscene, so when cutscene = true, then the cutscene may begin, and all of the stuff for it may also begin. The player animation works with it too. I also made a widescreen view for when the cutscene is playing, basically it is applied on to the player object when cutscene = true. Right now it's not necessarily working for some reason. It should only make cutscene = true when the player is in the house. I may have to play around in the player draw event for this to work, but right now I'm quite happy with my progress today. I also want to make it so that there is a constant sort of dusty foreground when in the house to create atmosphere; which is my goal for the game.

DAY 30

Today I fixed the revolver by replacing it with Howie's version which for some reason wasn't already imported. I worked on the glow inside for pretty much the whole class, though it is a shorter day like the past week has been. I had to play with it a bunch; at first it was projecting a black image on to the player, then I fixed that within the code, and then it looked weird because the dark forgeround image is layered on top of the glow, which makes it look really awkward. Ty said it looked fine but no, I don't like it. Ill fix that tomorrow and work on the cutscene. Also, I got Jake to work on a fridge which has too many sticky notes, it looks good though, its progress, good job Jake, proud of you. [UPDATE] Jake made it look good.