Keep Whaling Forward

Yesterday was the end of another sprint. We've been moving forward, amping up the speed at which everyone is working while creating a support network for those who are getting sick. My head is definitely back in the game. The whole team has been coordinating with each other, providing honest and open feedback. As I establish the goals of the project, major milestones, and sprints, I am getting a clearer picture of the project's lifespan. This also helps me communicate what the team needs to do. We shifted priority for the upcoming sprint to focus on the shared towers. As an aside, just as we work hard, we play hard! I invited our team over to watch Meet the Robinsons and have some pizza. Maybe I'll work on some cookies for the end of our current sprint.

Producing Things

• Update the Gantt chart (2.5 hours)
• Clean up task list and clear any conflicts in scheduling
• We met as a team Sunday evening to go through the goals of the sprint and assigned deadlines (1.5)
• I updated the task list with the superunit for each type of tower (1 hour)
• Turn on notifications for task list (0.5)
• I let my team know that they might get massive amounts of emails...
• Model! (we are doing a task list review tomorrow during the art team meeting!)
• Augher (4 hours)
• Kail (3 hours)
• Kamikaze Unit (3 hours)
• Kamikaze Superunit (2 hours)
• Make sure we're on task for our first playable, due 10/26!
• We ran into some issues with path drawing but more-or-less met the base requirements for our first playable!
• Made criteria chart for milestones with Dylan (1.5 hours)

Proof of Progress

Here are links to some important files:

• Gantt chart
• Task List

Augher

This is the second iteration of Augher. The poly count was decreased (will post stats in a future post) and Kai-Lin gave me feedback prior to start about changes to the model so he could rig the model.

Kail

This is the first iteration Kail. I consulted Kai-Lin before start but there were some issues with the orthographics that I took creative liberty with.

Kamikaze Unit

This is the second iteration of the Kamikaze Unit. Poly count was reduced and the spikes were made larger.

Kamikaze Superunit

This is the first iteration of the Kamikaze Superunit based on the art that was developed. I don't think Henderson put together the orthographics but I went ahead and modeled it anyways since Jonathan was more-or-less happy with the design.

Foreseeing the Future

• Model Augher Phase 3
• Test Augher in Unity
• Model Sniper Unit Phase 1, 2
• Model Rush Unit Phase 1, 3
• Test Tank Unit in Unity
• Model Rush Superunit Phase 2
• Test Rush Superunit in Unity
• Update Gantt chart
• Establish logo
• Give report to Stefan about First Playable

Some Other Comments

I had a pretty intense conversation with Alex about marketing our game. There were some changes to the design. The decisions I notified him about had me concerned because I was not sure what our game's unique selling point was. Alex expressed the same thought. We had a conversation about the opportunities in the market we would be launching our game in. The conversation will be continued on Wednesday with the team.

This week's kudos goes to Kai-Lin! He and I worked together almost all day Saturday to finish up work for the sprint. He also scripted a Maya tool for me to use when I am about to send my models off to the next person. The script snaps the geometry to the grid and centers the most bottom point at the origin. This will allow our programmers to more easily place our models right onto the ground plane. Not only that but Kai-Lin dealt with me for an entire day. Much kudos to him.

Anna