Lets see some particle effects

Well, we made some changes to the game, like bomber mode and reticle placement.  We also added some particle effects.  Check out our newest video.

Back to work

Well, after about 2 solid weeks of 15 hour days working on getting BomBIRDier ready for GDC, we've taken a week off after the convention.  Honestly, I think we earned it.  It was an amazing chance to show our game prototype off and get some really good feedback from industry professionals.

The most prevailing critique was that our bomber mode needed to be reworked.  Apparently the camera swap is disorientating.  Additionally people seemed to think the projectile should have some forward momentum.

Well, we're listening, and we're making some changes including:

1) Changing bomber mode from a a camera swap to a actively changing the position of the camera.

2) Angling the poop camera forward instead of straight down.

3) Projecting the reticle onto the ground instead of just as a filter on the camera

4) Giving the poop projectiles both forward and downward velocity

He's at the 20, the 10, FUMBLE!!

Yup, I dropped the ball.  Despite being told we were being shown at GDC, I didn't follow up.  Turns out I made one of my old common mistakes, assuming.  In addition to there not actually being an Android tablet to show our game on, we weren't scheduled to have a computer either.

Thank you Valerie Carmer.  You saved the day!

Luckily I have a very dedicated team member who was volunteering for the convention and realized we weren't scheduled to show and took care of it.  As it turns out, one student had pieces showing on two computers.  The department was kind enough to give us one of those.  It was close, but we made it.

A seriously big thank you to Valerie.

Ready or not, here we come.

It was close, but we have a build ready for GDC.  Despite having our coder back, we got nothing useful out of him.  In addition to not working on what I requested from him, he spent two days coding something that doesn't really work, that was more or less already done. Instead of turning and shooting, I got Xbox controller code that almost worked.  My favorite thing though was his answer to the question "why doesn't it work?"  Response: "Hmmm, it should, the logic is almost exactly the same."

/sigh

So, I got to spend all day Sunday, the day we needed to submit work, fixing it so that it did work.  In the end though, we have both a PC and an Android build ready for the convention, and they came out pretty well.

We thought you were dead man!

So our programmer has re-emerged, although with no more work finished than when he disappeared, and just in time to get the only thing I really need done, done for GDC.  Here's hoping we'll have turning and shooting at the same time ready.

And we have T-Shirts!

So I ordered T-Shirts for the group to wear at GDC and they came in today.  They look pretty good :)

So um, optimization? Who's afk?

We've hit a snag.  Those pesky frame rates just seem to be happy at  15fps.  Well, that's not what we in the industry call "great."  That's also where a programmer can really shine.  Unfortunately, our programmer has gone missing and hasn't been heard from in a month.  So all that sloppy code I wrote to prototype mechanics, is now going to be our only code.  So I have to do some major clean up and try to get our frame rates up.