Blog Hours

This page contains my dev-blog information, where I break down my weekly hours, overall highlighting what I accomplished each week.

Continue reading to see how my hours are broken down.

Pre-Beta 1 Sprint (Nov. 1st, 2021 - Nov. 14th, 2021)

Week 1: 25.75 Total Work Hours

*Nov. 1st - Monday: 3 Hours Total, From 11am - 12pm ET I created a Bitly account, revised my rough draft social media content in AirTable for today, and posted on LinkedIn and Twitter. From 1pm - 1:30pm ET I attended the Narrative Writers meeting with Crystal and Nicholas. From 7pm - 8:30pm ET I attended the Narrative meeting with Crystal and Zelin to go over in-game descriptions.

*Nov. 2nd - Tuesday: 0.5 Hours Total, From 1pm - 1:30pm ET I brainstormed ideas with Nicholas.

*Nov. 3rd - Wednesday: N/A

*Nov. 4th - Thursday: 2 Hours total, For 2 hours from 7pm - 9pm ET I attended the WolverineSoft Mass Meeting. I even attended the Officer's Meeting to go over Marketing boundaries with the officers.

*Nov. 5th - Friday: 4.5 Hours Total, From 5pm - 6:30pm ET I attended the Mayflower game showcasing with Professor Ken Ludwig. From 9pm - 12am ET I attended the UC Berkeley Bear Jams Fall 2021 meeting and led the desigining for our game and set up workflows for our team to operate in with specified roles. This was only my second game jam and each of their first game jams, yet I took on the role of leading the team and coordinating everyone's work.

*Nov. 6th - Saturday: 8 Hours total, From about 1pm - 10pm ET I worked around 7.5 hours on the UC Berkeley Bear Jams Fall 2021 with short breaks throughout it. For 0.5 hours from 8:50pm - 9:20pm ET I had a voice call and brainstorming session with Nicholas for WolverineSoft Studio's Project Tower Narrative stuff.

*Nov. 7th - Sunday: 7.75 Hours total, I spent 45 minutes from 10:05am - 10:50am talking with Colleen, the marketer for Yolked, a studio made by an EECS 494 project endeavor by UMich students. I spent 2 hours from 11am - 1pm ET at the WolverineSoft Studio regular meeting.
From 1pm - 6pm ET I spent time working on the UC Berkeley Bear Jam game. For this endeavor I created a lot of art, mainly in the form of UI/UX elements (such as a pause menu/buttons), gradient backgrounds, text files, and coordinating the team. To coordinate each of our 4 efforts in a remote setting I ensured we worked as a team and made a complete(ish) game!

Week 2: 27.50 Total Work Hours

*Nov. 8th - Monday: 1.75 Hours Total, From 7pm - 8:15pm ET I talked with Crystal at the Narrative Meeting to go over some in-game dialogues and trigger conditions. From 9:30pm - 10pm ET I attended the 1st day of the UC Berkeley Bear Jams Fall 2021 game showcasing for the games made.

*Nov. 9th - Tuesday: 3.5 Hours total, From 11am - 2pm ET I worked on making my website better. I problem-solved to figure out how the divs worked and why my images weren't loading on the frontpage. Per how the code is it only accepts images with super specific image pixel sizes on the home page. Later from 5:45pm - 6:15pm ET I made small tweaks to my website.

*Nov. 10th - Wednesday: N/A

*Nov. 11th - Thursday: 0.5 Hours total, From 1pm - 1:30pm ET I worked on making IGDA Ann Arbor marketing posts. However, I decided not to post them after making them due to being unsure of whether to boost other Michigan game dev events or exclusively WolverineSoft stuff.

*Nov. 12th - Friday: 3.75 Hours total, From 6pm - 8:30pm ET I attended the opening part of the WolverineSoft Turkey jam, prepared myself to work on Audio, and talked with Jasmine (from UMich) to meet her via Discord and David (from Berkeley, I worked with him on the Bear Jam project and he is a member of the WolverineSoft Discord). From 8:30pm - 9pm ET I attended the Project Bloom playtesting session with Matthew Rader, learning some insightful design principles. From 9pm - 9:45pm ET I attended the finale of the UC Berkeley videogame showcasing! While we didn't get 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, the host of the event said our game was one of his personal favorites and was one of the few he recommended for everyone to download and try! (I saw the video since I missed it when they reviewed our game "Inconsistent Dash", and the host really loved it while the other reviewer had opposite design principles, which was funny to watch!).

*Nov. 13th - Saturday: 5.5 Hours total, From 10am - 3:30pm ET I worked on the WolverineSoft Turkey Jam with my team at the Starbucks on S State St. Anna, Jasmine, and I met there where we each brought our laptops and got a table that had power outlets. I literally just focused on audio for most of that time, while also grabbing a coffee and some breakfast sandwiches of course. It was fun to work with them in a loose environment in person, especially since all 3 of us each brought completely different skills to the table (at a literal table).

