CREU Progress Journal

April 28, 2008

We met again last week and got the trackers properly incorporated into our game.  Since we are using the implementation a now-graduated student previously wrote, it took us some time to figure out the necessary configuration of the device.  We eventually concluded that we need to be using a tracker plugged into the first connection with no others connected.  We made sure to document this in our code for the students continuing this project over the summer.  Next Monday is the last day of classes here at Ithaca College, and will likely be out last meeting for the semester.  In preparation we discussed our final report today.  We also planned how to wrap up our project; Madeline and Andrada will meet later in the week to finalize the cScript of our game.  

April 21, 2008

Today's meeting was about trying to solve the tracker issue we had. Our trackers wouldn't show up, nor would our hand model (which moves coordinated by the tracker readings). We decided to try out all trackers and see which one would work with our hand. Without any result, we decided to meet with professor Sharon on Thursday (April 24, 2008). During our Thursday meeting we managed to get the trackers work properly with the hand model. We also planned to get more stages of the level done and build more snowmen models. Madeline attached a bone to our previous snowman model and animated it to spin. Andrada was assigned to build different snowmen models having Madeline's snowman as a base. 

April 14, 2008

During the last week, Madeline and Andrada met to further work on their game.  They had trouble building and running their level as well as incorporating the trackers.  At today's meeting, Professor Stansfield helped them work through some of these issues.  We had to incorporate a template to their level design and a player for it to compile and run correctly.  We also needed to redo the skin mappings for some models we included.  The students set up another meeting to continue to work on incorporating the trackers later in the week.  

April 7, 2008

I met Madeline on April 2nd to work on building the structure of our Snowman level. We built the "world" of our game and added mountains in the winter background. We decided to keep working individually, on separate elements. I was assigned to work on more snowmen models and Madeline continued working on our room and background. Today we met to discuss with Prof. Sharon about compiling issues and told her about what we have done. Madeline and I decided to meet on April 10th to put our work together and see what we can add to improve it.

March 31, 2008

At today's meeting we discussed how to move forward with our game.  We focused on working in WED to develop the snowman level.  Prof. Stansfield reminded Madeline and Andrada to be consistent with the gird size they choose to use.  We discussed using prefabs and creating each room separately.  We decided to build the snowman world in a hollow cube textured as sky, mountains, and ground.  Madeline and Andrada set up a meeting for later in the week to continue the level design.  We will need to write a script for our snowman, but will likely find templates for objects such as doors and ladders.  

March 24, 2008

Today we met and went to the VR Lab to get a more specific idea about C Script looking at a student's previous work with 3d Game Studio. We menaged to understand how he has created the world and imported the models, yet we had a bit of trouble finding a script attached to one of the animated objects (a door which opens when its handle is being touched). We decided to start building our main level and look at the student's example in order to learn how to deal with scripting in our game. Madeline came up with a 3-D snowman model. 

March 17, 2008

 We just returned from having the past week off for Spring Break.  Andrada was unable to make today's meeting.  Prof. Stansfield gave Madeline a disk with a past student's senior project files to look at.  This student had written a VR game using 3D GameStudio and encorporating the hand tracker as we plan to.  We had originally planned to write our game level in C++, as both students have used that language before.  Prof. Stansfield asked Madeline to look at the files the other student had written in C Script.  Although Madeline and Andrada have not programmed in C Script before, there is more documentation available for it.  

March 3, 2008

After our meeting with the professors from the Physical and Occupational Therapy we decided to change some aspects in our game structure a bit (start with a level which involves more of the movements needed in regular PT sessions). We decided to meet after the break and start our work based on the new and valuable feedback from specialists.

February 28, 2008

We all met today with professors from the Physical and Occupational Therapy departments.  They explained to Madeline and Andrada the long-term goals of this ongoing project.  We presented them with our initial game plan and discussed the movements associated with each challenge we designed.  Together, we came up with a modified design that incorporates four different types of motions that the therapists use in a therapy session as well.  We will first program the odd-one-out challenge of our design in hopes that what we do not complete will be accomplished in the future.  The therapists emphasized the need for feedback to the players, that we should acknowledge any all and tasks they complete.  We also discussed how the virtual reality set-up forces the child to use their affected arm.   

