UPDATE 7
Art:
Beach house is done.
Modeling done for Monte Carlo, still needs texturing and lighting.
Loch Lomond started.
Have Bar and Champ table, waiting for some possible manufacture deals before doing for all rooms.
GUI:
Just some minor touch-ups, need to get back to this.
Physics:
Work progressing slowly. Working on new ball collision physics and new rail model. After numerous experiments seems the ball collisions are more complicated than we had modeled. Trying to get the game to play more like real pool, including the variance seen in real life.
Online:
Dealt with a lot of nasty things that had been put off...
Disconnects - handled with message and option to save. Sort of like VP3 but right now match can't continue if you lose players. May put that back in for more than 2 players, makes sense in some games like ring game in 10 ball.
Quit Match - what a evil witch. You would think quitting would be simple but it is not. It has to be handled differently for each room type.
Normal Rooms - it is pretty much yes or no to the confirmation. With yes the player leaves the room, no cancels. Master gets setup screen, everyone else gets the Match Being Setup screen.
Challenge Rooms - at confirmation, you can quit leave the room, cancel, or quit and re-queue
Event Rooms (Tournament, Ladder, League) - at confirmation, you can save the game and quit, cancel, or quit and forfeit
And practice in these rooms is handled differently, the above is only for 2 players or more.
DQ player in a tournament by the Admin now works, all players in room are notified of the DQ, and a DQ message is sent to the lobby, brackets show DQ.
Forfeit by a player in a tournament also updates the brackets properly now.
Login Authentication is now secure using RSA encryption. This was critical as we don't want players accounts accessed by anyone but the players. The web portal uses SSL and the game uses RSA so hacking a player password will be nearly impossible given proper strength passwords are used.
Handicapping for tournaments is partially done, waiting for some DB updates to finish.
Still have not done non-real time tournaments, but getting closer to working on it.
Did some code re-factoring to clean up the design, nothing functional but is progress.
Pro Tour Career:
XML reader working, have season and player xml files.
Other Coding:
Did some code clean-up, things were out of hand with over 4000 macro definition and around 1000 art files for the UI. Actually ended up writing 2 programs to find unreferenced art files and unreferenced macros. Took all day to do that but better than trying to figure it out by hand.
Celeris Site:
Still not done but mainly delayed because web designer is so busy on VP4 site.
Web Portal:
Layouts have been update per our web designer.
meta tag editor added, for SEO.
Blog is in and working. Integrated Wordpress for that. Setup so articles can be commented on and discussed.
Alternate roles for users is in and working. This will be used so a user with some sort of administrative privilege can switch roles. For example if you are a TD and are going to setup a tournament or run a tournament, you would go to your account and turn on TD, now everyone sees you as a TD.
Editing tournaments is restricted depending on the current state and who is trying to edit the information.
Private messaging is in and working. We have an inbox, trash, and sent messages. Basic but nice.
Newsletter mailing list has been setup.
Event calendar has been started, this is the main way players find out about events and keep track of events they are signed up for.
UPDATE 6
Art:
Beach house close to done.
Work started on Monte Carlo.
Going to do a couple of new rooms.
GUI:
New Career map in place.
Physics:
Working on new rail model.
Online:
Lots of activity here, tournament systems has got the basics working. Can create and play single or double elimination matches. The game server automatically creates rooms for tournament players, only allowing assigned players to play in that room. Match scoring and reporting works and online brackets are updated in real time. Plenty of bugs and little problems to work out but the basic tournament system is working. Still need to add the non-real time tournaments, and many of the pool rule options.
Have the draft navigation page up and running.
The friends system works.
Lots left to do on the user/social aspect.
Celeris Site:
Have prototypes done for a new Celeris web site. This will be intermediate until the VP4 site is up then we will move all the pool product material to the VP4 site.
Pro Tour Career:
Design is done, starting work on UI and XML reader.
UPDATE 5
Progress Report 5
Game:
Chat now supports multiple chat windows. They will be used for lobby, private messages, possibly ICQ (though not in the first rev), and game chat. The lobby will not support game chat. But the game does have a lobby chat so you can chat in the lobby while in the game. Also added color to chat text.
Normal mapping is working for the tables. The pool tables are dynamically lit using a custom lighting model that has a light bar for the table. The lighting is per pixel diffuse and specular with normal mapping for details. The tables now have diffuse maps, normal maps (with a specular component), and detail maps. Probably does not mean much for most of you but I'll translate to non-tech speak: The tables should look really good.
