CAGD-470

Video Game Production - CAGD 470 - Fall 2019

Undead Enigma - Sprint 7 - 12/16/19

1 User Stories Assigned

5 User Stories From Early Sprints

1 User Stories moved to Verify

1 User Stories moved to Complete

5 User stories assigned but not moved

For this sprint and the previous one I helped bug fix and assign art assets, but made little progress on anything else.  Other than some forward momentum acquired in class I spent most of the sprint unable to make forward head-way on needed tasks or chasing down construction of objects and systems that were not implemented in the final version of the game.  I definitely feel I let my team down and I hope that the therapeutic treatment I am receiving now through Chico State Mental Health will allow me to be more consistently focused and functional next semester.

I think that the Post-Mortem I wrote for the Final Report sums up things nicely, so I will repost it here:

• What went right?
• Iterative Design
• Our team was able to have a functioning game every step of the way as we started with the core concept of a platformer and expanded on it incrementally.
• Team Communication
• Trello, text messages and semi-weekly meetings outside of class in-person and through Discord helped us stay generally on the same page.
• Core Aesthetics
• We started with a dark and whimsical concept and I feel we followed through on it with the quality of the models and the summoning mechanics.
• What went wrong?
• Psychological Burnout
• Failed at least three classes due to extreme difficulty working on any class project in the last month.  Received new psych med from CSU Mental Health Clinic and hope to have a much stronger semester next year.
• Failure to Delegate Tasks
• Took too much on myself.  Wesley as the second programmer was able to help early on and get me started in several areas such as character movement where he laid the groundwork and I polished it, but I failed to use him as a resource near the end when I really needed help.
• Unused Backlog of Assets
• Several things such as trapdoors and false walls and a cutscene dialogue engine were created but left unpolished so they didn't make it into the main game, as well as an awesome spike trap model created by Renzo that possibly could have been modified into skins for the untextured door and treasure chest models..  
• Overall Experience
• I'm very happy we had a functioning game before I suffered extreme burnout mid-November.  Iterative progress was very slow past that point, but we had most of the core concepts down.  The final project shipped with seams showing, but it is definitely playable.

Undead Enigma - Sprint 4 - 10/24/2019

Progress was decidedly slow this sprint.  I was unable to move any Trello cards into Verify.  Two cards related to summons and collectibles remain left over from Sprint 3 and the newest In Progress task is creating dialogue boxes.  I was able to fix some of the issues with the summons by commenting out the code that pulled camera focus from the player and adding in options so that the character when grounded can sometimes summon a stationary skull rather than one permanently in motion.  The main subtask from that card remaining is arranging it so that the skull when summoned below a grounded player will automatically lift up the player a square in height.

Collectibles were something designed for the paper prototype and placing them in either easy or hard places to collect them depending on menu options should be straightforward once I get the basic additions to the permanent GameController and local spawners set up.

Adding a dialogue engine should be a straightforward process but I have been hung up on placement and design of a better interface for the summoning system which will affect how and where the textboxes hang on screen.  I am afraid that I will not have this straightened out by the end of the due date for this personal blog, but it should be well-handled by the time of the presentation next Tuesday.

Sadly, this delay is very probably affecting my team leader's workflow on producing a polished tutorial.  Hopefully it will be a straightforward process to convert the tutorial text over from writing on the walls.

Concept Images for New Interface and Dialogue Boxes

Undead Enigma - Sprint 3 - 10/10/2019

I was able to make a lot of progress in the last two days of the Sprint.  9 Tasks Completed, One Personal and Two group tasks still remaining in progress.  Unfortunately I ran out of time on this blog update.

Undead Enigma - Sprint 2 - 9/29/2019

This Sprint passed with me working on the project intermittently.  I was able to do a lot with the hours I put in, but I feel I should have been putting hours in on more days.  This time through we focused on ironing out the art concepts introduced by the Paper Prototype and started assembling the Electronic Prototype.  We currently have a functioning stationary summon, a mobile player character and several varieties of triggers for opening and closing several varieties of gates.  Once we create a functioning trigger for 'winning' rooms and advancing to the next one, we'll be able to start combining our different test rooms into a functioning series of levels well in time for the Electronic Playtest in about a week and a half.

I was able to closely work with Wesley on this phase of this project, which also saw my first time using the voice chat feature of the gamer's chat service Discord.  On Trello, the completed cards that were assigned to both of our avatars are:

• As a programmer, I want to provide my Level Designer with a Gate
• As a user, I'd like to be able to move the player character
• As a programmer, I want to provide my Level Designer with a Falling Trap
• As a user, I'd like out-of-reach buttons I can activate by throwing minions at them.
• As a developer, I'd like to have a development testing level.

The personal ones I completed were:

• As a user, I want the camera to follow the player
• As a user, I want the camera to let me see the minions
• As a player, I would like collision detection on my summons so I can stand on them.
• As a developer, I want units to collide with objects and platforms
• As a developer, I'd like a checkpoint system.
• As a developer, I'd like to have proper 8-directional movement for my skull throw
• As a developer, I want to fix the gate so it doesn't teleport.
• As a user, I'd like a stationary summon.

My central task in-progress should be the one labeled "As a user, I'd like a mobile summon." as we need it for the next phase of puzzle creation.  However I've only assigned the placeholder elements so far as I've been spending most of my time on my second in-progress task of "As a developer, I would like to fix the 8 direction skull throw" as it's been easier for me to look at my already existing code and patch holes than move on to the next task.  So far I've been able to mark off fixing the bug that didn't reset the pressure plate if the skull was crushed and the related one where it didn't reset the pressure plate on being resummoned.  I've yet to iron out the bug that summons multiple skulls, the directional throw sometimes being randomized and that the non-destructive gate wedges the skull into the floor, somehow causing random player navigational hazards.

Here are screenshots of the current gate and pressure plate system, notably showing off the base version of Renzo's cool 3D skull model working well inside of the Capsule Bounding Box we've assigned to it:

Undead Enigma - Sprint 1 - 9/12/2019

New game design class, new team of three on a semester-long project.  For the first Sprint we focused on the paper prototype which was a smooth process as we've had many classes together working from rule sheets to tutorial design.  I have a small library of GameDev Market assets built up over the years from being a regular subscriber to HumbleBundle and we received permission from our instructor to use the stock art assets for the prototype stage - although they'll need to be replaced with original work for the finished product.

Wesley as the lead designer set down the basic layout for the paper prototype levels.  We all pitched in on the character concept.  I assembled the Summoning Cards and such from the pre-existing components and made sure they were printed on solid card stock for ease of handling.

Character and Object Tokens - Components licensed through GameDev Market

We're using Trello and I've no personal completed tasks so far, just the three main ones assigned to the team related to our successful run of the Paper Prototype.  We had seven playtesters this morning and I hope we can get in a few more before the report is due next week.

• As a designer, I want a bare bones paper prototype first room that has summon-activated pressure plates and a player-flippable lever to open a door.
• As a designer, I want to test a simple prototype amongst our members to prepare for playtesters
• As a designer, I want to create a short rule sheet that explains how to play and what to avoid.

My main task in progress is "As a programmer and artist, I want to provide my Level Designer a comprehensive toolkit to assemble puzzles with." - To start towards this, I'll be replicating most of the paper prototype in the shared unity project, using 2D sprites and 3D basic shapes to stand in for the dynamic 3D models our modeler Renzo is building.

No real issues so far other than several cases of myself and at least one of my teammates arriving late to class.

Wesley's Level Design - Components licensed through GameDev Market