Sprint 2 ENDs!

Well it has been a fun month. 1st the story team, bugging the mini-team on Silcat and the deal with the Splash page. With the Sprint done its now time to worry on the Presentation, eeeecckkk. Did I ever mention I don't like public speaking? I'm teaming with a Robert for this thing and after the 1st two attempts to wow the class....we failed big time! No humor or visuals...yea pretty bad. Well hopefully we pull it together and be simply AWESOME!

Until then here are our ugly burn out charts...obviously we need to work on our communication. PFFFTT

And to end on a good note here is the Header I made for the Invitation Email that was added to the splash page presentation.

HEY YEA!

Changes changes Changes

So first let me update the work I did as the project director. I was approached by few of the story team and was brought to light a situation that has been going on and pretty much as was asked to step in and try to solve it. We ended up in a separate classroom to talk things through. I ended up having each of the team members go down the line and explain their problems and see where they all lead up to. For the most part it came down to...drum roll please...communication. Communication. Communication between members and the team lead or Product Owner. It was pretty good mess. And that lead to a bigger mess.
After this we had a really fun week of HELL, with the splash screen. We ended up having a few lines of mis-communication which lead to one of my artists working with a piece up to the very last minute, another programmer spending more then he should have online and others missing out on showing what they can do. Pissed me off and guilty all at the same time, mainly because I felt it was my fault that it happened. I felt pretty bad about the whole situation. BUT I did learn from it, and it even saw more of our communication problems. Something we are going to have to work on this next semester. Anyways it was a great week.
When I wasn't just working on that I was revamping the sites we have that help us find the info we are looking for and what not. Here are the screen shots of what it looks like now.

Finally!

Finally I got a chance to actually work in Unity. With one of our co-students not putting in any time to do the work for one of our minigames, I had decided to step up to the plate and try to fill the spot and do some art for a change...that was about 3 weeks ago....and I made like three two sets of assets which didn't meet up to what was needed...and now I think I got it lol.

Now these are just pictures of the 3D models and they aren't animated. The Supernova on top has the texture that moves outwards like it was exploding and the sun swirls around to simulate the nature movement of a star. Took a bit to get the scripts to run everything but as it turns out really proud of this.

Storm Rolled In

Okay, so when we started this sprint I thought,"So the 1st sprint went badly, this next one will be great!!" Well it got better but as it turns out there were a few issues we still didn't encounter yet. Like consistency. It seems that after I had made the ARG roadmap everyone wanted to change it. PFFTTT well, we'll see how this goes. Speaking of roadmap here it is :D

Why do I bother?

This week was one of those weeks, unfortunately things in my private life went to the dumps and with me having this awesome/horrible habit of wearing feelings on my sleeve, it poured into the school scenario. I wanted to collect my thoughts on the situation that happened this last week and organize them so I knew what was me being an asshole and what was the actual professional feelings. I think I got it figured out, so let me explain my situation; I have moved to Milwaukee; which is three hours away from my family, put myself into a near poverty state, taking on the highest position in our student project and working for a company where I make no money what so ever, dive hours into tutorials to learn what is required of me and for the better part of my time alone at home. 

So with all that said when I put soooo much into this education, how come it is so hard for someone to read a few tutorials learn a few basic things in game engine that relate to his portion of the course. It bothers me to see someone, with talent mind you, not put the minimal effort to do to this industry, especially when it's wildly known to be one of the hardest industries to get into, with a 25% employment rate. ARRRRrrgggghh. The worst part is, I'm not necessarily one of those who is willing to leave those who don't pull their weight behind for the wolves to get. So I pushed. I tried to get him to do something he has never done and see if he could do it. What happened, he dug in his heels plopped his butt down and said I don't wanna (in so many words) just like a mule on a stubborn streak. Where is the crop when you need it? In any case that is what I think about that.

The rest of the week was ok, as said before with me worried about other things I didn't put 100% this week and I think I may have hurt my position a little bit because of it. I think it's something I am going to have to fix  this next week.

The project looks good though, we are moving into our 2nd sprint and aside for some project management issues I feel we are on a really good track to finish this part of the game before the end of the semester. I just need to hope on my portion of the work and get some assets out to Jeanette for her game and get my butt on some other things. SO /onward.

Sprint 2 Planning

Ok so a lot has happened since the last time I blogged.

1st of all I needed to change my blog over to a more affordable medium, ie free. So some of the stuff I couldn't get back on here but I did find some of the stuff I wrote in Word and put them on here so you at least you can see where I started.

2ndly we are almost done with our 1st sprint of the game development of thee 1st part of the ARG and I am getting a HUGE impact from trying to run the production of this thing almost blind. I may have been a manager before but this is a whole new challenge style of doing things. There are deadlines, quality control, creative insight, and a major call for a lot of communication. There is so much to do just as the top that I didn't even realize there was to do. Dealing with Scrums, leads and even member issues is just, wow. I am giving everyone props who does this style of management and is in the game industry, it is a little nuts. But FUN! :D

So back onto the actual ARG production, the story has gotten it together finally after a huge tussle with the story line and the video. There was some descent on what story should be. The people involved should have thought, ok how can we make a good story, and what will work for what we are doing rather than but I want this like this because I wrote it. The other issue, the video, had a similar scenario but it was more of one person have not enough tact when dealing out criticisms and the other person involved taking the criticisms too personally. The good thing about both altercations was it brought to light some major issues that the video was suffering from, which was the scope of the video and what the video should have been designed to do.

