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 for the Pre-Alpha I Sprint.

Pre-Alpha 1 (February 8th, 2021 - February 22nd, 2021)

Week 1: 9 Total Work Hours

*Feb. 8th - Monday: N/A

*Feb. 9th - Tuesday: N/A

*Feb. 10th - Wednesday: 1 Hour total, for 30 minutes I had a meeting with Design Director Brandon Schulz about: Dungeon Objective Confluence advice Purpose of tasks in more detail for 30 minutes I set up appointments with people from the following departments: Narrative Pod (Art Director and Narrative Pod Lead Alex Trombley) Design (Game Designer Manuel Guzman and Game Designer Matthias Claassen) User Interface Pod (Programmer Nikhil Ghosh) Audio (Audio Director Bradley Gurwin)

*Feb. 11th - Thursday: 2 Hours total, for 30 minutes I had a meeting with Art Director and Narrative Pod Lead Alex Trombley about: Narrative Design for Dungeon Objectives in General (Mainly 1st Dungeon Objective) for 30 minutes I had a meeting with Game Designer Matthias Claassen about: Narrative Design and Level Design for Dungeon Objectives in General (Mainly 1st Dungeon Objective) for 1 hour I had a meeting with Game Designer Manuel Guzman about: Level Design for the 1st Dungeon Objective Current Progress and Highlight Features about the 1st Dungeon His Creations by Using Unity ProBuilder

*Feb. 12th - Friday: 2 Hours total, for 30 minutes I had a meeting with Audio Director Bradley Gurwin about: Dungeon Objectives (Mainly about 1st Dungeon Objective) Audio in General and for Dungeon Objectives for 30 minutes I had a meeting with Programmer Nikhil Ghosh about: User Interface Goals for the following: HUD Design Hub Shop Interface Design Skill Tree Interface for 30 minutes I had a meeting with Game Designer Conor Egan about the following: Player Mechanics Updates Platforming Mechanics Updates How to Tie Mechanics into the 1st Dungeon Objective for 30 minutes I set up and had a meeting with Associate Art Director and Level Design Pod Lead George Castle about: Dungeon Objective ideas Level Design Updates Beginning to Think of How to Tie the Dungeon to the Dungeon Objective

*Feb. 13th - Saturday: 3 Hours total, for 45 minutes I had a meeting with Design Director Brandon Schulz and Game Designer Matthias Claassen about: Dungeon Objective and Game Design Documentation Strategies for 45 minutes I worked on my Devblog website and did the following: Experimented with Programming More in Visual Studio Studied a bit of HTML terminology and updated my not working "Generic" webpage, getting it to work again by tweaking the code for 1.5 hours I updated and organized the Dungeon Objectives Game Design document where I did the following: Color-coded certain categories Organized bullet points into sections based on Department category Standardized the font stylings to match other Game Design documents Created 1st Dungeon Objective Blueprint (so people from other departments reading the extensive document could have a short and quick summary of the 1st Dungeon Objective) Brainstormed and Combined Dungeon Objective suggestions from everyone I had talked to, retaining what I thought were good ideas

*Feb. 14th - Sunday: 1 Hour total, for 1 hour I attended the weekly WolverineSoft Studio meeting where I did the following: Discussed User Interface activities everyone was doing in the User Interface Pod Announcements Game Design Meeting (Mainly Listened to Others' Progress, Didn't Need to Pitch My Ideas Yet as I had a Longer Deadline)

Week 2:

*Feb. 15th - Monday: N/A

*Feb. 16th - Tuesday: N/A

*Feb. 17th - Wednesday: N/A

*Feb. 18th - Thursday: N/A

*Feb. 19th - Friday: N/A

*Feb. 20th - Saturday: 8 Hours total, for 2 hours I watched and followed along with YouTube Unity tutorials about: ProBuilder SNAPS Tutorial (Using asset packs and the asset snap tool, of snapping asset pack objects to scene objects and in snapping them in locations in projects) Grid Tutorial As part of this 2 hours I also experimented and practiced with Unity myself learning different Features for 1 hour I attended Game Design Office Hours with Design Director Brandon Schulz and Game Designer Bada Kwon about: Reviewing my Dungeon Objective Progress Skill Tree Progress Direction for User Interface Goals for 2.5 hours I attended 3 lectures about how to survive as an indie game developer with the lectures being: Indie Survival Guide: Sustainability Techniques for Small Midwestern Studios (1 Hour) by Professor Austin Yarger of the University of Michigan Student-led Production Studios (30 minutes) by WolverineSoft Studio Producer Amber Renton of the University of Michigan The Benefit of Small Games for a Small Studio (1 hour) by Indie Game Developers Jordan Ailouni & Rachelle Viola for 2.5 hours I greyboxxed the 1st Dungeon Objective mainly accomplishing: Creation of the level platform, door block, general tower structure, half of the cloud-staircase for the tower Note-to-Self: Need to buy a computer mouse, my laptop mousepad isn't very quick with Unity work

