Earlier this week the we had our final porduct presentation. It went really well.
This has been a great adventure for us as a group and we are very proud of the product we have been able to make.
The only thing to do now is write the final report for the project and its all done.
We will be taking a short break as a celebration of the games completion and will resume work on the 26/03/16
Thanks for being on this journey with us!
We spent this week fixing bugs which was found from gathering feedback. There was a bug in the point economy, and some colours within the minimap was incorrect. We then spent this final week discussing the final presentation.
Now that the beta has conculded we are adjusting some of the point prices and reqards for in game actions.
We hope these changes will imporve the game play balance.
See you next week for the final blog post
Implementations have been added and no further implementations should be added... unless bugs are found. The beta is deployed as a downloadable .zip file on the website, contained within this .zip file is Peril Beta v1.X, Link to the feedback questionnaire, Link to the website, pdf version of the game instructions.
We spent this week playing this games with friends to gather feedback.
Good afternoon! The AI tournament is at an end and our last touches are being made for the final release of Peril on the 19th of march!
We kept to these rules and we genterated these brackets.
Duckling and Goat disqualified as they were not functional and therefore could not compete.
The tournament has exposed a bug in the environmental haazrds causing powerful units to be given when they were not purchased. Knight won because of this however a win is a win.
Gurdeep is the best AI develoepr!
The beta will start later today and we hope that you guys will all give our game a shot. A feedback questionaire is bundled with the game and should be used to submit and issues or feedback to us.
Hope everyone is looking forward to the final release of Peril on 19/03/18 as much as we are. Remember to update your version of Peril to get a grip of the new updates!
Hello everyone
Project Lead (Joshua) here to talk about where Peril is in terms of final release and the open beta.
Usually, James from WDMRT collects all the information from the separate groups to curates this post but today we felt that the information would be best coming from the head honcho.
We are working diligently to prepare the game for final release and our development team (myself included) are adding fun new features that we hope will provide complexity and new strategic avenues for players.
Our design/gameplay balance philosophy is “the smarter player should win”. However, we still want the game to be interesting to play even when there is an experience disparity.
We have introduced a point based economy:
The beta test will begin 01/03/18 and last for two weeks. During this period players will be able to download the beta version of Peril and submit feedback via a link packaged with the game.
We hope that their feedback will be in depth and give us meaningful insight into the small tweaks to be made for the final release.
Our final release of the game is slated for 19/03/18.
See you then
Joshua
Good evening, Peril is getting closer and closer to release and we are as excited as you are.
The entire team is working on their AIs however they are not ready for a fight yet. The tournament has been postponed for two weeks. We have also been making refinements to the unit system and our current test build has shown that units will play a really large part of the metagame.
In addition to this, we have been playing around with the idea of allowing countries to block links between them and an enemy country for a certain number of points. We are looking at how this will affect the game as a whole but this feature is still in its infancy.
More on this next week.
Everyone has had their own AI setup however they are not fully complete. This week we just focused on implementing the new features.
More menus have now been implemented and the credits page is looking good with all members of the group featured on it. The menu now shows Player details, Country Upgrade, Consumables shop.
We have added a mini map after feedback which stated that the map was too big to just pan over. So that now displays at the top right corner and shows the user the entire map but in small. We haven’t got the country colours displaying at the moment, but it is definitely on the list.
Mohammad and Nikita have left the team and we are redistributing their workload as equally as possible, but the final release of the game will be affected.
See you guys next week.
We decided to add was to be able to have vs the AI. Everyone was to create their own AI, using an AI API and the winner AI will be used as the hardest difficulty AI. We also get to see who can create the best and most complex AI.
Also discussed new implementations that can be added to the game to improve upon such as goat logo on startup menu to take us to the website, new startup screen to select AI player(s) and a number of real players.
The Quality Assurance Report has also been planned out and started to write up.
Last week we mentioned a point based system. With points can buy consumables aka weapons, defence line to prevent a country attacking from one side - disable links between countries. Drop units in the middle of enemy territory, move units between isolated places. New maps, new challenges and Unit types - a tank can roll 4-6, troops roll 1-6, increase the chance of rolling higher numbers when more powerful.
This is still just a concept but we would love some feedback.
See you guys next week.
Hi, Project lead Josh here to talk about the future of Peril.
Our game has seen some serious back end improvements to the game architecture which has allowed us to add AI to the game.
"Hold on" I hear you ask, "when did this happen?"
During the break we had a large code refactor headed by yours truely. This needed to be conducted during a period when there was no development occuring so it would not effect any features currently in development.
Never the less, the game was left in a much better state and shortly after the first itteration of AI was added. Codename 'Monkey' based on its low inteligence.
AI aside, here is a list of some of the features we are thinking of adding for the final release:
Horray! The MVP demo went off with out any issuse. While some of the questions asked in the Q and A where abit suspect the audience seemed very interested with our game and what we had managed to achieve in such a short development period.
We have a functional game which perfectly portrays how it should work! Peril's current features are:
Now that we have completed the MVP we will be taking a break from development to focus on our upcoming exams. The strategic goats will continue work in the new year (22/01/18).
Happy domination!
We're back! It’s the final countdown to the MVP and we have been practising like crazy! We have been anticipating some questions that may be asked at the end of the presentation, so each one of us has been quizzed on the ins and outs of the game, to ensure we are prepared.
We had our meeting with the critic, and the feedback we received was very positive, the only points the critic mentioned was that the UI needed to include more indicators of which player is which.
Now that the MVP demo is right around the corner we have taken the step to proofread all the menus and any other text objects in the game, as well as test the game using JUnit testing.
The game now has a new map inspired by Elder Scrolls called Tamriel, a fully implemented victory screen and the dice rolls are displayed in the combat phase. Our next post from us will be after the MVP detailing what exactly we have added to the game. Thanks for reading guys, and stay tuned for more.
