Thesis Game Pitch: Kingdom Hierarchy System

At the beginning of Spring 2013 in Game Project II, we are going to make our thesis game.
At the end of last semester, I did a game pitch of dragon race for the Game Design final project. I like this pitch, however, I prefer to make an RTS game. Specifically, I want this game to be a game with some ancient Chinese culture. And for my favorite, the ancient Chinese culture means the Three Kingdom history.
Currently, there are already many games built on the Three Kingdom history. I want my game has at least one unique feature, and that is the Kingdom Hierarchy System:

The game will suppose to be an isometric view. Here, each player start as civilian. As the player raise crop in farms, make merchandise in factory, or participate into a battle, he will gain experience to grow. Somehow he can become a general, and then a king. The king can be overturn by his general, an the general can be overturn by civilian. If the king was overturned, he become a civilian again, and he can start from the beginning to become a king again.

From civilian to king, player would play more RTS and kingdom management. On the other hand, as a civilian doesn't have much power to domain an area, he can play more RPG feature.

The game will have two modes: Peace mode and Battle mode. In Peace mode, kingdoms could not attack each other, and generals, civilians can not overturn their kings too. At this time, players are suppose to do more kingdom development, such as raising the farm, build more barrack, etc. At a specific time period, the game turns into Battle mode. Now kingdoms could attack others, or defense themselves. King could be suddenly overturned by his generals or civilians at this time too. King, generals and civilians can also suspend to their enemy at this time.

A more visual view of this game would be: WarCraft III + Ragnarok + Romance of The Three Kingdoms. So, player normally is just like playing Ragnarok: go out to hunt some animal, raise their farms, earn money and exp. to upgrade level. As the battle mode unlock, they will play like WarCraft III: train military in barrack, send out dominion to attack or defense, control their hero character to enhance advantage. If they win the battle, they gain more terrain for their kingdom. Generals and civilians may suddenly overturn their king at this time.

However, this game idea maybe too huge for a student thesis project. There are many detail should figure out how to make the game work. If this game going to be built, I would do more detail design about the Kingdom Hierarchy System first, to make it simpler first for the game.

Acknowledgement: The Kingdom Hierarchy System is first came out by Zhi Dong. He discussed this idea with me two days before the game pitch presentation.

Customer new should put on .cpp file

One time I create a Vector3 class and put the custom new() method in the header file. However the compiler still think that there is a default new() method in the .cpp file, so that it complaint there is a second definition of the new() method. But if I put new() method in the .cpp file, no more complaint.

Thus: Put custom new() and delete() in the .cpp file.

Prototype 4, week 1

At the last prototype on this semester, we have a pretty large team which expected to build a functional prototype.
This week, as our producers, Zac and Briana, said, we just thought about the game idea, no coding. We also have done the physics prototyping. And the result was really good. Now we have a basic idea which is a tower defense like game, but with gem-collective and chasing. It seems like League of Legend, RTS game.
I like the idea that the character can be changed between 3 animals. That's one of the variable that make the game mechanic fun and also do some balancing work. Also the digging map level design should also make some effort to do.

Prototype 3 Summary

In this prototype, we used HTML 5 + JavaScript to build a Shoshone in wonderland game. We didn't use scrum process, and also with very few documentation for the game. Even if this is a small project, I thought without documentation just made me feel lost. Most of the time I didn't know what I suppose to do next, and even the final prototype came out, it was not the game what I like. However, at least I have touched some web development.

Project 2, Summary

The final week, we had present our project. The Crusader, our game, looks pretty good.
This time we used SVN to make co-working on code easier. We didn't have to worry too much about code conflict if two people working on the same code file. SVN could handle it and tell you where should I do the merging work.
At the beginning we had used scrum and sprint pretty well. However, I think I got lost in the middle of time. Maybe, putting those documents in one single file, not on Google Docs as well as white board, and remind team member to check story board will work better. Generally, at the beginning working in scrum made the project work.
As an engineer working inside the code, I know there is still several bugs can be fixed. Such as collision detection, level design configuration and so on. Maybe as a prototype, it is fine.
Also, I need to do more about my time management. Most of the coding work is done by Max. I feel myself was just a watcher in most of the time.

Project 2, week 3

In this project, our team used XNA-C# to build a game for Treadpot, which is a 3D wander simulation game. In this project, we build up a castle environment, and set up several gems, ghosts, and swords, make it like a 3D PacMan.

Even if C# has many similarity to C++, it is still a little bit tough to study it and make the work done simultaneously. In fact, XNA has many built-in function that we don't need to start from the very beginning. For prototype, it's far more easier to work than Moai, I think.

Currently we have built up a castle environment and several models done. And I just create a simple UI to count the swords and gems. There is still AI for the ghosts to do.

A little summary of Prototype 1

The first prototype seems finish well. We make the cheese can be throw, hit detection, customer match and so on.

But I think, just myself, have much more can do.

First, I tried to figure out MOAI before I can work on it, but I fail before other team member done. In this case, using MOAI to do a prototype maybe worse than C++ for me.

Second, time management. I remember that I waste several days on many trivial things.

Let me do better in the second prototype.