February 25, 2008

Madeline and Andrada met during the weekend to work on creating the first level of the game. Madeline discovered a suitable Christmas tree that they ended up skinning and using. Madeline and Andrada tried to work on the assigned tutorials but they got stuck. They met with Professor Sharon on Monday and she explained to them what they were doing wrong. They also scheduled a meeting with an OT/PT specialist on Thursday.

February 18, 2008

Madeline shared what she found out about power point presentation pointers/remotes.  At our last meeting, Andrada mentioned that she thought it would be helpful for the children playing the game to have some wireless device in their hands to press buttons to help control the game.  Madeline thought that this type of device might be suitable.  We're not sure how these devices are read by the computer and if they would be compatible input for our game.  We discussed the matter further and decided that we might not even need such an input device.  Prof. Stansfield mentioned that she has a one-button mac mouse we might be able to use as well.  

Madeline had also found some models online of Christmas trees that we are thinking of importing into our game instead of creating our own from scratch.  Prof. Stansfield warned us to watch out for the format of the models we find and the number of polygons they contain.  She also suggested that we may be able to use other modeling software to convert our downloaded models to a format 3d Game Studio likes.  

Our next goal is to complete the modeling of our first level.  Professor Stansfield suggested we work through a few tutorials (which she will send us later in the week) to get more practice creating a level.  We will be using WED to model any part of our level that does not need to move, which is simpler than MED.  We will also investigate using billboards for background elements that are not interactive.  Madeline and Andrada planned a meeting for later this week to work on these tasks together.  

We compared schedules and found times that we are all available to meet with an Occupation Therapy professor.  We would like to discuss our game design with her to make sure the movements we are aiming for will be helpful before we implement the game.  

February 11, 2008

The three of us met today. We've been working on modeling Christmas ornaments for one of the puzzles in our game. I (Andrada) had some problems with applying a skin to one of my ornaments. Professor Sharon sent us an e-mail with useful skinning tutorials. We hope to start working on levels as soon as we have our basic models. 

February 4, 2008

Andrada was out sick today.  Madeline and Prof. Stansfield had a brief meeting to stay up-to-date with each other.  Madeline had been having some trouble with modeling her star.  Sharon suggested she use a spherical center and cones protruding.  Andrada e-mailed Sharon for help with skinning her ornament model.  

February 2, 2008

Andrada and Madeline met.  We came up with a list of all the models they think their game will require and decided which of these models will need to be made using "bones" and which do not.  We decided to start by modeling the simplest models, Christmas tree ornaments and stars.  Andrada was going to work on the ornaments, and Madeline the stars,  

January 28, 2008

Today we had our first weekly meeting of the new semester.  We had some difficulty find a time to schedule these meetings since all of us have conflicting and crowded schedules.  We are going to meet every Monday at 3:00, unfortunately, Professor Stansfield has a bi-weekly meeting Mondays at 3:30.  so on those weeks our meetings will have to be brief.  Having been away for about a month, it was valuable to sit down together and catch up again.  It was decided that our immediate course of action will be to begin modeling the charachters, objects, and worlds that we will need to build our game.  The students made plans to get together over the weekend and figure start this task.  

December 13, 2007

Since last week's meeting, we all received e-mails from CREU about the mid-year progress reports we are required to complete for this project.  Madeline and Andrada realized that they have to complete those individually and so decided not to meet over the weekend.  As this was the week before finals, we were all very busy and didn't make much progress on this project.  We met to discuss our progress, the mid-project reports, and our goals for over break.  Sharon is going to work on getting the trackers set up over break.  Madeline and Andrada will continue to work with the 3D Game Studio software and become more comfortable with it.  Madeline asked Sharon to send her check to her at home over break, Andrada figured it'd be just as fast to wait and pick it up here as have it forwarded to Romania.  

December 6, 2007

This week we discussed more about boning. Andrada needed some help with skinning (setting a skin for a model's body parts) so that took a bit of our meeting. The goal for the next week is to try to create models using bones and get familiar with it as we are going to start working on modeling our game's characters (using bones) soon. Andrada and Madeline also agreed to meet and discuss about a progress report of their work.

November 29, 2007

Last week was Thanksgiving, so we didn't meet.  Over the break we worked on getting more familiar with the 3D Game Studio program.  This week Madeline and Professor Stansfield met alone because Andrada was out sick.  Professor Stansfield gave me a copy of the department's educational version of 3D Game Studio to install on my personal computer for this project, since the department isn't currently using all of its licenses.  I am planning to install that and then pass it along to Andrada before our next meeting.  The free trial version of the software which we had both been using previously does not allow you to do boning.  My goal for this week is to play around with the boning more and try to create a model using that method.  

