Full Steam Ahead

 Well, it's fast approaching the deadline and we need all hands on deck (that's not a deck on MW2, Liam!)

Me and J have been working hard all week trying to get the character creator working and finally, here we have it. I forgot to add the male and female icon in this shot, but you can change between. Here's my version of 'The Hulk"!!

And here is the wardrobe where you get to choose items.

New betterererer colour picker

Made a new colour picker, this one has a larger spectrum and can be pretty much designed to how ever we want it, you hover over the spectrum, a little cricle with a glow tells you what the colour will look like, you click it and it changes the skin colour of the character.

Smaller is sometimes better.

OK, it's been about two weeks since our last update, the main reason has been Christmas and New Year, the other is I've been working on my FMP quite a bit as well, which is daft because this has to be in first. Anyway, this next week we NEED to get the music sorted for the game, otherwise the game just seems far too static and boring. We also need to finish off a few things like the band, inventory and rap battle screen. Try and get the chat in game if we can and then finish the Design Document which I started this week. Another thing we wanted to do was get this game ported across to the iPhone as it has such a massive user base and one of the main type of games on there is the Mafia Wars esque game. This was the look I went for, I think the size is just right for using your fingers and when the player hits the Dizzee Rascal button at the bottom it'll open up the options and the player screen. I could make the rest of the screens but I think it would be a waste of time at this point.

Skin Color

I've had a very quick go at making a skin colour picker, it's basic but gives an idea of what we can do.

Past Week

I've been away this weekend, but before and after I have focused my attention on this group project. I told Chris last week I'd have a look at the character customization which I did. After several very long sessions, and almost all nighters, I got considrably stuck so Chris said not to worry about it and he would take over the coding for that. I turned my attention to the graphics I drew for the character customization last week, and felt they were not satisfactory, they felt out of place and although I'm not an artist I decided I can do better so I re-drew them. This took a long time alot longer than I expected but I am much happier with the result. They don't look great but a lot better than they did. This time I drew them into photoshop using the path tool, which confused me at first but after some practice I think I've mastered it's basic use. I then shaded the items and made them look a bit more realistic. I hoped to get a female version completed for Wednesday but this impossible, due to time and feeling very demoralized at the thought, I think unless Chris is desperate for the graphics over the next few days I'll have a break from drawing clothes and hair and go for a walk....

Below are some charatcers I created using my new drawings.

Update

I've been quite ill this week and every time I try and do some work my mind seems to hit a brick wall and I lose concentration. Saying that though, I've still managed to get the band screen in the game which Liam made and I've added the incoming and outgoing money mechanics which happen every hour depending on opportunities, properties and items the player has.

The only thing I'm worried about at the moment is the fact that the game doesn't really reflect Dizzee too much, it just seems like another Mafia Wars clone. I'm gonna have a look over that this week as well as finish of the main screens (inventory and character customization). Next week I'm going to start adding sounds in and the week after that will be polising and getting Tier2 content in if we want it in.

I had a look at character customization in regards to skin colour and while it does seem easy, trying to read what to do didn't go down well this week. As soon as I knock this cold on its head the game will get back to 100% production in time for hand in.

Symbol for chris

We needed a symbol to show when you've leveled up to the tier 2 of jobs, so I went a way and made some, dunno if they're any good?