CAGD 470

 Sprint 6

 How was this sprint for me? Fine, but could have, should have been better. I got a lot of work done but I should have been able to complete all of my work with some help from team members. There were some hurdles and other projects got in the way time wise, but it would have been doable, if not for a significant personal issue which killed my momentum. The first weekend of the sprint when I was planning to make good progress ended up being a very bad time for me personally and I struggled to do anything. While I was able to get moving by the midweek after it killed my momentum and made it easy to stay slow. I will finish what I have laid before me and help some more with other project aspects as we reach, at last, the end of the line for the project.

               What did go well this sprint for me? I found some really good royalty free music online which my lead liked for the main menu and first two levels. The website I got them from even has digital license documents which is good. I also got a lot of good sound effects from freesound.org which is a great source for sounds to use in game projects. I also recorded a few more sounds for enemies just messing around with my own voice. I’m no voice actor but I can make some weird sounds for the enemies in our game. I also made a new texture for our campfire building area which had been an untextured blue for a while and I was able to build a sufficiently interesting and distinct texture using Substance Sampler. This was some decent progress but should have been better.

               What went poorly this sprint for me? The big problem this sprint was that my pacing was shattered by a bad start to the sprint cutting off important working time which ended up hurting my ability to finish the work I wanted to finish. I still need to get most of the sounds working in unity which should mostly be fine but I foresee some challenges with some specific implementation requiring code work which interacts with other code which will be a challenge to unravel. I also ended up deferring the fixing of my health bar spawning code to our programmer Usume as I have been taking too long in finishing it. This required some rewriting which should not have been needed if I had made it right in the first place. I had a time setback but I know I can finish what is needed of me in the coming last days of the project.

               What will be going forward for the last breath of our project and what would I have done differently? I will make sure that once I get past this weekend burst of class work that progress will be swift and consistent in implementing the remaining sound in the game during this polish phase. One important element which has changed for the project was an important scope change with the levels all being shrunk down to better facilitate the gameplay that our players find fun. This was an important decision for the project which while I preferred a different approach I deferred to Bradley, our vision holder and team leader. The biggest lesson I have learned in this project is not to let fear of work quality stifle productivity, get stuff done, even if only to have to fix it to truly get it done. A quote comes to mind “Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Sometimes in a fear of not doing something right I fear to do anything at all. But the end is nigh and I am proud of the work that has been done by myself and team on this project.

 Sprint 5

How did this sprint go for me? Things went decently well for me this sprint as I completed a decent amount of work and got moving in a good direction work wise. I came close to wrapping up a rather annoying user interface element and successfully completed another. I also got started on a fun and interesting area of design, sound design. While some work wasn’t fully finished or requires further bug fixing the overall direction looks good.

               This sprint was overall pretty successful for myself with a good recovery despite a slow start. One thing that I was happy I was able to get working was the bullet count user interface element. We had considered making something more in-depth with individual visual bullets which would appear and disappear corresponding with the ammo count but due to feasibility concerns this idea was scrapped. Still even a simple text-based ammo counter was pretty good for me as I have trouble with programming stuff. I also started making audio effects for the game this sprint. I created sound effects for the player and enemies. I made a player hurt sound, a zombie death sound, a witch death sound, two zombie attack sounds, and two witch attack sounds. These I just recorded with my computer and they turned out surprisingly well. I had to do a bit of fiddling to get them in the right format and such but they worked. The zombie noises were classic groans and growls while I cackled for the witch noises with a fading cackle being the death sound. I worked on finishing up the health bars for the enemies and defenses and I thought I completed them based on the video tutorials I was using. Unfortunately, due to having trouble testing on my end I didn’t iron out the last kinks to get them fully functional yet. Overall, I made some good progress this sprint.

