Our Last Hope

Sprint 4

  Sprints four is one of our busiest and most stressful sprints and I do not think sprint five will be any different. With the deadline for our prototype coming up we are definitely trying to make sure we have a working version before the deadline so that way the prototype is playable for others, and we do not fail the whole class. As a group we have decided that on December second, we would like to have a working version done by and also when we want the final build to be ready. As for how many points we have left for the prototype, we do not think anything will be cut as we are on track to finishing by our deadline. Sprints four and five are going to be some of our fist sprints where we had the right amount of work assigned at kick off and we had no incomplete work. Previously we would assign ourselves an extra user story on the last day because we needed to have something is assigned but this time, we did not do that, and we now know that we should have kept what we were doing but also adding another extra card on the last day so that we can answer the three questions that we would have at a team stand up. 

This sprint I worked on a lot of things, the one that I am most proud of is the free throw hand as I went through a few different iterations of this mechanic before it finally worked the way it was intended to. Some other things I worked on was, player and enemy health, player and enemy attack, player health packs, and checkpoints. Everything was pretty easy besides the checkpoints and free throw. The checkpoints were giving an issue as they didn't want to move the player to the checkpoint when they died instead it would move the player to 0,0,0 world space. After a few adjustments though I was able to fix it and put some of them around the map. I do however need to go back and move some of them around and maybe add a few more to the map which should not be hard as the script for the checkpoints allows for more to be added or moved very easily. All the player health and attack as well as the enemy health and attack were pretty easy as they were just triggers and change in numbers.

I did not have any cards left at the end of the sprint but now we know to never let that happen even if you are out of cards the night before. Next, I am working on making it so the hand cannot attack the enemies, making it so the player that is left there when you control the hand can still be hit, making it so the skateboard can only be activated in the skatepark and if you spend too much time there you die, and also change in FOV for when you change to the hand.

I do think the FOV change might give me some trouble because I tried adding it earlier as another visual thing for being in the hand, but I ended up not doing it because it would not change properly but I think I can get it working this time. Also making it so the hand cannot fight and also making it so the player that is left behind while using the hand still takes damage might cause me some issues, but I am up for the challenge.

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Sprint 3

         The Prototype is going really well, we have most of the hard part done in my opinion. I think that because I felt like, at least for me, getting our movement mechanics working properly was the hardest thing that I had to at least do for the prototype, and I feel like the next couple of sprints should go very smoothly. As a group we don't have much left to do and even on an individual level there is not much left, at least not much hard stuff, and we will need to add more for us to do or I think what we will do is just go back and refine and tweak and few things as so the game can run a little bit smoother. In the end we have not decided what we want to do. I think that we are going to wait until closer to the end of this sprint to figure out what we want to do. As the semester went on and we used agile development more I think we got a little more used to it and it also helps that our lead is on top of her work and what she needs to do as a lead.

        At the start of this sprint, we did things a little differently because we knew we had a playtest coming up, so we pushed for the most important stuff to get done and then after the play test we went back and added more user stories for us to do after the playtest. All the user stories we added afterwards, for me at least, were directly related to the feedback from the playtest. For example, during the playtest the player was able to throw the hand in certain locations but after the play test concluded some of the play testers said that they would have loved to have been able to throw the hand anywhere around the map. So, because of this I was now given a new user story to update the throw hand ability and allow for the player to throw it whenever and wherever they wanted. Some of the other members then had to go back and put some warriors to make it so the player cannot just throw the hand over walls and skip certain parts of the level.

        With all the movement for the player done I am now moving into a health and attack system for both the player and the enemies that we will be adding. It will be interesting as I have not done a player attack system where the player has to interact and pick up the items. So, making an interactive system and having it work with multiple different weapons will be fun, but I cannot imagine that it will be too difficult to figure out. Another thing I am looking forward to is making a script that will have the enemies follow the player when the player is within a certain range of the enemies. This will be fun to figure out and I know that when I do it will be useful to know how to do that and also have a personal example for me to use whenever I need it. Other than that, the rest of the work that I have to work on is not too difficult but will just be time consuming and I'm really excited for how this prototype is turning out so far and I cannot wait to have a finished version of this prototype.

