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-Alpha 2 (February 22nd, 2021 - March 7th, 2021)

Week 1: 5.75 Total Work Hours

*Feb. 22nd - Monday: N/A

*Feb. 23rd - Tuesday: N/A

*Feb. 24th - Wednesday: 2.5 Hours total, I finished my grey-boxing attempt for the 1st Dungeon Objective. It even got featured in our group meeting for the start of Week 2 of this pre-Alpha II Sprint!

*Feb. 25th - Thursday: 1/2 Hour total, I slightly re-organized the Dungeon Objective documents (1 Main DO doc with 3 Branches, 1 branch for each DO, now which are in the "Old Dungeon Objective Iterations" Confluence branch), set up appointments with Brandon Schulz and Nikhil Ghosh for UI Design, and I looked at the preview sections for all the departments to stay updated on overall group progress.

*Feb. 26th - Friday: 1 Hour total, I had a 1 hour meeting with Brandon Schulz and Nikhil Ghosh about UI Design, where I documented the "HUD Components" document and where we got to hear programming updates from Nikhil in general.

*Feb. 27th - Saturday: N/A

*Feb. 28th - Sunday: 1.75 Hours total, For 15 minutes I created and began the Design on the 2nd Dungeon Objective (now labeled "Old 2nd Dungeon Objective Iteration" in Confluence), and for an hour after that I attended the weekly WolverineSoft Studio meeting. For another half hour in the day I looked at previews, comments, and made some reactions, especially in the art-preview channel.

Also my Dungeon Greybox got featured in our state of the game video!

Week 2: 12.25 Total Work Hours

*March 1st - Monday: N/A

*March 2nd - Tuesday: N/A

*March 3rd - Wednesday: 1/2 Hour total, I had a 30 minute narrative meeting with Alex Trombley, where I asked as to what his narrative vision was for the Final Boss Room (now unfortunately cancelled), and I documented both our ideas down on what is now called the "Old Final Dungeon Objective Iteration".

*March 4th - Thursday: 2 Hours total, In these 2 hours I worked on the 2nd Dungeon Objective Document (now the "Old 2nd Dungeon Objective Iteration" document), I color-coded the document, I organized the document, I added a "Feelings" section to the document, and I further conceptualized and developed design specifics/differentiations of specifics/mechanics that differentiated this DO from the 1st DO (the 1st DO original designs are now going towards the Final Dungeon, and the 1st and 2nd DOs are now being remade from almost scratch).

*March 5th - Friday: N/A

*March 6th - Saturday: 1.5 Hours total, In this time I created and added to the UI/UX Research document in Confluence in a half hour, in another half hour added to the UI/UX Research document in Confluence, and in another half hour talked with Brandon and George to unfortunately go over the new plan for the Dungeon Objectives in light of the Scope of the Game being further reduced.

*March 7th - Sunday: 8.25 Hours total, In this time I did the following: Created and Added to the Dungeon Objective Research Document in Confluence (1.25 hours); attended and contributed to the weekly WolverineSoft Studio meeting (1 hour); went over previews and videos of other departments' progresses (1/2 hour); reorganized and sligthly modified the Dungeon Objective documents (1/2 hour); read some of the research documents I found on Dungeon Objectives and added more links to the Dungeon Objective Research document (1/2 hour); Created a folder named "Cloud Interior Pictures" in my GitHub code in Visual Studio and added 100+ pictures to it(1/2 hour); Learned how to code in pictures and tried that a bit, didn't realize how easy it is to add pictures to HTML/Visual Studio (1/2 hour); Tested different pictures on my website (1/2 hour); learned more about HTML code in general (1/2 hour); Created more webpages and links to webpages (1 hour); Created Documentation Webpage, links between webpages, and showed my family about the game and my role in it thus far (1 hour); Recorded my blog hours into this entry and made sure website is smooth despite disorganization/needs for addition of materials (1 hour)

*

PRE-ALPHA SPRINT 2 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: 18 Hours (5.75 from Week 1 + 12.25 from Week 2 = 18 Hours)

IMAGE AND VIDEO EVIDENCE

*Currently I do not have video evidence, yet I have image evidence throughout this website. For next devblog post I plan to procure my best image/video evidence of results for the sprint in this section as well as throughout the website.

BUGS AND PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED:

*Problem: Due to Scope Limitations, Have to Completely Re-Make Dungeon Objective Designs and Plans

*Problem: Balancing Midterm Exams with Game Design Time

*Problem: Time Management (Due to Midterms I Completed Much of My Work Again Towards the End of the Week)

TIME MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES USED:

*Last-minute Hustle (Surprisingly Worked Out in Design Favor, as I Was Alerted of Re-Planning of Dungeon Objectives as recently as the evening of 03/06/2021)

*Combining brainstorming sessions with documentation in real time (Still a great strategy)

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

SUCCESSFUL TASKS:

*Dungeon Objective Research (It's Not Complete, Yet Like Where It's Going)

*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 (despite Midterm Exams, got great grades on them)

UNSUCCESSFUL TIME INVESTMENTS:

*Documentation of 2nd Dungeon Objective (now in the "Old 2nd Dungeon Objective Iteration" document)

*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, despite having much of my original Dungeon Objective Designs being incompatible with the state of the game.

STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING IN FUTURE SPRINTS:

*Distributing time more evenly throughout the week (Failed this sprint, yet shall try again, midterms is a pretty good excuse to me)

*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 (Succeeded in this sprint at this objective)

*Continuing to format this website, continuously updating Blog Post formats, immediate focus on learning how to add/embed videos as well as record videos of game development/progress

*Still on learning more about Documentation styles, glad to see some of mine being very very successful thus far though in different department creations (such as tower design in art, UI features in programming/art)

*Spend some of my Sprint time on specifically organizing past website progress.