Helping Wherever Necessary -- Week Ending 20 Oct

These past few weeks have been filled with a lot of the same work--designing levels, placing the level models I receive into the game engine, testing like crazy, and filling in gaps wherever else I can. This week was much the same, so I'll just get down to the nitty-gritty of what I did with the team this week:

- Drew the level map for our second-to-last level and sent it to Charlie for modeling
- Designed the content and purpose of the final level, including unique gameplay moments and the intended player experience, though I still need to draw the actual map
- Added all new level models into the game engine for gameplay testing (up through level 4 now!)
- Communicated design details through meetings and emails (it still amazes me how many little things I haven't addressed or even considered up to this point--I hope I'm not the only designer who experiences this...)
- Constructed the final iteration of our release backlog, from user stories and gameplay features down to individual design, art, and engineering tasks that will get us there

I can't believe we only have a week-and-a-half until IGF submissions are due, but I'm stoked about how far we've come. In all seriousness, I'm incredibly proud of our team. The game is really feeling great. We've had ups and downs to get here (including my own personal ups and downs--good times!), but I think we'll have an awesome product for IGF, not to mention what we publish in May next year!

- Troy

More Done, More to Do -- Week Ending 13 Oct

Not a huge update this week, but just a few notes on how I'm taking care of my work and what I've specifically done over the last two weeks (including Fall Break this past week).

We've redone our menu systems and UI fairly extensively, so I've played a large role in the flow of pages, clicks, and information. I'm really pleased with how things are pulling together in these final weeks before our IGF submission. Besides the necessary changes to accommodate gameplay and meta game updates, the entire experience now feels more streamlined than before.

In addition, I've also continued producing level designs and adding whiteboxed level models (once again, modeled by Charlie from my designs) into our engine and ensuring that they work within the game. At the moment, only two levels remain for me to design, and one of those is well on its way. I should have the last of those designs ready for modeling by this coming Wednesday at the end of our core development hours (class time).

Since I've pretty much described to you what I've worked on lately, I'll forgo the obligatory list of itemized contributions to the game. You're welcome.

I'm excited to help get Dodos in ship-shape over the next couple of weeks. This is the exciting time when everything really seems to finally be gelling. Awesomesauce.

- Troy

Course Correction -- Week Ending 29 Sep

In the moment of critique or correction, I imagine that many people feel a bit defensive, perhaps thinking that the critic just doesn't understand the intent behind the action or product. I know that I have certainly felt that way on many such occasions, and this past week provided me a few more opportunities to choose how I reacted to critiques of my work.

It is in those instances that I have learned (even if it's still difficult) to consider such critiques as course corrections rather than personal attacks, especially when they come from someone more experienced and who honestly has your well-being (and the success of your product) in mind. Take Wednesday for example. After we presented the current build of Last March of the Dodos to faculty and other students, Roger Altizer came over to personally try out our game. Game-freezing bugs aside (rar), he honestly had concerns with the meta game design (or lack thereof). Thankfully, we were able to consider his thoughts and suggestions and come up with a solution that we feel will be a great addition to the game with what limited time we have left.

As designer, I was able to seriously analyze how the various core mechanics of our game work together to lead the player to the most satisfying possible experience. As it stood, the collection of "doins" (our in-game score/currency) appeared to be the end goal, since there was nothing on which to spend millions of eventually banked doins. We had previously assumed that it would be akin to earning high scores and reaching for the top of the leaderboards, but it turned out that simply trying to earn doins to spend frivolously on traps here and there distracted from the core concept of the game. In other words, the mechanics seemed to push earning doins over the real hook of the game: destroying tons of dodos in fantastic ways.

My solution (eventually approved by the group) was to make each new level a money sink that has to be purchased. These new levels promise new, fun ways to terminate Dodos, with more and more masses of the birds available on each level. Finally, the ultimate goal is to buy passage to the secret (and ridiculously expensive) Dodo haven island. This final level has scores more Dodos to kill and is laid out like a Dodo hunting playground, providing a space for the player to go crazy with fowl-slaughtering imagination. With these changes, we feel that the collection of money reinforces the concept of the game rather than distracting from it. The player will want to earn money not just to earn more money, but to eventually be able to buy the most possible fun the game has to offer (which, when beaten, will result in the games ultimate win state).

We deliberated a number of solutions over the weekend, and we feel that this is our best solution, especially given our remaining time of only four weeks. It feels good to have been able to take constructive suggestions, give them real thought, and put forth a solution that we honestly feel is possible to accomplish.

Here's what I did this week:

- More level creation, including designing, drawing, and putting the whitebox models into Unity for playtesting
- Helped prepare the presentation of the game with Jesse (our team lead)
- Organized the final design meeting to decide which new changes and features we want to (and have reasonable time to) implement in order to ensure that our game ends up the best it can be for our IGF submission

And on that note, I've got my work cut out for me for this final month. Keep checking back, and I'll let you know how our last leg shapes up!