As the MVP demo looms over our heads we have been meeting twice a week to practice the demo. We have scripted every event down to the mouse clicks that will accompant our speech. We hope that nothing goes wrong on the day!
As far as developement goes we have added:
We will talk more about our progress soon because some features are not tested fully yet. See you guys next week.
Hello guys! Not much has gone on this week in terms of new development, however we are continuing to work on the points detailed in the previous blog post, in order to perfect and smash the MVP presentation. The UI is being refined, by including button icons which are universally understood, such as; a ‘?’ for help and an ‘X’ for exit from a menu etc.
We have finalised our plan for the MVP presentation and we have been writing our individual scripts, ensuring to not go over the time limit allocated to each member. As well as writing our scripts, we have been rehearsing the presentation alongside the game being played, so we can give a live demo as we talk about the game. Every member of the group has been given a specific topic to talk about and when as well.
After this week we are looking at having a code freeze, in order to finalize changes and minimise errors in the game. From here we are looking at scheduling a meeting with the critic to get an idea of how well the game is designed from an outsider's perspective.
This week we have been planning our demonstration for the MVP, it’s quite a hectic task showing all the key elements of a 2-hour game in just 5 minutes. However, through some great planning headed by Nikita, we hope to produce a great demo.
As far as additions we have made so far to the MVP we have music and a basic game menus. We are still thinking of ideas to add to the MVP such as an AI and a splash screen whilst the game is loading. In terms of progress to the MVP, the IDT will be creating the backed logic for the new game state menus and visualising the environmental hazards.
The UIDT will be refining the UI making it nicer to look at, and working on a more concrete plan for the MVP. The WDMRT will continue doing what they do best, writing up the deliverables and keeping you guys updated each week!
We are back after submitting our Hack! This week we have been reflecting on how well we all worked together during the hack submission. We have taken our strengths and weaknesses into account and figured out what we want to achieve for future submissions.
Some members have been moved between sub-teams, James has been moved to the MDMRT, Mohammad has been moved to the IDT, Joseph has swapped leader roles with Adrian, and Gurdeep has swapped leader roles with Hannah. The reason for this was that we believed that this would improve our work efficiency and because there was an imbalance of work delegation.
We have had a play of the hack version of Peril and we have created a detailed plan of what we want to achieve for the MVP submission. We are now looking at including more maps, working on the display quality of them and refining the UI by including some menus.
We are ready to submit our Hack, there are just a few things left to figure out and we should be on our way. We are just ensuring that the map is clickable and responsive to how we imagined it. IDT has created a clickable and viewable map, with basic functionality which was able to meet the Hack’s requirements.
The project plan is coming along nicely 98% finished, there are just a few tweaks that need to be made to ensure the flow of the document is correct. We have decided to use a simplified UI for the hack submission.
In terms of team structure, we are planning on some reshuffling. The leaders for WDMRT and UIDT will be changed, electing new team leaders. Our next step is to book an appointment with the project critic, for some more detailed analysis of the UI and the game operation.
The development process of our Hack submission is fully underway, alongside a project plan. The WDMRT have been conducting some research into existing UI’s for Risk so that our UIDT have an idea around how to design our very own UI.
We have decided to keep the UI simple and have to separate regions so that we do not have to worry about button overlaying at this instance. All the UML designs have been completed.
This was the beginning of the designing process for the Hack milestone. During this week the development teams have discussed and devised some UML diagrams which would be used to implement the hack version of the game.
We also discussed the scope for the Hack submission and we decided to keep the game as basic as possible for the time being:
We shall keep you all updated on the progress of our project.
At the beginning of the week, every member of the group has downloaded the latest version of eclipse and imported the project via GitHub. Every member was given their own branch to implement. Joshua explained the code he had written to the rest of the group via screen share. This included the skeleton classes and initial implementation of the environmental hazard class. Initially, every member was given a class to work on.
After an insightful meeting with the project mentor, the group has decided to split up into more manageable sub-teams.
We decided on three
This allows for better workflow, as work can be sent down from the group leader to the sub-team leaders and so on. This means that work can be closely monitored and of better quality. Now we have a more structured team, where every member knows what exactly they are responsible for during the project.
We decided to use Slick2D and LWJGL as the libraries to use for the implementation of the game and Slack/Google Docs for file sharing, as we can have control over what needs to be done and it allows for easy access to any documents needed for production. GitHub issues will be used for task delegation.
Hello, people of the world! We are the Strategic Goats aka Team 5 of CS2010. This is our very first blog post in which we introduce to our virtual board game! We spent this week discussing which board game to create and to start planning and recording the pitch which was to be due in week two.
Our two main options of board games were Chess and Risk, however, the vote among all group members ended in 50/50, so in order to decide the final outcome, we have flipped a coin and Risk was the result of this. After deciding upon Risk, we brainstormed what our game will be like and how we will propose this on the pitch.
Tun, Tun Tuunnn! So, without further ado we introduce to you *ominous music* Peril!!
Peril is a virtual turn based strategy game based on the board game Risk. Users of the game take it in turns to place troops in various areas of the map, they then attack their counter-parts in attempt to acquire that area, if successful the area attacked becomes theirs and the final step is to reassemble your troops and make your acquired areas stronger if needed. The winner is the person with the most territories on the map. Battles are won and decided by random dice rolls completed by the game.
What is more the game is made more difficult with the addition of environmental hazards which randomly occur across the map, if hit with one of these hazards users’ armies can be minimized without even battling.
So that ladies and gents is Peril, we will keep you posted through further blog posts with updates on how the project is going and where you can get Peril etc.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!
Strategic Goats ©
strategicgoats@outlook.com