New additions

Alright, time for another update. We are getting ready for our first official activity release, so here's a rundown of the features added since last time.

Shop feature is fully implemented.
Door puzzles fully implemented.
Dungeon creator in development.
6 levels in game (not all have enemies/locks yet)
Difficulty setting in development

Look for the official release on activities.sugarlabs.org and hopefully we'll also have a new gameplay video on our youtube channel fortunehunter42 soon!

Level up!

Hello again everyone, hope you had a good break and all that jazz. Here's what the latest goings on have been with MAFH. User testing went AMAZINGLY! The kids love the laptops (most wanted to buy one after spending 10 minutes with it) and they loved the game too. We got mostly positive feedback, and all but one student who doesn't play video games said that they would play a finished version. Here's a breakdown on the features of the game, and what they liked/disliked about them.

Controls (gameboy mode):
+Controls felt natural
+Felt like a gaming system,
-Some thought the laptop was too large to feel like a controller

Traversal:
+Maze like structure was challenging
+Not that difficult to navigate once acclimated to the controls
+Liked the lock/key system
-Some felt that the map should not rotate
-Dead ends were confusing

Attack/critical hit:
+Easy to understand
+Students liked practicing multiplication facts

Special (division) attack:
+Did more damage when weapon was equipped
+Liked visual representation
+-Roughly half of the students understood how to perform it, the other half were confused. This is due to the fact that the class hadn't covered fractions yet.
-No visual indication of a successful hit

Magic (geometry) attack:
+Was like a puzzle
+Was fun to figure out
+-Those with good spacial awareness/knowledge of puzzles were successful and enjoyed it, those who were not were slightly confused, but would try it more to understand it

Menus:
+Easy to navigate
+Everything was visible and clear

Difficulty:
on a scale of 1-10, difficulty ranged from 3-6, which is a good range for flow

General Complaints:
There should be more types enemies
There should be an indication of an enemy dying
There should be an indication of enemies being hit by attacks
There should be battle music
It should show what you have equipped in the stats screen


So basically, most of the complaints about the game were features that we are currently planning on adding into the game anyway. Most of the confusion in the traversal system can be solved by better level design, which we are also working on. A lot of the other things will be fixed when we put in cutscenes and animations. I just want to say that it was awesome to see the kids have a great time playing the game and learning at the same time. Keep up the good work!

Friday update

Alright guys, time for another update. We've met all of our milestones this week, and here's a breakdown of new features added to the game.

-Menus
Final battle menus
Final Statistics/Inventory menus
-Traversal System
Item pickups supported
Room search supported
Hidden items supported
Some special events
-Design
Locked door puzzles designed
Puzzle rooms designed
Wiki re-organized
-User testing
Testing plan in development
Cooperation with public school successful
xo's acquired for playtesting


Well, that's it. Jon and I will be polishing the game over the next week to make sure it's ready for testing. Hope everyone has a good holiday break!

Updates galore!

It is now week 3 of serious development! Here's a list of features added to the game since the last update.

-Battle System
Enemy AI(enemy chooses different attacks)
Items and equipment now available
-Traversal System
Locked doors now supported
-Tutorials
Battle tutorial
Stat menu tutorial
Inventory tutorial
Traversal tutorial
locked door tutorial (Kinda)
-Design
1st dungeon complete and implemented
.txt file pattern finalized
1st level designed on paper
Enemy concepts
-Organization
Separated class hierarchy into separate files.


Also, some good news for testing over the holiday break! I just talked with some teachers at Woodstown Public, and so far I have 24 student volunteers for testing. This gives us a lot of room to work with, but that also means our game has to be as bug free as possible. Hopefully we can acquire quite a bit of laptops to make full use of this opportunity.

Wednesday meeting summary

So, here's what went on at our new meeting time, Wednesday 6-8. Fortunately everyone showed up to gold stars all around. Milestones for this week involved getting the battle system up and running, so here we go with assignments for this week.

Jon: Make dungeon .txt files to be used in game, make specific item effects and powers
Kevin: Work on enemy AI, add enemy special attacks and bosses
Eric: Add in an inventory/equipment system as well as a rudimentary pause menu
Dave: Finish making images for the battle menu, start making images on stat menu
Preston: Make background music and art assets


We also made some changes to the way the rooms work. Now that we're going to have locked doors, puzzles, events, and items in rooms, we have changed the string used for making the rooms to the following: [North][Locked/Puzzle][South][Locked/Puzzle][East][Locked/Puzzle][West][Locked/Puzzle][RoomTypeFlag][EnemySlot1][EnemySlot2][EnemySlot3][EnemySlot4][ItemSlot1][ItemSlot2][ItemSlot3][ItemSlot4].

So an example string would be _LS___WP_002100A3 or a full string would be NLSPELWPT12341234

Progress update 12/02/2009

Here's what's been done so far this week:
1) Support for sugar on a stick
added keyboard controls
2) Basic battle system features
Multiple enemies now supported
Player can select different enemies (an arrow is displayed to reflect this selection)
After battle, enemies are removed from the room so the player does not have to fight them multiple times
Countdown timer that adds bonus to attack
Critical hit chance with basic attack
Critical hit brings up a number pad an multiplication problem
User can enter answer on number pad using arrow keys and enter (or d-pad and check on xo)
If the correct answer is input, deals base damage to selected enemy+answer (144 max)+timer bonus (10 max)
If the wrong answer is input, deals base damage
Enemies are removed from battle as they are defeated (they retain their positions in the room)

2) advanced battle system features
Division attack is nearing completion (not yet implemented)
Geometry attack is beginning development

3) level design
enemies spread out through dungeon

More to be added in the next few days. Look forward to gameplay vids and developer interviews on the weekend!

Week 1

Alright time to start doing... stuff! Now you might ask "What stuff?" Well here's the assignments for the first week.

Dave: art for battle menus
Preston: balance the battle system, come up with item list
Kevin: work on division attack
Eric: work on basic attack, timer, critical hit
Jon: kill the flu, once that is done, start working on geometry attack

Next meeting will be Friday to assess progress and test what we've done till that point.

Assignments will be next Tuesday. Namaste.