Meet with Tony Lavoie and Tony Zoko to discuss how networking has been used in commercial games. Discussed web-based play, network play, and distributed gaming. Then, we worked out the original game concept and concept theory.

The first meeting.
We discussed:

1. What goes into making a computer game
2. What each person is doing
3. What the first step for everyone is
4. A game title: CSS Beer Engine? Beer Hunter?
5. Everyone was given a task to orientate them to a part of game development that applied to their respective positions in the project.

The Object Model

Feel of the Game
One thing that became apparent to me is how we've been visualizing the aliens and levels.
We're using nasty lethal weapons like the Slinky of Death and the Hockey Stick of Love. It's apparent that the levels need to be just as menacing. Say, for example, you step off the elevator into the second floor and you notice that growing out of the ground are giant lollypops with shag carpeting on the ceiling. You walk into the bathroom and find the Taco Bell chihuahua sitting in a urinal. Doesn't that just strike fear in your heart? The point is that so much of the game is ridiculous that we shouldn't try to push the usage of Quake-like monsters if what we want is bad B-movie.

Storyboarding
It's time that we try to use the various ideas and create a storyboard of actual game events, interactions, and plot developments. This process will involve several people and will probably involve a separate meeting opportunity. I would like to see much progress in this by the next meeting.

In addition, keyframing is the concept of drawing special motions or dramatic scenes. Though the actual application of keyframing in animation can't be made here, I would like to see the artists choose key frames for their storyboard.

Object Model
Last Saturday, some project members met to go over modelling of the game objects. It was a very successful experience though we stalemated ourselves, try to conceptualize giving each wall, character, etc. his own space. Visit Jeff's info site for more information.
In addition, Tony, Tom, and I have been analyzing engines and examples to see how others deal with this. We'll have more info.

Plotting the Engine
We currently have two engines we are considering, Frog and Poly. I would like to make that final decision tonight. I would also like to organize an effort for the programmers to come together to map that engine. We need to understand it to be able to implement and upgrade it.
Once we finish that, then we can start game programming.

Frog Engine and code reading
Frog Engine, the engine we will use, is being constantly updated. Hence, we have standardized on version 10. Now, since we cancelled the code reading meeting, we have laid it upon ourselves to read the blessed code. That would be all of us. You will be assigned code if you do not volunteer at this next meeting. It won't be hard, believe me, to complete this assignment. Hence it will have a 5-day (Wednesday) due date. The submitted form is available on the Documentation Page.

Object Model Resolved
As much as we tried to include the ideas of all people, it became rather difficult to maintain a cohesive system. Hence, if you don't see your idea, but still think it could be of use, please mention your discrepancy. Otherwise, here goes: Object Model

Model View Controller
Tony took the floor to speak of how objects move from the CURRENT_WORLD array to the screen. The actual World map is actaully simply a data storage device. It does no computation for processing to video. There is a second step, the Trnslator, or logic of the game, which are a set of methods that say how to display the information. The Translator then sends the information to the View. The View actaully does the graphical processing and displays the information. Therefore, these systems can be developed independently with only some interface.

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