Final Whales

End of term presentations

This week both the DIGM and CS side of our team gave a presentation for our respective senior project lecture classes. Overall, both presentations did well but we will have to wait for the grade to see how well we actually did.

Over Thanksgiving break, I (Anna) worked with Alex to make a flashy video highlighting the work we created over the last several weeks. For the art team, we collaborated online to flesh out the content of the presentation. We did not go over the basic premise of the game at the beginning of our presentation so many of the faculty were lost. However, once we answered their questions during the Q&A section, we received very specific, valuable feedback. I reflected on the comments made and decided to reach out to specific faculty.

For the CS N, the programmers gave a very structured presentation to CS freshmen. They then ran through the presentation during our Wednesday meeting for Stefan.

End of cycle

This past week marked the end of a cycle (renamed from sprint). In our debrief, everyone on the team expressed better communication and initiative in all members despite the lack of hours put towards the game over break. Everyone was in good spirits about the work we are doing and was in great emotional health despite complaining about their hunger throughout the meeting. Several members of the team play tested the newest build. We were all excited to see the units, superunits, and towers in the game. There were less errors that crashed the build as well. All in all we ended the cycle ready to start the next.

Making the public-facing side of Whale House Studios

One of the biggest issues we have as a team is consistently and concisely explaining our game to others. Alex, our marketing amazingness of a person, started to address this in gathering key points of our game when we casually explain the premise to friends during our marketing meeting. He is using the information to put together a press kit for Whale House Studios.

Initiate

Previously, an issue across the board was time management (and this is still somewhat an issue). With everyone on the team addressing time management in their own way, the next step was to take more initiative. As a team we are too humble and modest about our work, often not showing off the effort we put towards the game. In hiding our confusion, members within each disciplinary and across disciplinary are not fostering conversations about issues they believe are important. While I (Anna) highlight the key issues during the team meetings and encourage discussion, there is too much confusion going on when we are away from each other that everyone else including myself do not know about. The first week of each cycle usually goes well, but the initiative levels off in the second week. The team started addressing this towards the end of the Friday meeting, which was great to see.