November 15,2007

This week's meeting was used mainly for asking questions about a modeling exercise we started on. The task involved modeling a character (named Hector) using vertices. It was a really good opportunity to learn how to model a character from scratch and the book was really helpful. The plan for the next week of work is to finish modeling Hector. At our next meeting Prof. Stansfield will give us a copy of the department's educational version of 3D Game Studio in order to create bones (our current version is a trial version, therefore we could only use vertices in creating a model).

November 1, 2007

At today's weekly meeting we discussed our progress and familiarity with 3D Game Studio.  Currently, becoming familiar with the program and its many tools, is our mail priority.  Our assignment for this week is to specifically investigate modeling using MED.  We will look online and in our textbook for tutorials as a starting place.  We hope to learn more about bones and how to create movable characters.  We will try to create monsters, and if they come out well enough, we will incorporate them into our game.  But the main goal of this exercise is to become more familiar with MED.  We are also going to further investigate importing existing models, so that we will not need to build all of ours from scratch.  Specifically if we can find models that were built using bones and import them for our project.  Sharon gave us the files from previous projects including the models for a human skeleton and face.   

October 25, 2007

This week we worked on going through the tutorials and getting more practice with 3D GameStudio basics. Goal for the next week is to learn more about modeling the "monsters" in our game (using MED - in 3D GameStudio) and modeling the background (using WED in 3D GameStudio). We will also look for importable models in order to use them as examples. Going through a WED (3D GameStudio) tutorial about mapping textures is also part of next week's assignments list.

October 11, 2007

Having finished the design for our first level and its four puzzles we decided that it is time to start getting familiar with the game developing software we are going to work with: 3D GameStudio.  The goal for this week was to start learning how 3D GameStudio works and go through 3D GameStudio tutorials provided by Prof. Stansfield in order to learn how to work with this software. We are also using "The Official Guide to 3D GameStudio" (authored by Michael Duggan) which provides an excellent resource for a beginner with 3D GameStudio.

October 4, 2007

Last week I went to a video game store at the mall and purchased a couple of games designed for kids for our research.  I bought one game that is rated "Early Childhood" which is approved for children aged three and older.  I also bought two games rated "Everyone" that seem to be marketed towards kids.  "Everyone" rated games are approved for anyone aged six and older.  It was hard to determine exactly what age the games were intended for, since they are only rated and not marked for a specific age range.  

We are hoping that we can explore the way these professional games targeted for children work in order to determine what functionality children would expect in our game.  Specifically: Can we expect them to navigate the game world on their own?  What types of puzzles with they grasp?  How is failure handled? 

We are going to investigate the commercial games more thoroughly over the next few weeks and look for ideas which we think will help our design.  We are also going to work on finalizing our design for level one during this time.  

September 22, 2007

During our last meeting we worked on brainstorming and tried to get many interesting ideas for the game. We came up with a large amount of ideas which were reduced to the following:

Overall game theme: board game

Progression through game:

•  level (w/ specific theme)
•  see board for level
•  roll dice
• complete ‘puzzle”
• move x spaces on board
• shown one puzzle piece of an image
• repeat roll/puzzle sequence 4x per level
• at end of level you have all the puzzle pieces for the image
• the image animates to introduce the next level

Character:

•  represents player on game board
• introduces each level (during animation)
• encourages player throughout game play (cheering)
• speaks instructions for each puzzle/task

Possible themes:

• candy
• jungle
• farm animals
• artic animals
• sea life
• 4 seasons
• fireworks
• circus
• school
• beach scene
• music (instruments)
• rainbow 

Puzzle types:

• matching (drag to spot)
• building (drag components to correct places to “build” something)pizza, snow man, pyramid, house, etc.
• doesn’t belong (pick the odd one out)
• a game with obstacles and animations
• simulation of a tennis game
• introducing a little monster and having the kids poke it with a magic wand until it goes away

we agreed that we need more research on types of kids games that are out there, and decided to do more of that on our own before our next meeting with Professor Stansfield .

Goals for the next meeting: start writing the story line for the first level of the game. Discussion on the number of tries a player gets until hs/she has to start the level over again. Discussion on including a "SAVE" option for the game.