Lone Wolf

Well, it seems I'm a one man show now. I emailed my teammate and he said he's way too busy right now to work on the game and that our third member is most likely out as well. Therefore, it all falls on me. Fortunately, I'm not too busy. Furthermore, less people == less confusion. Frankly, I'm not used to teamwork, so the breakup is welcome. Plus, all royalties go to me now. And I can now brand it as Clev.

Before we get too excited, however, we haven't completely agreed that he's out. He said he's too busy, but I don't know if he intends to find time later or what. He suggested that the game be web-based with ASP.NET instead of XNA and that I could use his server to test it, but frankly if I'm going to be the only one working on it, then I get first choice and I choose XNA. I realize that making it web-based would solve some problems we've been anticipating, but I have next to no experience with ASP.NET and I've already invested too much time into the game to drop it now.

We're going to try to meet next week to discuss it, and I hope we ultimately agree that he's out. I would love to do the project on my own. I have nothing against him. He's a good guy. But I'm just not experienced with teamwork and I can't afford to let that get in the way right now. I'll take a class on it or something later.

Anyway, I'm working on some animation helper classes now that the graphics fall on me (thank goodness). Things are looking up.

Suggestions? Questions? Comment.

clevceo

Getting Closer

Things are going alright. No, I still haven't contacted my team, but I will do that soon. I want to have a good portion done by the time we meet. So far the main menu is functional (though incomplete), the game is playable (you can answer questions now, but all the questions are the same), and I have a line of patrons (static stickmen sprites with varying hairdos) that walk up to the desk and walk away when they're done.

At the moment, I'm learning to incorporate XML into .NET so I can load the questions from an .xml file. After that I think I might complete the core gameplay elements, such as score, promotions, difficulty, categories, victory, and so forth.

We thought it might also be fun if you could be hired to more prestigious libraries as you climb the ranks, eventually ending in the Library of Congress or something like that.

On the side, though I haven't spoken to anyone about this, I thought it would be fun to incorporate a story into the game. For example, there might be a rival reference librarian. Maybe he could be the boss at the end of the level, disguised as a patron, asking harder questions with less time to answer. A little story might add a little element of fun to a bland game.

Suggestions please? Questions? Comment.

clevceo

Progress

Last time I planned to devote at least one day to RefLib, just to get the ball rolling. However, I put it off until yesterday. Nevertheless, I did it and progress has been made. I'm a little less distracted now and I plan to work on it daily.

I still haven't met with my team and I plan to get in contact with them soon. I'm sort of hoping our third member cops out, as she was never a concrete member in the first place and she had little experience. Basically, I don't know that we can afford to rely on her, especially when I could easily be doing her work right now. In fact, I have some ideas for how it would work and I'm quite excited about them.

As I worked on it yesterday, little things began to click and everything seemed to come together. I'm beginning to feel the same way I did about Sever.

Anyway, things are boding well. Suggestions? Questions? Comment.

clevceo

Back to Work

Haven't posted in a while. Then again, haven't worked on RefLib in a while. I've been quite distracted. A thousand things are happening at once in my life and, frankly, I haven't been too excited about RefLib. I haven't seen any of the team members in weeks (or months? before I lasted posted anyway), and a lot of it just doesn't seem practical.

On the plus side, we have more time to complete it. For a while, I was thinking I would've needed it done by...well yesterday to be precise. But I'm taking a semester off to work and part of that work is RefLib. I'm going to devote a few days here soon completely to RefLib. I'm going to shut my door and douse myself with RefLibism. I firmly believe that my lack of excitement, and therefore lack of work, is my own fault and I plan to make amends.

clevceo