*Nov. 14th - Sunday: 12.5 Hours total, From 8am - 8:30am I created 9 in-game dialogues based upon loosely-decided upon in-game trigger conditions.
Game-Making Experience
From 10am - 12am ET I worked on the WolverineSoft Turkey Jam and WolverineSoft Studio. At the 1-hour WolverineSoft Studio meeting, I provided my updates for Project Tower (the description names). I ate and drank almost nothing at the event due to being focused on audio, and tried out the games that students made there. We didn't win any prizes, yet I had a ton of fun working with Jasmine in person (esp. since she's from an art/programming background and I'm more from an audio/design background, and since we just got along well) and overall like the audio I made (bet we were 2nd or 3rd for votes for the Audio section lol, next time gotta bring a speaker...). I got back to my house at about 8pm ET and took it easy until 9pm ET, then submitted what I had done at 11pm ET for the devblog and continued tweaking this section after to make the blog readable (for now, hopefully upgrade entire site soon with more organized visuals and actual files to my game projects/audio files/etc.).

*

PRE-BETA 1 RECAP:

TOTAL NUMBER OF HOURS FOR THE PAST 2 WEEKS: 53.25

*Target Number of Hours: 30 Hours (for 5 Academic Credits 15 Hours Per Week, 15 Hours * 2 Weeks = 30 Hours)

*Hours Achieved During this Sprint: 53.25 Hours! (25.75 from Week 1 + 27.50 from Week 2 = 53.25 Hours!)

*I only attained hours this high due to working on 2 game jams also. I wanted to do these since I want to make my portfolio stronger since I'm still fairly new to game-dev/computer science and to learn how to make games/work with new people rapidly. While I am behind on my marketing goals I have been keeping up with Narrative and now have gained the game dev experience I've wanted. The next sprint is going to be much more marketing-focused, yet for my personal growth as a game-dev I think I made the right decisions as to what to do these past 2 weekends, as these game jam experiences will be great memories for me probably for life--even if the next week is rough catching up with classes, still, totally worth it.

IMAGE AND VIDEO EVIDENCE

*I do not have video evidence yet, but do have image, link, games, and file evidence to support my work endeavors on this page and this page: Games I've Worked On

BUGS AND PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED:

*Problem: Narrative finding it's footing in Project Tower

*Problem: Balancing other University of Michigan Extracurriculars with Game Design Time

*Problem: Over-commitment (I did 2 game jams in 2 weekends in a row--with my busy schedule it's been pretty tough, but I am building my portfolio up))

TIME MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES USED:

*Making sure I took on tasks and work that I enjoyed so I could power through such a busy schedule

*Accepting more help from teammates in WolverineSoft Studio and my game jams than I normally would, including taking on a more limited role for the 2nd game jam by focusing only on audio.

*Getting sleep instead of pulling all-nighters so while my work times were shorter they were more efficient generally. Still feel sleep-deprived though lol but since I feel like I'm getting my personal goals done it's totally worth it.

SUCCESSFUL TASKS:

*Ameliorating my devblog website so it is on track for being marketable (it looks MUCH better)!

*Making sure I get game dev experience along with my marketing experience through persevering through 2 game jams in 2 consecutive weekends amidst a rigorous curriculum.

*Overall maintaining University of Michigan grades and getting a lot done with WolverineSoft Studio despite some big time commitments with other extracurriculars and homework.

UNSUCCESSFUL TIME INVESTMENTS:

*Many of my marketing plans and lacking to post as much content as I wanted to these past two weeks

*Lack of time spent on HTML tutorials (still have much to learn with using HTML)

*I still overall don't feel like too much of my time was wasted; while I'm behind on my marketing goals I am pretty much all set with learning game dev skills that I wanted to for this semester through the 3 game jams I've completed (strengthening game design on different types of game projects such as the Pumpkin Game Jam for a 3D game with Nikhil, trying a hand on mainly doing art, leading a team of smarter students than myself with the Berkeley jam, and trying just audio at the Turkey Jam), so now I can focus almost exclusively on marketing itself.

STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING IN FUTURE SPRINTS:

*Distributing time more evenly throughout the week while putting in more time per time spent on Game Design

*Using more time going over tutorials (specifically for HTML, as most of my work is design-focused, thus I don't need to worry as much with Unity at the moment)

*Using more time to research ideas (I should've done more research in this sprint)

*Continuing to format this website, continuously updating Blog Post formats, especially on recording videos of game development/progress

*Still on learning more about Documentation styles, glad to see some of my work continuing to be featured for the Design Department

*Spend MOST of my Sprint time the next two weeks on marketing, communication, and content.