Yay! We passed the internal alpha

This evening we had internal alpha meeting. It was a awesome meeting. We got a lot of feedback from faculty to make the game even more fun and engaging. Frankly, I am glad that they didn't try to change any feature of the game, which is I had already implemented. There are only some tweaks and improvements need to be done but that's fine. I am also so glad that I found no big issue on implementing their ego to implement their partner logo into the game.

Yes, I call this customization logo implementation company's ego. I understand from the marketing point to promote their company by blending the logo into the game. But thinking from their target demographic, I don't see what is this logo related to me at all. Well, they might want to make their partner company happy.

Anyways, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The first time Mike brought this issue and how they mentioned that they have this logo database in their server and their partner can connect to this game I was freaking out. I had no experience with web programming. And as easy as GameMaker is, I completely had no idea how I can accomplish this with GameMaker. Can I create a sprite just from a HTTP address? I don't think so. It is impossible to create a sprite from a source outside the working directory of GameMaker. How would I possibly create a sprite from a HTTP address? My original idea was to create a tool to replace the images of the logo sprite that I had already created in GameMaker. The other idea is to replace the logo in the sprite sheet on HTML5 build. Thankfully, they said their partner company will host this game in their website server and   all they want to do is replace logo.png (which is used for the logo sprite) with the logo of their partner company. Phew! It was like a big huge stone was lifted off my shoulder.

I was glad we finally got approval on alpha and most of the faculty are happy with our quick progress (considering I only worked for 3 weeks). In the following days I have to change and tweak the features that had already been there to push this game into beta and final product. Then, I can have a vacation on August =)