CAGD 470 - Sprint 2

 CAGD 470 - Sprint 2

Production Process

Compared to the team I managed in CAGD 377, mobile game development, this has been a much more hands-on process. In 377, I could easily attend to the tasks I assigned myself, but now there is much more administrative work I have to attend to. Much of this work involved course correction, task creation and assignment, as well as being prompt answering questions asked by members of the team. I was still able to get a decent amount of VFX work done. In order of wands, I completed the basic wand and projectile, fire wand and projectile, ice wand and projectile, as well as dash effects.

As a worker, I spent a lot of time watching videos about the Unity VFX graph in order to better understand its function and capabilities. Due to this, I was able to create more complex effects compared to what was produced during the first sprint. I'm hopeful that my effects will only increase in quality and speed of production.

Issues/Problems/Solutions

One of the issues we encountered was having one of our modelers not understand the vision for the set of modular walls. In order to ensure the designer's vision was carried out, I reassigned the cards from our modeler over to our designer after some deliberation between the two. This seemed to be the most optimal solution as our designer had previous experience working with low poly models and knew what they wanted visually. Our modeler was given cards from our designer to build out room templates. This worked out as one of their strengths was level design. I utilized the strengths and weaknesses document from the 1st sprint to assess what cards to reassign, so I'm glad to see the document came in handy.

Another one of the problems I encountered was having some of the VFX not work properly when merged into the main branch. To fix this, I had the programmer pull up the game scene on their computer and adjusted values until it gave the desired result. I then went back and changed it in my branch and pushed it. Those changes ended up fixing this error.

The final major problem we ran into with our production is that we didn't get to playtest the game in time for the end of the sprint. I planned to have us, at the very least, conduct an internal playtest on Wednesday for our meeting. Getting the build out took significantly longer than expected, so we were unable to setup a playtest. I was able to create the form, after consulting with the designer, so that we're still ready to playtest whenever we can. I plan to fix this by conducting a playtest over the weekend. The earlier we can get feedback and iterate upon our core gameplay the better.

Sprint Kickoff

Sprint kickoff started smoothly since I was able to get our sprint sorted well before kickoff. I had to make a few adjustments after negotiating with team members, but this only added or changed a few cards. Overall, kickoff went smooth and we were able to hit the ground running.

Work Completed

I personally worked on the VFX as can be seen in the video at the top of the page. I started with the basic wand projectile VFX which resembles a sort of void ball with circular particles trailing behind. I made the particle appear glitchy with a high spawn count and a looser spawn sphere. This means the particles were spawning very quickly over a wider area than the other projectiles. For the ice and fire projectiles, I have them spawn in a much tighter circle which gives the impression that it's a glowing orb.

VFX Showcase

I also worked on the dash VFX. Essentially it's two separate effects. The trail follows the speed and direction of the effect holder which can be attached to the player when they activate the dash. I used the default particles for both of these effects. I used custom sprite sheets for the fire and ice particles to give them more of a personality.

Sprite Sheets

Work Incomplete

I couldn't make it to the air wand and projectile VFX, but I plan to get these done next sprint. I also plan to get VFX for every elemental projectile within the game. 

Current Work

I'm currently finishing the air projectile and I plan to also get a few other small effects I'll be completing this sprint.