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Sprint 2

This sprint went very well. I feel like the whole group is starting to get used to agile development as a whole. I felt like I was able to appropriately give myself the right amount of work at sprint kick off and only a few things needed to be changed due to a change in the card's priority. While many other teams had to change some of their game in order to fit the requirements all we needed to do was add another movement mechanic to ensure that ours would be unique enough for the prototype requirements. The only thing that we did not understand was that we were able to throw cards back into the backlog, we thought that once a card was assigned that it was stuck in assigned until it was complete. Now that we know we can throw cards back into the backlog it will help with cleaning it up and making the higher priority cards easier to find later on.

This sprint I was able to finish a good amount of work. I ended up finishing the player hand detach the day after we had our sprint two kick off. I was also able to complete a wall climb ability, a key and door system, as well as a grapple ability. The wall climb was giving me some trouble but after a few hours of trial and error, as well as a break from my computer, I was able to get a functioning wall climb down but I would like to go back and maybe change it later if I end up having time and it does not interfere with any other work. The door system was super easy, and I was able to finish that within an hour or so. Lastly, I did a grapple ability, but for the sake of the prototype and time my group and I decided that it is ok if it functions more like a teleport. What I mean by that is that instead of having a grapple hook come out the player and then having them go to the grapple point I have it set up to when they are looking at the grapple point and push Q it will teleport them to the grapple point. They function the same way, but the teleport just skips over the whole grapple part and teleports them straight to where the grapple spot is on the roof.

Finishing the grapple ability felt really satisfying because when I thought I finished it and sent it to my lead to be checked the lead then told me that something is wrong and that there is a bug where the grapple would freeze the character and then they would be unable to play the game. I then spent the next four hours or so trying to figure out what was wrong and also yelling at my computer to just let it work. When I did manage to find what was wrong it felt like such a relief, and I felt so much joy being able to send it to the lead and having them tell me that it runs perfectly.

I am super excited because next I get to figure out a way to launch the player like if they were getting shot out of a cannon and I can't wait to start trying to figure that out. My other team members were telling me that if I can't get it to work like where you are watching yourself get launched it will be fine to use a similar teleport that I used for the grapple. In the end I think I can do it, and I know that my teammates will like it a lot more if I can get the launch to work.

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Sprint 1

         The making of our prototype has been going well so far everyone has been doing their work and there have been no issues so far. This is my first time using agile development and I think it is also my teammates first time using it, so we are all trying to figure out how much work we can do within one sprint period. Personally, because I have never used this format before, figuring out how much work I can get done within one sprint period has taken me longer to figure out. It is taking me some time to figure out because my workload is changing week by week with my other classes while also trying not to burn myself out with just one class, because of this during the first sprint kick off I assigned myself to little work so I went back and had a couple more cards assigned but then was unable to finish both of them by the time the sprint was over.

                                            
        I did get very close on one of the cards where I was trying to have the hand of the player detach and then have the hand become the new player. I was so close that I was able to complete it the night of sprint two kickoff but the other card I was not able to start until later. The reason for that is because after I finished detaching the player, I had pushed it to GitHub but when my teammates tried to add something to the project a few of the prefabs broke so now we have to figure out why that happened and also fix those prefabs.
                                            
        The work I was able to complete this sprint was the player movement and camera as well as the hand player movement and camera and as stated before I almost finished the detachment and reattachment of the hand from the player. What I am working on now is getting the hand to climb up walls when it goes up to the certain walls that the hand will be able to climb. My team planned it out well as one of the team members has already finished the look of the certain walls, so I get to take those and use them while testing the hand climbing instead of making my own wall and having the potential for something to break later down the road.
                                             
        With this being the first prototype, I have worked on with a team it has been nice having those people there to help bounce ideas off of or having someone to help you because they know the vision of what you are trying to accomplish so you don't need to try and explain as much to them. Also because I am in a team it has helped me get more work done during the week instead of push it off until a later date as I don't want to hold them back so I now have a system where I need to get some more of my work done each day so I accidentally sabotage my team or make them get a worse grade because I was too lazy to get my work done ahead of time. It also helps that the lead of the team has to check the work so I can't wait until almost the last minute and dump all my finished work on them at the last minute. Something new that I am doing to help me is set a goal of where I can stop on my work for each day, or I set a time limit if the work might be too difficult, and I don't want to burn myself out and leave no time for my other classes.