Have run a lot of physics experiments, hoping this will pay off with and improved model.
Web Portal:
The web portal is moving much faster now that our new designer Rob is on the team. My original design was oriented towards playing tournaments, ladders, and leagues. Rob said it needed to be user oriented and more social which I confirmed with an internet marketing guru. So the project has grown considerably but I think has much better chance for success because it provides a lot more value to the user. Key features include:
User home page showing your information, your event calendar, your money, your friends, your teams, your messages
User dashboard, present on all pages showing key information to you
Icon based navigation system
Integration with your facebook account
Your achievement page, has trophies, rankings, history
Community News page, has results and event promos
Pro blog, will be done by me and other guest bloggers
Tournament brackets are going to be pretty cool, modeling after this:
http://www.ctsondemand.com/
Will remove some of the busy text and things should look much clearer. Scoring placement will be different, handicapping will be shown too.
Art:
Now have 5 rooms "finished": Garage, Hawgpen, Pitstop, DeepPockets, Hardtimes, and Beach house is in progress.
We are making multiple lighting passes with different tables. I want to be able to put any table in any room or what fits. I don't think the Snooker table will fit in some rooms.
Am getting close to having a bar table for the Hawgpen. The new tables have been problematic from the art, rendering, and physics issues.
UI:
Added chat into lobby, need to work on the server more to get the player list in, room list works. I'm thinking the static 1024x768 size used in the menus is not so hot for the lobby and may make that screen dynamic to take advantage of the complete screen space.
UPDATE 4
Progress report 4:
Plenty going on, though my coding time has been cut down dealing with all the people working on this, but still production none the less, more from them, less from me.
Online:
Lag for break is in and working! Probably still some issues, sure it won't work with recording right now. But it is really cool looking. It was a tremendous amount of work to put in the lag, hope everyone likes it. I have deviated from the lag rules slightly. The rules say both players must lag before a ball hits the end rail. That is sort of hard to do online. I thought about having each player lag blind where they could not see the other players lag but that is not so cool and everything would be delayed for spectators. So the whole simultaneous lag was put it. The requirement to hit the lag is before the other players ball comes to a stop. I think that works ok, we will see if there are issues. The intent of the hit before the end cushion rule was so you could not read the other players lag but I don't think that is really much of an advantage at all and trying to delay your lag could get you in trouble because of network delays that could cause you lag to be illegal anyways. So the smart player will not try to wait on the lag.
Basic tournament room code is written, much to do there still, waiting for web portal to be done enough to work on that.
Secure login from VP4 has basic communication and logic, still need to work on some encryption issues.
Web Portal:
Web portal is coming along. Basic player sign-up and account manager is 70% done
Tournament setup is 80% done
Tournament brackets for single elimination are done double elimination brackets in progress
Still need web design and html/css for all of it
Still need to connect to VP4 server
Working on teams for tournaments, will be supporting scotch doubles play
Art:
Garage and Hardtimes are getting close, probably 95% at this point, so soon we will add those to the already completed DP and Pitstop. The harder rooms were done first so the others should go faster
New bar table is built, still working out issues, but basic geometry is in. This is difficult because of the tie in to the physics. Tables will be a huge upgrade over VP3. They have detail and normal maps, should be really cool.
UI art for key mapper done, have career map background, prototypes for lobby remote play normal room setup. Hope to post some SS soon, need to get the backgrounds rendered.
New Games:
Straight Rail, done and working per BCA rules
4 Ball Carom, done and working per BCA rules, looking at implementing Japanese, Korean, and Czech variations
UPDATE 3
Snooker:
Have added a push shot rule, not that happy with it, may do the physics modification
Auto-nominate is working. When the Shoot key is pressed, and your supposed to be nominating a colour, it will auto-nominate what is being aimed at. Normal Nominate key for the overhead selection still works as does pressing a numeric key. If either the overhead or numeric is pressed auto nominate is disabled for that shot.
English Billiards:
Is in and working. That took a while, there are some strange things in the rules. You guys in the UK can't make anything simple.
UI:
Still working on the UI, getting there but it is a ton of work, probably 65% done.