               What did not go so well this sprint for me? I failed to fully implement the health bars for the enemies and defenses which was a disappointment. I have trouble messing around with coding stuff especially as this work requires working in multiple scripts with numerous prefabs and user interface elements. I still need to do some trouble shooting to figure out where the problem is because the code is not causing glitches or errors but is not spawning the health bars properly either. It may be a simple fix by inserting a line or two of code here or there or it may be a complicated effort finishing mashing up the code of our existing scripts with the online tutorials I have been using in order to create a Frankenstein fusion. I also started working on music this sprint with a free music making software. I had already started messing with it and was able to get some decent results finally. I enjoy music a lot but do not understand the mechanics of musical notes and composition and have a bit of a tin ear. But I managed to create a track which I decently liked and did not make my ears bleed. Unfortunately, my lead did not think it fit his vision of the game so he wants me to find royalty free music online instead. The music software I found has a very retro feel to it which he did not think fit our game, I personally feel it could be a decent fit, or at least better than stock music, but he is the vision holder. There remain some frustrations but things are progressing even the bad.

               In the upcoming last real sprint of work, I have some things to do, but I know where I am going. I will be creating more voice-lines for the player and monsters as well as implementing those in game. I will be finding and implementing royalty free sound effects and music throughout the game. I will also finally get those accursed health bars fully functioning. I know where I am going and how I will get there. 

  Sprint 4

               How did sprint 4 turn out in the end? It was a mess for everyone. I am very unhappy with the amount of progress we made as a team and also quite unhappy with how much progress I was able to make as an individual team member. There is some solace in the quality of the work my team did and that our struggle was not unique. Still very disappointing, especially considering I had wanted to improve pace not slow down. I managed to get some work done but unfortunately much of my work was incomplete by the time the sprint closed. Yet I shall persevere through these challenges and push myself and my team to improve our pace of production and then maintain a steady pace to completion.

               What went well for myself this sprint? Not a great deal as my work also suffered as returning to pace proved more challenging than expected. I did manage to create some new user interface elements to track the gold as well as another one to track ammo for the pistol. I learned a bunch about various programming concepts when working on some of my user interface stuff but that is still a work in progress.

               What did not go so well this sprint for me? As alluded, I had a lot of challenges this sprint in maintaining a good pace. The first problem was that the beginning of the sprint started just a few days before spring break and it is hard to get work done during that window. I did not work on the project during break in order to better recuperate. When I returned it became quite challenging to return to a healthy work pace. Despite reminding myself and the team several times that we needed to make a better pace rather than backloading all of our work I struggled to match that ideal. The main problem I ran into was my rustiness and inexperience with programming. I have not done programming for a class in a long time and was never especially good at it even back then. Now having to relearn certain elements while trying to learn new things in order to get tasks done is difficult. Tutorials definitely help but still require some searching and finesse to find ones that can teach skills that apply well to the project task I am working on while not stepping on the programming of other team members. The big thing I wanted to do with user interface work this sprint was add health bars to enemies and defenses so players can track the durability of their defenses and the health status of their enemies. There were and remain numerous hurdles in attempting this even after making a player health bar last sprint. Some mild overconfidence did not help matters as I hoped to copy elements of my work from before but it did not fit the design needs of this work. I needed to spawn in user interface elements, sliders in this case, with specific properties, at specific locations relative to the monster/defense spawns while making sure they accurately reported the health status of those specific entities. This was where I ran into snags as even in testing, I would make small coding mistakes and have a very difficult time solving them due to my relative inexperience and the ability for code to break in the most unexpected ways. I appreciate our programmer more and more the more frequently I dabble in even simple coding.

               What is changing going forward? I need to improve the pace of both myself and my team. This requires a lot of encouragement and some prodding with helpful reminders. I need to make sure to work on it more across the length of the sprint and not all at the end. I also have decided to turn my focus further away from user interface/programming related stuff and while I will finish what is on my plate I will now be turning to work on some other features of the game and I am next planning on tackling sound, a rather ambitious leap. We have had some setbacks but we will overcome with good teamwork. 

