Author: kstreeper

Completed Tasks

• Playtest Sessions (2.5 hours)
• QA (3 hours)
• Survey Analysis and results (1.5 hours)

Positives

• A lot of the feedback we received from completely new playtesters this week was very inspiring
• A lot of annoying bugs from the past have been fixed

Negatives

• Balance changes, while mostly good, had some issues that were noticeable even in our playtest data and really need to be sorted before final release

Upcoming

• Lots of testing to make sure the game is ready to go for the showcase
• Balance tweaking on blessings, gold production, and towers/unit balance
• Bug fixing anything that might be found

 

Postmortem

This term was interesting. I thought it was going to be so different from last term but in actuality, it really wasn’t. During the first few weeks it was evident that I wasn’t really needed on the programming side of things as tasks were being completed rather quickly but no one was there to QA them so I kept at that, noting bugs when I found them. Part of this is on me though for not stepping up and asking for programming work to be assigned to me. Also I think we all made a promise to get things in earlier which none of us really followed so it lead to some builds going through untested which is just bad practice since I was almost always testing a week behind current release. So tldr; 3 things that didn’t go so well are 1. I didn’t get to program like I wanted to, 2. Constantly submitting things last minute, which leads to 3. QA testing was done on prior builds which is just really bad and allowed for so many bugs to get through since they wouldn’t be in my version.

On a more positive note, I got to work with even more Excel by making the Gantt chart which was a fun and cool experience. Aside from just that, I continued to do our Survey Analysis Reports which I always find intriguing. And finally it was really nice having people that I know genuinely enjoy playing the game and wanting to play against me in it.

All in all, I would definitely do it again, even if I am just the Excel guy.

Completed Tasks

• Spreadsheet rework (0.5 hours)
• QA (3 hours)

Positives

• Lloyd’s playtesting day went well as we got 17 responses from that, which will make getting the rest for next week easy
• File size of the game has gone significantly down as optimizations came through this week
• Some gameplay features have been smoothed out for an overall better looking product

Negatives

• Time management was really bad for me this week
• I noticed some new bugs that popped up for me during my QA session that other aren’t having, which is never a good sign

Upcoming

• Playtesting
• Juice
• General Optimizations

Completed Tasks

• Survey Analysis (1.5 hours)
• QA (3 hours)
• Playtesting Sessions (1 hour)

Positives

• Certain questions for this week had some of the biggest turnarounds in negative responses to positive responses we have ever seen
• Tooltips and loadout descriptions have really added to the overall experience of the game

Negatives

• My vacation this week caused me to not have any time to work on controller detection implementation like I wanted to.
• This was the first team we didn’t reach our allotted playtesters as we were short 4 people

Upcoming

• Get controller detection in a build so we can have Xbox/Playstation buttons appear for their respective controllers
• Make loadout navigation for intuitive
• Fix the bugs that appeared or resurfaced during this week

Completed Tasks

• Team Meeting (2 hours)
• Controller Type Detection and Research (3 hours)
• QA (2 hours)

Positives

• Tooltips are in and are fast and responsive
• Game optimizations are actually noticable

Negatives

• Didn’t get to where I wanted to on controller type detection. Windows really doesn’t like working with non-Microsoft products.
• Didn’t have as much time as I wanted. There were other features I would have liked to tackle this week.

Upcoming

• Keep up with the optimization
• Start to add juice and polish
• Second map
• Tutorial

Completed Tasks

• Playtest Meeting (1 hour)
• Gantt Chart Revision (3 hours)
• Playtest Analysis and report (1.5 hours)

Positives

• EGS provided us with a lot of playtesters
• Creating a new Google Forms for the survey fixed some issues from last playtesting session

Negatives

• Some old bugs have resurfaced
• Initial feedback on loadouts were pretty bad so that’s certainly going to be a focus point for us

Upcoming

• Bug fixes
• Optimizations
• Focus on tooltips and descriptions for loadouts

Completed Tasks

• Playtesting Meeting (1.5 hours)
• Gantt Chart Draft (2.5 hours)
• Survey Report (1.5 hours)
• Emergency Playtest Session (0.5 hours)

Positives

• Gantt Chart is surprisingly easy to make in Excel when you have all the data
• Playtesting session at Saxby’s was a huge success

Negatives

• Even though we had more than 10 playtesters, not all of their surveys must have submitted properly and I needed my roommates to playtest last minute so we could meet the requirement
• Unexpected busy weekend resulted in me starting my tasks on Monday which was less than ideal

Upcoming

• Implementing some long awaited features like tooltips
• Continuing to bug fix
• Personally, I will be dedicating some extra time to QA regress the system for this next week

Completed Tasks

• QA (1 hour)
• Website Redesign (2.5 hours)
• Group Meetings (1 hour)

Positives

• New look and features on website (as well as easier flow)
• Group meetings were moved and I can now attend them

Negatives

• Can’t Bootstrap a WordPress website unless you pay money monthly
• Customization of themes is very limited so I didn’t get the website to look nearly as nice as I wanted

Upcoming

• Bug fixes
• Implementation of more blessings

Completed Tasks

• QA Testing of issues that arose towards the final playtesting and public demo (2.5 hours)
• Started document of current bugs and improvements (0.5 hours)

Positives

• Thought of some improvements that should really improve gameplay
• One of the biggest mysteries of our game might have actually not been a bug afterall

Negatives

• Time chosen for meetings falls at the exact time I have class; again
• I am really bad at communicating in a strictly online presence and need to talk to people in person

Upcoming

• Finalization of upgrading to Unity 2018
• Pitching found improvements and possibly working on them
• Continue small bug fixes

Completed Tasks

• Created and added sound effects to fit the style of our game (4 hours)
• Met and planned with group (2 hours)
• Final analysis (1.5 hours)

Positives

• Finding open source sounds was a lot easier than I anticipated
• Creating sound effects was easier than I thought it would be

Negatives

• Figuring out the exact length that the audio files needed to be proved to be a little challenging

Upcoming

• Possibly moving this project into next term

 

Postmortem:

Things that went right:

• The flow of the project from week to week was consistent .
• I learned some neat tricks about creating sound effects and it was a lot easier than I planned.
• Meetings were always good. I felt like every time I was involved in a meeting I know what I had to do for that week and had a solid plan of action.

Things that went wrong:

• I feel like my contribution to the overall team was pretty lackluster compared to most. This is definitely something that I strive to work on next term regardless of the team I am on and want to step up as more of a programmer and less of a QA.
• Not utilizing my time appropriately on the weekend was a very bad choice for me as I have a lot of classes earlier on in the week.
• While my communication in person was fine, it was really hard for me to keep up with everything in our Discord with how much action was actually going on in it.

Like stated above, I think two of the major changes that will come with the transition to GMAP 378 will be managing my time effectively on the weekends and stepping up my role as an actual programmer and to stop being scared of Unity. If I can do these two things not only will I better myself, but contribute a lot more to my team overall.

Completed Tasks

• Unit’s face-off data sheet (2 hours)
• QA (2 hours)
• Survey data report (1 hour)
• Playtesting (4 hours)

Positives

• Playtesters were very satisfied with the game overall
• Not many bugs appear to be in the game (only very minor ones from what I noticed in my QA testing)
• Improved feedback and performance

Negatives

• Trying to get people to play the game is always a challenge
• A little behind on sounds

Upcoming

• Get all sound elements into the game
• Polish everything