Record and Playback:
Added play events like ChangeTurn
Added some additional information for ChangeTurn that says why if the change was from a Play Choice like shoot over, this will show up for online play too
Put in some delays to give time to see status messages, like foul and slow down the shot pace a little
CO:
Made some improvements to Straight Pool game strategy for break balls
Fixed a problem with combination shots, CO should take advantage of that more now
Art:
DP and Hawgpen are done
UPDATE 2
Things are coming along nicely, lots of work to do.
The new menus now have the custom rules and handicapping in with custom rules for 8 ball, 9 ball, bank pool, and snooker.
Working on the in game display, plenty has changed here, will post some sort of screen shots after a little more clean up.
Have icons for the information window close to done. FYI the information window tells about the menu item you are interacting with and the icon is a little extra info and flash.
The custom rules for 8ball are done completely (except online) including the CO. The CO turned out to be a pain, lots of modifications to get it to understand the rules.
Still have to put in the custom rules for the CO for other games.
Looking into a major physics upgrade. Don't know if this is happening or not, depends on cost and schedule
.
UPDATE1
Just wanted to let everyone know things are moving along, though never as quickly as I would like
We have the first room upgrade complete. Changed to using Maya and there were art export/import problems
The user interface is coming along, that has been a lot of work to redo everything, plus add new features. Quick Play is done, load/save game, the career room (where you pick players), career management.
Still to be done is career map, tournament brackets, in game interface, in game menu, online lobby, in game play choice and call pocket menus.
Rules customization is working. The current generic customization for most games is:
Break - default, winner, loser, alternate, trailing player
Call Shot - default, off, on
3 Foul - default, off, on
First Break - default, coin flip, lag balls, lowest rating
There is a some of the game specific done, more to be added
Money Ball Call Shot - off, on
Bank Pool Rack - long rack, short rack
Snooker - 15 reds, 10 reds, 6 reds, 3 reds
I was thinking of adding;
One Pocket - front pocket (normal), back pocket
8-ball, pocket 8 in - last pocket (last pocket your last ball went into, opposite pocket, bank, side pocket
Cowboy - normal (can either shoot ball or a carom), alternate (must alternate ball and carom)
Bowlliards - normal, rotation
Handicapping is in with the following:
Handicap type - games, points, multiple money balls, ball goals
Except for Straight Pool and Billiards all games can handicap by games
Point handicapping is applicable to Straight Pool, Billiards, Bowlliards, Snooker, and Cowboy
Multiple Money Balls is applicable to 9ball, 10ball, and 6ball
Ball Goals is applicable to Banks, One Pocket, Basic Pocket, and Honolulu
I'm thinking of adding:
Odds on the money, for wagers on any game
No count for straight pool (must run X balls to count on the score)
8ball handicapping on 8 ball - last pocket, side pocket, opposite pocket, bank
8ball handicapping on all balls - rotation, bank
Still plenty of other things being worked on too dull and boring to be worth speaking of but necessary
The art updates are for the menus (major), in game (minor), rooms (medium, upgrading what was done for XBox), plus hoping to add at least one new room.
Will have to do some web art as we need to do a web portal for the online version. I thought about doing everything in game but that is probably a mistake. I also thought about putting a web browser in game to access the web portal but right now the design does not do that. All presentation in game is a custom interface.
Certain things must be in-game:
Login
Lobby
Game Rooms
Chat
Messaging
Other stuff could be in game, web portal or both:
Sign up for an account
Player Stats
Tournament Admin
Tournament Signup
Tournament Bracket
Tournament Stats
League ...
The advantage of using a web portal is you can get to it any time anywhere. It also integrates into our web site and others. And it will be better publicity and give us more traffic.
That is why I'm planning on doing a lot of web stuff. Still have not decided if I'm going to put a browser into the game. That would be an easy way to access all functions from VP.
If anyone is interested in helping out on the web dev side of things PM me what kind of experience you have and what you want to do.
The back end will be:
Linux
Apache
MySql
PHP or ROR, have not decided which to go with yet
The front end will be:
HTML, CSS, of course
JS using JQuery library
The game art will be used and derived to get web art, though there may be some additional custom art produced for that as well.
Anyone out there that knows how to use Maya or Max and has the talent to build a room is welcome to give it a go, PM me before doing anythin,
IF YOU THINK YOU COULD ASSIST STEVE WITH ANY OF THE ABOVE YOU CAN CONTACT HIM VIA HIS PROFILE PAGE ON THE CELERIS FORUM EITHER EMAIL OR PM HIM FROM THIS PAGE
CONTACT STEVE CHAPLIN AT HIS PROFILE PAGE
