At the end of class today we discussed what needs to be done in the immediate future. This involves all of the technical things that still need to be done before we can just focus on the hole's design, textures, and anything like that. There are in roughly order of importance.
Timer - we need to get this implemented soon so we get a standardized performance
Hole - we need to make the mechanism for winning the game. Most likely a black circle drawn on the ground and some code to
prevent the ball from colliding in that area
ball/club that z is providing need to be integrated
Stopping - need to add a flag for stopping so that we don't get a jittery ball when it should be stationary
Camera - needs to track the ball (Kangas this is all yours)
milkshape? we should play around with this and see what it can do, so we can use it for the final game!
We seem to be in pretty good shape even though the list still seems pretty long. Timer really needs to get done soon, that's a very important aspect that keeps getting overlooked because there have been more pressing issues.
-- JannaDeVries - 31 Mar 2004
Ok, we're having our weekly Friday afternoon meeting to work on our list of remaining issues. Here's an updated list:
Timer -- we're not sure we want to do this. None of us really understands how it works and we are (rightfully) afraid of changing something that works.
Hole -- It's there and kind of working. Shouldn't be too difficult. Janna got this working/drawing.
Ball/Club -- huge issue still needing lots of attention.
Stopping -- done by Janna.
Camera -- Kangas got the camera tracking the ball now, should be in great shape for Tuesday.
Modeling -- we are still not off the ground on this, surely going to take some time over the weekend.
Thus, we're in good shape. The most pressing aspects are unrelated to our physics engine, namely implementing the game aspects of the game :). Here's a prioritized list of tasks:
Ball/Club -- got to get the interface working. Janna is working on integrating Z's classes.
Modeling -- we need a course, period.
Extra UI -- we probably need a splash-screen, a stroke counter, ability to reset, etc.
Documentation -- we need a user's guide and a design document. I plan on taking care of these.
Add new items as they come to you and maybe bold out anything you've finished.
-- EvanParry - 02 Apr 2004
Put all of the camera code into a Camera class. This makes our design more object-oriented, and will allow for more interesting things to be done with the viewpoint. Decisions about what the camera should be doing are made in NewWorld?, and will be expanded as the project progresses.
-- EvanParry - 02 Apr 2004
Ok, we are meeting again now, Saturday at 3:00. Kangas has been working on some Milkshape testing and he believes we can easily get good models from there. Thus we have two major steps left to perform:
Milkshape Course -- we need to figure out the Milkshape file formats and how to read in or convert Milkshape files to something we can use. Kangas seems to believe this will be fairly straightforward.
Swinging -- we need to implement adjusting the shot and swinging the club.
Janna and I have got rudimentary swinging working using the spacebar. We need to integrate this with Adam's camera rotation code so we can actually hit the ball in the direction the club is facing.
-- EvanParry - 03 Apr 2004
Adam has worked extensively on the club swinging and we think we can get it to rotate about the ball. I have examined the Milkshape 3D ASCII file format and I'm convinced we can easily use it given the close similarity to the format we are using already. I need to ask some more knowledgeable people about how the file works completely since Milkshape doesn't bother to provide a detailed file format document.
In all, we have a few hurdles left to clear, but we're making excellent progress.
-- EvanParry - 04 Apr 2004