Sprint 3

               This sprint was a mixture of ups and downs. Things started well as I was working on applying the lessons, I had learned from the previous sprint to myself and the team but then things derailed. We were meeting daily to discuss progress on discord but we knew that several team members would be busy for several days early on so I didn’t press them. But as the first week became the second the team had not made much progress and our communication had become suboptimal. I had now become busy due to my work on other projects and classes and failed to properly keep the team on pace. In the last few days of the sprint we were for the most part kicked back into gear and completed a lot of work, but we still fell behind on our previous sprint pace. We also spent far too much time working on the project in the final days of the sprint, more than is healthy. I for my part completed most of my work but should have pushed harder with it and done more to help the team.

               What went wrong in more specific detail? I did too much of my sprint work at the end when I had meant for a more even pace throughout the sprint. Despite some initial progress my work stagnated in the middle before wrapping up quickly at the end. I did not complete the work for the user interface related to the perks system as the programming behind that was not completed this sprint. I had some struggles with the health bar user interface element I was working on as the tutorial I was using used INT and the scripts we had tracked health using BOOLs so I tried to figure out some way to preserve the BOOLs but I ultimately had to change most of them to INT in order to make my health bar function. Some of the user interface elements I made were not fully up to my personal standards and will require touch ups with additional programming and sprite work. The scripts for the scene transitions for the main menu and options menu were tied to build scene numbers but I should have made it tied to scene names for better future proofing as we add more scenes and levels into the game. The biggest problem though was that I failed to properly push the team in the mid sprint, I knew that several team members were busy with other classes which is perfectly understandable, but once they were done with those I should have kindly but strongly pushed them to get some work done. I also failed to reel in scope problems as some cards from certain team members spiraled and took up far too much sprint time. We don’t need perfection; we need progress and I did not adequately bring this message to my team.

               What went right this sprint? I completed most of my assigned sprint work minus the aforementioned user interface work for the perk system. I completed several new Adobe Substance Sampler textures which was good clean work. I also made a main menu scene in Unity and some working buttons to start a new level and open the options menu. I also created the options menu and a button to bring the player back to the main menu. I made placeholder sprites for the buttons and non-functioning buttons unimplemented but forthcoming (or wishful) features like sound. I also made onscreen user interface elements for the XP Bar and health bar. The health bar was able to made functional with help from our programmer Usume, though the XP bar needs to have a functionality added to it once we add in the XP system. Overall, I am mostly happy with what work I did this sprint.

               What lessons have I learned going forward? I need to improve my team communication and keep in daily communication with the team to ensure a healthy pace of progress. I need to practice what I preach and have a more even pace of production for my own work. I need to better future proof my work in Unity. I need to better collaborate with other team members when working on adjacent work such as programming and art. While I have made some mistakes these I shall overcome and use these as lessons to improve my own work and my team cohesion in future sprints. 

Sprint 2              

  This sprint was a significant improvement on the first sprint in several ways. I got some work done and also have been learning how to better manage the team and project. The team has been making good real progress. Our lead was sick for much of a week but we managed to continue on, and he managed to complete quite a bit of work this sprint. The big project I have been working in this sprint is adding to the backlog which is a mammoth task that is hard to fully complete with the scope of our game but I have endeavored towards it and added some new epics to reflect some elements found in the game design document. The other thing I was working on this sprint was creating some ground textures using Adobe Substance sampler, formerly Substance Alchemist which I enjoy using. Substance sampler is the easier to use cousin of the more powerful substance designer and can be used to quickly create good looking textures and I enjoy using it to make such textures. Overall, everyone, including myself, has significantly increased our pace of work and things are looking good ahead.

               What went right this sprint? The team has significantly increased our pace of production with far more points assigned and completed this sprint than last sprint, hopefully we shall soon reach a production speed comparable to some of these other teams. I think I did a decent job on the texture work I chose. The backlog is coming along nicely with new epics and many new cards added to better reflect our design plans. Our programmer Usume was able to complete the building system in time for our core loop prototype which is a good milestone. Bradley, our lead, has been really helping make tons of props even when he was sick which has been great. Nathan, our level designer, completed all of his assigned work which is a good step of progress. The sprint was closed at a specific time which was relayed to the team in advance. Alex has created some really good-looking models, especially the zombie model which everyone really likes.