The video was more or less solved by a major direction change for the video which required a roadmap, or flowchart per say, to show what should be the objectives of the video and what needed to be added to the video. So because all I could see was the team sitting there and arguing about this, I made the roadmap for video and submitted for approval for the whole group. Thankfully they all liked it and now we actually have a framework for the whole per-portfolio ARG and got everyone moving towards the bigger goal, a working game.

 We also have issues dealing with the Mini-Games but this seems more like a lack of knowledge of how to do things rather than not working together, though they do have that issue as well as a issue of people just not working. PFFFTT there is always one.

My third and final major event in terms of school is that today we sprint planned our Sprint 2 Features with the hope of getting the Pre_Arg game done by the end of the Semester. We started with retrospectives which revealed we are not being as transparent as we should. Which means I need to continue hammering on the Silcat updating and getting people to start paying  attention as well as giving input. So after that, we did our stand-ups and then moved onto the roadmap and poker planning.  I will be honest I am kind of disappointed in how it went today. I decided I needed to get the build team setup properly for the website. Afterwards I am feeling that with the amount of working going to be coming from the Website team and the Story I am going to need to make a separate scrum for them, despite me moving them to the now newly renamed Website team. PFffffttttt. I also know that it looks like the both the Website team and the Story team are not done with making their features and tasks, which I wish went better but we are still new at this guess I can't wish for too much.
Ending on a good note I got the Wayne and Marc to poker plan with me and got all their features for building the  website and I need to get them a list of things to sign up for tasks and then I can add them all into Silcat and they are ready for Sprint 2 :D

SO that is what is going on in school, I will write on the personal life tomorrow.

oops

Okay so a lot has happened in the two months while I haven't writing anything, which is entirely of my own doing. I apologize for that, just lost the ideal I was originally thinking for this site. But I am revitalized and ready to go....not to mention there is this little requirement I need to meet but we won't speak of such things and I'll claim all the credit for me-self. :D
So let's start with the beginning. I am moving very soon to the Milwaukee area for school where I plan on leaving with two, yes I said TWO, Associates Degrees in Computer Simulation and Gaming. One in the animation program I originally wanted to finish and then either the Programming degree or go for the new Design degree which I am beginning to think that would be a better choice since that is what I really want to do versus the other option. For those who don't know what the hell I'm really talking about. I'll get to that subject in one of the Gaming for City Slickers entries soon enough.
I got my own place down there in the Brew City. No you can't know where it is unless you have money...or candy...or...never mind you can't know where I live. It feels pretty good that I now know that I'm going to have my own place again...though the money issue might suck but oh well I'll get that figured it out soon enough. Maybe find a street corner :P Just kidding, I don't have to girlish figure I use to have. In any case I got a whole new adventure to go experience while there. I'm going to keep posting on here so people can see me rejoice, complain and even just shoot the poop with people. Keep coming back!

Wizards are cool because Arthur 'Fonzie' Fonzarelli was a Wizard

Ok so let me take you down the trail of logic that I have established here. Wizards are cool, why? Because they use magic right? Wrong! Magic is a tool/weapon/self entertainment. Magic is what is used to do cool things, things like: open a door to another location in the world, fly, throw lightning/fire/acid/puppies at whatever is trying kill him at the moment, create a house when the rest of the party needs to sleep on the ground, did I mention fly? Why can he do that? (Magic) NO! Its because he was prepared. It's not a matter of using magic to his whims, its a matter of preparing his magic to make it look like its at his whims. Wizards spend hours upon days upon months upon years to learn their spells they may or may not need in the future. And after studying so much all he has to do before an adventure/ going to town/ taking a poop, he just needs to say a few incantations and ready his spells for whatever might happen wherever he goes to do battle.
Now what doesArthur 'Fonzie' Fonzarelli have to do with a Wizard? Everything! Look at the man. He oozes a wizard (mostly out of his hair). How long did you think it took him  hitting the jukebox repeatedly find out how to get it work? Or how about how long it took him to get savy with the woman? A snap of his fingers he gets all the woman ( or men if you followed the bloopers) in Arnold's Restaurant to get up and leave the place with him. Not to mention the fact he was deceiving everyone that he wasn't an Italian-American. HE WAS JEWISH for Pete's sake. That should be enough to convince you. He never had the accent or used the word "schlep". This man walked into any situation prepared!
So in conclusion Arthur 'Fonzie' Fonzarelli is cool because he was always prepared and since Wizards are always prepared well then they must be cool. Isn't logic magical? lol

1st School Entry

Alrighty then this is the 1^st day of the school blog. So our class was divided into two groups and each group is supposed to design and build an education game, a game that teaches you something.  The basic design behind our game is Bejeweled smashed together with Math. The gameplay consists of selecting two numbers which equal a third number that you select to complete an equation which the operation is determined by the “Grade” selection and difficulty level. After looking at the game design and how easy it looks on paper, we decided we were going to include a couple different game modes that modify the original design of Bejeweled. One is the timed mode where you have an X amount of time to complete as many equations as possible. The other mode is an Adventure mode where the player continues to solve equations which grant the player points that turn into levels when enough are gained and other special things start happening when you gain enough levels. Or at least that’s the basic ideas.

After a couple weeks of tutorials on the Unity 3D engine, we have finally had a chance to start fleshing out our game and start assigning out roles for everyone. Everyone seemed quite happy with their roles though one or two seemed confused on what was going on, something I have to rectify. After we split up into smaller groups with tasks in mind everything seemed to fall into place to the point where we are  already to fully flesh out our game design, except for a market model and some of the more difficult problems like doing multiplication and division in this format, and ended what I felt as a very solid foundation for building this game.