Whaling Out

My team is going strong but this week I was unavailable for them. Last week there were issues as a team. This week, there were issues with me. I admit that my schedule is tightly packed with classes, student employment, homework for classes, and senior project. For some reason, I checked out. I was not dedicated as much personal contact time with my team mates. Tasks were not being delivered and I was not handling the situation as well as I could have been. One of the programmers gave me the down low on the situation as real as he could. At first I was resistant to what he was saying--until I remembered the rules we established as a team. I'm back in the game though, stronger than ever.

Producing Things

A huge disclaimer: the list I usually include in my posts do not include the time spent in meetings. I figured this was important to note as my main role is that of producer. There are about four weekly meetings I attend: whole team, art team, marketing, and a meeting with Dylan, one of our programmers. In addition, I also schedule one-on-one meetings with the art team semi-frequently to check in with them.

This is my task list from last week. Items crossed out are what I completed. Items in green are new tasks I completed that were not on the list from my previous post. Items in red are well.. everything that is associated with red.

• Prepare for our pitch this coming Tuesday (2 hours)
• Met with Alex, our marketing person, to review the presentation to ensure clarity
• We met as a team morning of the presentation to practice
• Work through NGUI and build a basic UI
• I prioritized getting my team back on schedule and creating mechanisms to handle reminders, late tasks, etc.
• Turn on notifications for the task list
• We redid the task list so I am waiting until we clean up the task list more to turn notifications on
• Set up JIRA
• The server hosting JIRA is unstable
• Finalize deadlines for the next sprint with the team (2 hours)
• Get our marketing (!) person up to speed on the project (1 hour)
• Model based on progress on concept art (6 hour)
• Most of the delay came from re-learning how to model on the fly, files not syncing, etc.
• Gantt chart update (3 hour)
• Project properties were not saving so I had to remake the Gantt chart...
• Web service automation for reminders (1 hour)
• I use IFTTT to help automate reminders for the team via Facebook
• Task list clean up (2 hours)
• We have a "naming" convention for the various assets in our game. I had to convert the list over to the proper names and delete assets that are no longer needed.
• Create individualized task list for everyone on Google Docs (1 hour) check it out!
• I've been testing this with Jonathan on a personal basis since we're also housemates. I decided to expand this to the rest of the team to help them get their to do lists together.

Proof of Progress

 Above are screenshots of the model ready to go into the game. The file was sent to Augher's rigger (Kai-Lin) for review. I would normally post images of the Gantt chart but...

Foreseeing the Future

• Update the Gantt chart
• Clean up task list and clear any conflicts in scheduling
• Turn on notifications for task list
• Model! (we are doing a task list review tomorrow during the art team meeting!)
• Make sure we're on task for our first playable, due 10/26!

Anna