               What did not go so well this sprint? A bunch of things were suboptimal this sprint such as how Bradley was sick for a whole week. This meant that our group meetings were less effective during this time and I was not able to communicate as much one on one with him as lead and producer to collaborate on backlog work. Everyone completed a lot of work, but most of the work did not move into “to verify” until the last few days of the sprint. Some of the work we were doing was not very productive which is a problem being rectified going forward. Our core loop prototype was not as complete as any of us would have wanted as the scope of our real core loop requires another sprint of work to complete. Another problem with the core loop prototype was the lack of polish as I failed to properly facilitate the creation of a refined prototype using models and textures rather than just placeholder objects. I do commend our team on the good parts of our prototype in showing off the core base building functionality of our game but I needed to better direct this. A lot of lessons learned but I think our coming sprints will be far better.

               What could have been done better/ what changes are being made going forward? The core prototype should have been finished earlier to allow for some more polish. For the next build I will make sure that the team has the functionality complete some time before to give them to time to work with and can add some polish before submission. Work could have been completed more across the time of the sprint rather than all near the end. We are doing daily check ins via discord to communicate our pace of work. I am confident that my time can overcome the challenges we will face ahead and make a good finished product. 

Sprint 1, what went well, what went wrong, what could have been done better, and what is up next? The big success of this sprint was setting up the backlog, even if it still needs to be finished, and working on creating the paper UI prototype. The challenge this sprint was learning Jira and its ins and outs in comparison to the more familiar Trello, some mistakes were made and some problems had to be quashed, but progress is rolling onward. What could have been done better was having a stronger grasp of Jira’s systems before working on the backlog so as to streamline the process. Up next is finishing the main part of the backlog by integrating the design document made by Bradley and working on some texturing.

The big task this sprint for myself was learning Jira and creating a backlog. While I did have some help from Bradley, as producer it is my job to work on creating and managing the backlog. This is a new type of work which requires some new learning to master. It is effectively a form of simple project management, a field which I find as compelling as I find it complex. Directing an effective project requires effective team and task management as well as planning goals and determining how to execute them. The first part of filling out the backlog was taking the epics we had already come up with and the cards associated with them and merely translating them into Jira. This was a matter of tedium and also took some editing to make them conform with the demands for card layout. Determining point value was something that was mostly easy but also took some discussion with team members to understand what their capabilities and expectations are. The next job of filling out the backlog was adding new epics to reflect additional goals and tasks that we had not initially brainstormed. There are still a few more that may be worth adding from the developer document, but all of the core goals have been reflected in the epics. One of my major goals as a producer is to manage our scope creep as it is always easy to expand the design goals beyond the team’s capabilities. We already have many cards that are wishes which brings in the priority system, one of the cool features of Jira. For the most part the early goals are highest, the essentials are high priority, important goals are medium priority, and the wishful goals are labelled under low priority, some more nuance could be added with the lowest priority label but it is currently unnecessary. One of the features found in both Trello and Jira that took some time to understand was how to assign people to cards as the way it looked made it hard to grasp initially. Early on in the sprint we just asked team members to self-assign cards before I figured out how to assign cards. Another challenge of working with Jira was using its sprint feature which is far more advanced than Trello’s but with added complexity it took some time to understand how to use it. We ran into a few weird issues with duplicate versions of the sprint which had different cards as well as one of the team members being on the board twice, this was eventually fixed but caused some mid sprint hassle. The other goal I worked on this sprint was creating a paper UI prototype which required some back and forth with the team lead to plan out as well as benefitting from some revisions. Now that the design document is complete and accessible to the team finishing the backlog and planning out work should be significantly easier in the coming sprints.