This week our team had a chance to reflect on our first sprint. Throughout the week, we had many conversations around the game’s systems and progression, plenty of which remained unresolved. By the end of the week we resolved to stay on course and focus our work in anticipation of the upcoming practice pitch week.
Detailed log of events
(26/06/2021)
- I prepared lecture notes and made a start on the ten pager document, as outlined in Level Up by Rogers (2014 : 71). The document is hosted on Onedrive so that myself and Matt can collaborate on it as needed.
(28/06/2021)
- Matt called an ad-hoc meeting on Discord between himself and Elliot to coordinate the creation of an objective progression chart – the meeting was open for everyone to join. After that discussion, I used the opportunity to raise the need to start work on the practice pitch, and admitted this is probably best discussed after we wrap up the current sprint.
- Following the meeting, I continued work on the ten pager document, and attempted to formalise the basic game elements based on our work up to that point. The challenge here was to really narrow down the key mechanics, goals, items and locations, that could help shape an MVP (minimum viable product).
- I used Miro as a digital whiteboard:
(29/06/2021)
- Matt outlined his game progression idea, which I thought was a solid concept for what we could include in the final deliverable. However I challenged the fact that it did not seem to create a natural opportunity to use the “shifting rooms” mechanic that we previously agreed would be a Unique Selling Point. I was reluctant to let go of that world mechanic as:
- I felt it would be impactful during the demo, and made the concept more unique against similar “walking simulators”;
- We have already invested James’s time into developing the technology to leave one room and seamlessly enter another distant one.
- Another quality of that progression was that there was no place or need for randomness; each event would be scripted, which I also felt removed the need for using time as a resource. Matt stressed the importance of retaining the awareness of the passage of time, so that it could be used as another tool to demonstrate the effects of progressing dementia when dealing with everyday tasks.
- The conversation was made difficult due to technical issues on my end. I wasn’t entirely sure if my statements were understood, and I believe there was lag which made it difficult to exchange discussion points.
- Ultimately, Matt advocates for the approach to try building first and drawing conclusions based on the result, whereas I am more partial to drafting a design and addressing flaws before we begin. I admit that the first option is more in line with Agile principles, but am worried that we have very limited time to iterate, and may be probed on specifics during the practice and final presentations.
- The lack of certainty over those mechanics have been a blocker for working on the ten pager.
(30/06/2021)
- I found it difficult to work today, and I’ve spent much my allocated study time on studying the literature to move away from the project for a bit.
- In a chapter dedicated to World Spaces in games, Schell presents the issue of scaling environments differently to accomodate a first person vs. a third person camera, to avoid a feeling of space that is too sparse, to cramped, or containing disproportionately large objects. For example, I learned that the designers of Max Payne used a combination of scaling up the room itself, scaling up the furniture slightly, and spreading it out, in order to counteract the distortion caused by a third person camera (Schell 219 : 532). It will be useful to be aware of this effect – although our game features a first person perspective, the rooms will be designed and pitched in third person.
- I cloned the game repository onto my local machine. James did a tremendous job implementing mechanics such as picking up items, placing them on surfaces, and going through “portals” into other rooms. I made sure to congratulate him on the team channel.
(1/07/2021)
- For this week’s team meeting, we had the following goals:
- Hold a sprint review and sprint retrospective
- Catch up with our Supervisor Matty
- Plan the next sprint, which would include work on the practice pitch, and potentially the team charter
- Notes and outcomes are documented on Confluence, as usual.
- Following up on the question asked last week – Paul does indeed work very fast when creating new models, and is happy to continue to do so. That was very good to know, as now we can have more confidence that we are able to furnish the level for the demo.
- During the sprint retrospective, Matt offered an explanation as to why most of the team completed most of our planned tasks, whereas me and Matt struggled:
- Our goals were comparatively less specific – as we were to work on the high level design and ten pager
- To which I added: our tasks were also more complex and had dependencies – the ten pager couldn’t progress without a mutual agreement on the specific common elements of the game, and even then it would be fed input from all other areas of development.
- Regarding our cooperation this week, there was a crossover between the work Matt and myself were trying to contribute, and I believe that created some constructive conflict.
- Matty gave us an example from his work experience, where both personality types can be encountered and you see them equally; having both ‘doers’ and ‘planners’ is beneficial for the team.
- I offered to step away from design responsibilities until Matt feels ready to present his next iteration, and that I would offer my feedback once prompted. I reassured Matt that my feedback would be honest.
- I pinned up a place on the team Miro board for our team to each contribute answers to the questions, based on the objectives of a sprint retrospective (Schwaber and Sutherland 2020):
- What went well?
- What went wrong?
- What will we improve?
- Following this exercise, Matt also suggested we post our individual goals for the next sprint, pictured below.
- While planning the next sprint, we agreed to focus on preparing the slide deck and presentation. We will work individually within our previously agreed areas, then practice together on Tuesday evening, two days ahead of the live event.
- It will be good to practice using Microsoft Teams; I will make sure one of us sets up a meeting that we can join rather than using Discord.
References
ROGERS, Scott. 2014. Level up : The Guide to Great Video Game Design. Chichester: Wiley.
SCHELL, Jesse. 2019. The Art of Game Design : A Book of Lenses. Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis
SCHWABER, Ken and Jeff SUTHERLAND. 2020. “Scrum Guide | Scrum Guides.” scrumguides.org [online]. Available at: https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#sprint-retrospective [accessed 4 Jul 2021].
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