Week 2: Development Process

This week heralded the second week of our game development phase. So far in development we have a High Level Concept document and we are currently working on a Game Design Document. On the technical side of things we have begun a rough abstract of the classes needed to create our 2D platformer.

Part I:
As mentioned above we currently have a working High Level Concept document that outlines the basics of what our game is and what makes it so interesting. Essentially it is our pitch. The game, "Chain of Memories" (working title) is about an amnesiac genius. The player is the protagonist and must navigate through challenging obstacles using uniquely crafted items. One of the main items in the game is the chain arm that the character creates for himself. "Chain of Memories" will contain basic WASD movement controls as well as the use of the mouse for using various items.
Apart from that, the Game Design Document will define what we plan to implement as far as Game flow, User Interface, Story, Characters, Environment, and Game Mechanics are concerned. That will be discussed next week.

Part II:
Jumping ahead of the Game Design Document, and even the Technical Design Document - our group has described several classes that are required for the coding of "Chain of Memories" in C++ and the DirectX API.
The classes are as listed:
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+DXRenderer
--This class creates and defines all of the various required functions for rendering images to the screen.

+GameObject
--This class is the base class to be inherited by all 'physical' objects in the game, i.e. characters, blocks.

+Collider
--This class defines the collision boxes or spheres for GameObjects. It also contains code for detection collisions.

+ PhysicsLib & MathLib
--These classes are a little self explanatory. They define all of our Physics and Math variables as well as functions.

+GameStateManager
--The Game State Manager is a class (perhaps implemented as a Singleton) that controls the flow of the game between the menu, loads, saves, pauses, and levels.

+SoundManager
--This class will contain on wrapping the sound API we plan on using (FMOD) to implement sounds and music throughout the game. (Also may be implemented as a Singleton)

+DirectInput
--This class contains the code to implement DirectInput into our game application to handle user input for the controls of the character and the various menu items.

+WinMain
--This class contains the code to create, register, and handle the window in which our application will run.

+Camera
--This class is used to create a camera for setting the view in the game window.

Of course, these are not all of the classes that we plan on implementing into the game. There are still a few others, such as inherited classes, that need to be defined. However, that is a few weeks ahead.

As for now, that is all that is going on for this week and I will update again next week on the status of our work.