CRUNCH TIME!!!

Hello ladies and gents! I was told last Monday that the GDW project was due in two weeks. I later found out that it was due THIS Monday. To make matters worse, I was behind in my work for my modeling course. "If you haven't created your model's skeleton, prepare to fail." Whew, at least I'm still alive... "Also, if you haven't painted your model's skin weights, prepare to fail". Oh no... Panic ensued Wednesday. Thankfully my bosses and my parents alleviated all my obligations for the weekend (after a plead of desperation, not a good way but anyway...) so that I can focus on helping my group make the GDW game. Since I was lost on how to do my modeling assignment 4, which consists of rigging my model (in other words, animating it to life), I decided to do my modeling assignment 5 (which is just painting its textures); then once I meet up with my modeling prof, I can get help from him in regards to assignment 4. Hopefully this will allow me to catch up.

This was my first shot at texturing my model for assignment 5. Creepy, eh? Don't worry, it looks much better now. :)

Anyway, now I'm with my group, since Thursday 2:00PM, working together on the GDW. Thursday night was late, Friday night was pretty much an all-nighter, and now here we are. We've collectively been working together, and Thursday was probably our most productive day. Some of my obligations (like save state and such) was accomplished by my group members, while I adopted the role of State Manager programmer from another group member of mine. It took me MUCH longer than I thought to code it, but I made sure that it was as error-free as possible, in order to prevent future headaches. Since coding the State Manager took all of Thursday and most of Friday, we suffered a bit of unproductivity on Friday, since most of the incomplete work could only be started after I finished the State Manager. But now that I finished the StateManager yesterday, I gave it to all my group members so they can wrap their work into my project. After teaching them how to use it, and help them wrap it from time to time, I started working on the shaders. I received a bloom shader from my game engine professor, but it was a stand alone program that was incomplete. So I wrapped it into my GDW program, and unfortunately runtime errors still arose. Since I was using the DirectX graphics engine to display the game's picture, I wondered if it were to work with OpenGL, another graphics engine. Although we were instructed to make the game in DirectX, putting the bloom shader into OpenGL worked! However, I still need to figure out a way to get it to work in DirectX. And create a particle tool. And figure out how to integrate animations, with the rest of my group. That's all on our plate currently... which is due Monday.... =S

FINALLY! A picture of team ProTester's GDW game: PIVOTal! In wonderful bloom visuals!!
Although my work is not very noticeable in the game at this current time,
it is still very essential, as it is the base of its code structure.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Hopefully we don't kill ourselves from sleep deprivation and eating unhealthy food. Thank you for reading, and until my next blog post, see ya! =)