ART
- Made art for the first Prototype
DESIGN
- This week, things have become more concrete. My focus has shifted from designing mechanics to creating actual level geometry and testing. I’m having to brush up on level design process so that I can create levels that meet learning goals in a timely manner. The feedback for interacting with thermal systems have to be stressed this coming week. Next week I want to meet regularly with Kshitij to get feedback designed and give art passes on levels I’ve designed. I’m happy we have a plan and I want to make sure everyone is communicating and using the organizational structures Cheryl-Jean has set up. We sometimes ignore organization and it is to our own detriment.
PROGRAMMING
- Deployed our platformer prototype on the iPad 3 and 4
- Handed off some level building elements to Julian so he can mock up some levels
- Tweaked controls for the mobile device
- Worked on some basic jump control, camera follow, tiling and parallex effects for the art layers
- Constrained the physics system to 2 containers for now, will work on gas splitting later
PRODUCTION
- We spent a lot of time this week preparing for quarters, and a large part of that for me was trying to get communication going so that the prototypes could be built in time, as well as working on the slides and practising. We had some underlying production issues that came to the surface, as we hadn’t been communicating much and we had been neglecting daily meetings due to our busy schedules. So, we had a full team “intervention” meeting on Wednesday where we each voiced our concerns and got back on track with standups, goals and tasks. It looks like next week, I need to hold a workshop for teammates to better understand JIRA. Some changes that came out of that meeting include a mid-week full team update meeting, a deeper commitment to daily meetings/project management and a build day (Thursday) and build meeting (Friday) for Akshay. I have learned that too little structure for this team can be a recipe for disaster. During quarters, we got a lot of useful feedback, mostly centred around getting the look of the game to match our design goals. I will be typing out this feedback for the team and we’ll be acting on it next week. I am also still in conversations with schools and have set up a meeting with Trinity High School for next Thursday. Most of all, I am happy that my team seems to be re-motivated due to quarters and on the same page again, and I hope to keep fostering communication and organisation as I have seen what happens when we take it too lightly.