- Troy

A Solid Work Week -- Week Ending 22 Sep

With every team member pretty much knowing what they were tasked with for the week, there was relatively little producer-type work that I had to do, which left me with a great week of designing levels. That's not to say that I didn't deal with people and communication scenarios--there was still plenty of that--but I was able to spend most of my time designing and creating tangible assets and features for the game. And that's my favorite part. :)

Which brings me to the next point. Up until now I have struggled with getting a good grasp on how our levels should feel, what would make them the most fun, and how to really let all the features shine. However, because of a fairly simple paradigm shift (no doubt brought on by using some level planning strategies taught in Joe Bourrie's virtual worlds class--thanks, Joe!), these goals have become clear. Now that we have these new levels, it's finally really evident how all the pieces come together. The gameplay has been there for weeks, but without a refined space to use those mechanics to great effect, it was difficult to enjoy the whole experience as intended. And it is good. :)

 So here's how my week was spent:

- Communicated needs (or lack thereof in some cases) to art outcource artists
- Helped with menu and UI design details
- Helped design camera functionality
- Wrote out the purpose of individual levels, including the major dramatic question/player experience that each is intended to facilitate for the player
- Drew out the maps for those level designs
- Took the whitebox models (modeled by Charlie) based on those designs and put them into our engine in Unity
- Added the necessary parts to those new levels to allow them to play as functional levels

We've got a presentation of the game to faculty on Wednesday, so I'm doing my best to make sure the latest build is in great shape with full game functionality. Let's hope the work pays off!

- Troy

Settled into the Work -- Week Ending 15 Sep

For the first week in the semester (and perhaps much of last semester), it feels like everyone has their tasks nailed down, and it was all about just getting into the groove and doing the work. I love weeks like this because they feel like the whole process concept is actually working and not something we simply strive for with meetings all the time.

So with few details to mention other than the excitement that I could focus on design work rather than typical producer work, it was all about simply creating the game this week. Here's what I did:

- Designed in detail the progression of the player (and the associated profile) as levels are beaten, including the unlocking of traps, areas, and characters
- Redesigned the aesthetic and functionality of the main menu with key members of the engineering team and our team lead
- Modeled test levels in Maya and added the pathing for the Dodos to follow in Unity
- Wrote the developer diary/blog entry (as I have every week along the way)

I hope for another week of hands-on work starting Monday. :)

- Troy

Always Something New -- Week Ending 8 Sep

To this point, the drama level in my various teams has remained relatively low. Thank goodness. Throughout my life, the primary difficulty I've had with any sort of group or team project has been drama (or the occasional one wherein I felt like I was carrying far larger a load than was reasonable). Unfortunately, the past week has brought with it a degree of drama that I hoped would not end up in our thesis team.

The best remedy for such issues (that I have found) is an environment of open communication and a requirement that egos be left at the door. I feel that our team has generally done a great job of upholding these ideals, but introducing outsource artists to the mix has brought its own set of challenges. Stifled communication and a lack of understanding individual roles has thrown some kinks in the mix. And sometimes, sadly, individual personalities fail to join the team in its overall goals. In those cases, appropriate, effective assertiveness is the solution. I think we've worked out solutions to our struggles this week through some team meetings and personal discussions, so I hope it doesn't turn to more dire straits.

Besides trying to work with the aforementioned situation, the week was short for our team due to Labor Day (though some of us did meet to discuss art pipeline issues). All that noted, here's what I did:

- Managed both the art and the engineering backlogs and sprints
- Designed levels and whiteboxed them using Maya
- Established deliverable milestones up to the point of our IGF submission deadline (test sessions, official presentations, etc.)
- Organized, attended, and ran pipeline meetings for the engineering and art teams

Wish me luck this next week!

- Troy

Busy Again -- Week Ending 1 Sep

Things are moving forward again, not much different than I remember from last semester. We all have our tasks, and we're all doing what we can to make our game the best that it can be.

As far as my thoughts for the week are concerned, there are a few things I'd like to point out. The first is that Agile development processes definitely have their flaws. Or maybe it's just that I have my flaws and am trying to force things in what I understand to be an Agile fashion, when I'm really missing the point. Lately, things just seem to go more smoothly when there is a dedicated document (design or some other type) and schedule to run things by. When we've tried to add or implement new features, there are so many new questions that come up ("How does this look? What's this supposed to do exactly? Would this fit with the rest of the framework? Have you thought about what this will do to these other features? Where do you want these buttons to go?"). It's almost impossible to have the forethought for all of these when trying to redetermine tasks and scheduling as you go along. I suppose I'm ranting, but I think it all goes back to my philosophy of "Plan like a Waterfall process, implement and develop with an Agile process." Trying to plan new things in the middle, however, has proven to be particularly difficult. So avoid feature creep and stick to your guns! Or just plan and design a better piece of software from the beginning--as if it's that easy...

The second is that I feel like I'm carrying much more than the load of simply the Lead Designer. As a member of the producer track, I understand that I'm expected to do "producer things" to gain the skills I'm intended to and to fulfill my MFA degree requirements, but I sometimes feel like what should be (and what I want to be) my main focus--design--falls by the wayside. I love design, and I want to design games more than anything else, but my class time is often filled with (hopefully effective and essential ) meetings and working out Scrum processes and documents. And my nights are filled with setting up other meetings and working out team issues--something I feel that the team lead should be heading up instead of me.

Finally, sometimes I feel like the work I do put into the project falls on deaf ears or simply isn't up to the level that we need it to be. I'm learning new skills and approaches to these problems all the time, so I'm typically able to push through any discouragement, but this work is not without its low points.

All that noted, I love this work, and I love being part of a team. And I love making video games. There is so much fun in the process, and there are so many rewarding moments along the way. I have confidence that the end result of all our effort will be the most gratifying and rewarding part of all--a fantastic published game.

Here are my contributions this week:

- Updated and defined new tasks and scheduling on the tech/engineering backlog
- Handled some major design work, including the implementation of newly added features involving the trap shop, avatar and narrative inclusion, and UI aesthetics and functionality
- Helped the engineers determine the architecture for player/user profiles in the game that will store key information about all of the above features, as well as the overall implementation of those features themselves
- Determined and created an updated art backlog
- Guided the meeting for the determining of our final art style (the specific rules, etc.)
- Contacted and held meetings with our outsourced artists

I've still got a ton to do, but I'm excited to help this team create something awesome!