*Feb. 21st - Sunday: 5.5 Hours total, for 1 hour I attended the weekly WolverineSoft Studio meeting where I did the following: for 30 minutes I listened to Audio Director Logan Hughes brainstorm with Design Director Brandon Schulz about various audio goals for 1 hour I received help from Design Director Brandon Schulz and Programming Director Nigel Charleston about: Unity Features Downloading a different version of Unity Transferring my 1st Dungeon Objective greybox scene into the "cloudinterior" collaborative Unity project Creating and maintaining a GitHub branch for my 1st Dungeon Objective scene and how to merge it for 3 hours I worked on updating my website, mainly doing the following: Recording what I've accomplished these past two weeks during the pre-Alpha I sprint Organizing my blog information in a uniform format on the "Generic" page I've created Adding in links and drawing evidence of work from past weeks Reflecting upon my time, achievements, and where I can improve upon

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PRE-ALPHA SPRINT 1 RECAP:

TOTAL NUMBER OF HOURS FOR THE PAST 2 WEEKS:

*Target Number of Hours: 18 Hours (for 3 Academic Credits 9 Hours Per Week, 9 Hours * 2 Weeks = 18 Hours)

*Hours Achieved During this Sprint: 22.5 Hours (9 from Week 1 + 14.5 from Week 2 = 23.5 Hours)

IMAGE AND VIDEO EVIDENCE (in the Form of Links Because I'm Still Learning how to program in HTML, plan to update this soon):

*Dungeon Objectives Documentation: https://studio.eecs.umich.edu/confluence/display/PWW2/Dungeon+Objectives

*Enemy Design Philosophy Documentation: https://studio.eecs.umich.edu/confluence/display/PWW2/Enemy+Design+Philosophy

*Enemy Design Reference Documentation: https://studio.eecs.umich.edu/confluence/display/PWW2/Enemy+Design+Reference

*Google Document with Image and Video Evidence: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H8zUXh4uXvzT9pefMQkfMqmVCCzorngUQfJ99CwOtNE/edit?usp=sharing

BUGS AND PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED:

*Slow movement in Unity (due to lack of having a Mouse, laptop Mousepad is not ideal)

*Speed of 1st Dungeon Objective Greyboxxing (again due to lacking a Computer Mouse for my laptop)

*Balancing project hours in Week 2 (I completed all of them in the final 2 days)

TIME MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES USED:

*Organized-time strategy of even distribution throughout the week (Week 1)

*Combining brainstorming sessions with documentation in real time

*Incubator-time strategy of doing most/all of week's work in 1-2 days (Week 2)

SUCCESSFUL TASKS:

*Dungeon Objective Documentation (Artist Natalie Neumann almost perfectly drew what I envisioned in my head, seeing those drawings were amazing)

*Communication between multiple departments (got feedback, listened to, and incorporated ideas from each of the 4 departments)

*Keeping up with WolverineSoft Studio hours and maintaining overall grades in heavy University of Michigan class courseload (total is 18 credits this semester)

UNSUCCESSFUL TIME INVESTMENTS:

*Using some of my greyboxxing time trying to get a working player in it (we already had player drafts in the main "cloudinterior" project files)

*Lack of tutorial organization (should be watching these in order, this didn't hurt in the short-term but probably will in the long-term if I continue watching tutorials without viewing them in a planned order)

*I overall don't feel like too much of my time was wasted.

STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING IN FUTURE SPRINTS:

*Distributing time more evenly throughout the week

*Using more time going over tutorials

*Using more time to research ideas

*Continuing to format this website, continuously updating Blog Post formats, immediate focus on learning how to add/embed images

*Learning more about Documentation styles, incorporate more images and take out rough draft notes eventually