CAGD 377 - Sprint 1
CAGD 377 - Sprint 1
Development Process
The development process during this sprint has been more chaotic due to the recent role switch made during our sprint review. Up until then I served as a designer, but now will undertake the duties of a producer. This will be my first time acting as a producer which means I will need to familiarize myself with Scrum process and Agile development principles more than ever. I was familiar with them as an observer, but now need to take a more active role in overall development. I think that as the semester continues, I'll settle into my role comfortably, but for now I have a lot to gauge.
Problems/Solutions
One of the problems we ran into early on was with the game needing to be made in 3D rather than 2D. Luckily, our programmer was able to translate their work quite smoothly after a couple of hours. Another problem we ran into was the setup for the paper prototype taking too much time due to its modular pieces. The solution to this was to make two pre-made levels that the player could not complete unless they bought at least one upgrade from the shop. This still allowed us to test the core mechanics of the game and some rogue-lite features without spending too much time assembling the board for each run.
Sprint Kickoff
The sprint kickoff emphasized getting core mechanics done and I got started on a rough paper prototype so that we could test if the core gameplay was fun enough to go into development.
Work Completed
For this sprint, I did a lot of design work. I made the initial paper prototype above to get an idea of what types of tiles would populate the grid as well as how the player would move. Pieces for this first board were modular to replicate the nature of procedural generation that may be present in the final product. With a board this small, setup didn't take long, but not as much data could be extracted from each run. I created a new board and pieces for the next version. This allowed us to get a better idea of what moves the player could make as well as how some tiles needed to be setup as to not allow for an instant win for the player.
This version also showed that filling the grid using modular pieces was too time consumptive for a paper prototype, so I remedied this in the next version by coming up with two premade levels. This allowed for a much quicker playtest when the day actually came. It also allowed us to see the impacts items would have on gameplay and flesh out more of the rogue-lite features. Some of the ideas that spawned from the playtest were putting coins further down so the player couldn't spawn and get one instantly, adding a depth meter as a form of score-keeping, and having more enemy and tile variety.
The final thing I worked on during this sprint was some UI concepting for the digital prototype. This includes menu button placements, shows how the character will move, and displays information crucial to the player such as a turn-count.
Work Completed by Others
Some of the work completed by my groupmates is the character movement and tile destruction in Unity. Originally, this work was done in 2D, but our programmer managed to transfer the scripts over without too large of a hassle.
Our producer, for this sprint, was able to keep us on track and created custom slides for our presentation. They also created a design document for us to communicate the design of the project more clearly without having a meeting every time we have a question.
Current Work
Currently, I'm working on the tiles for the digital prototype. This includes modelling and texturing. As of right now, I am working on creating stylized textures for dirt tiles.
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