So it’s time once again to let you know what we will be up to this week, by posting our “sprint of the week”, “project plane of the week”, “to-do list of the week” or just simple our focus area (work) this week. As last week this week will focus much on programming. On Wednesday we have a “game presentation” and we will show some gameplay of the game to some people in the industry. So there’s a lot of things that should be done before that.

Code
Make more AI patterns
Adjust player control (revive)
Enemy generator true triggers
Camera kontroll Concept (2d)
Menu & GUI (animation)
Particles

Level (2d)
Finalize level 1

3d
Make animations for foes

Narrative
Fraps animations for sound effects

Other things
Start to work on presentation
Sketch for trailer for GGA
GGA boot
Game play presentation

SGA (Sweden Game Awards) and GGA (Gotland Game Awards) starting to close up, so we have to focus on getting all system running and working together. So this next month we will be focusing on tuning things and not to implement new features.

Code
Make more AI patterns
Adjust player control
Get particle and light effects onto the characters
Get gem system to work
Enemy generator

Concept (2d)
Menu & GUI

Levels 2d
Continue working on levels

3D
Make more animations and get the to work smoothly

Narrative
List of sound effects
Start to work on presentation
Sketch for trailer for GGA
Test the story on regular people

Other things
Take screenshots
Move to new office
Start on the last sprint

Everyone has more than their hand full and on top of it Easter is coming this week. Which probably means that we’re losing some work days since some of us are going to visit our families. Also we might have to present last weeks canceled presentation. Well that’s life : )

This week sprint looks something like this:

Code:
Continue work on shaders
Implement other features

2d:
Concept art for bosses
Concept art for alternative enemies

3d:
Continue making enemies
Put textures on 3d models

Levels:
Continue making level

Narrative:
Explanations for all people and enemies in the game

Marketing:
Sleep and fishing : p

Now we’re in production phase (major sprint 4), most of the concepting is done, the major tools are done, the game is up and running on the white box and so on. No it’s mostly putting everything together and making a game.

This week sprint looks like this:

Code:
Collision and basic physics
Player control and basic game play
Also continue work on Shaders, GUI, interface, particle effects

2d:
New versions of some of the enemies
Level 1 done

3d:
Continue making enemies

Narrative:
Should be done by the end of the week
Story and patterns for every enemy

Other things:
Test normal maps
New ingame pictures
Game presentation for the “game panel”

Today we had one of the shortest weekly meetings in the history of Databox. It was about 45 minutes including the “ordinary” 15 minute delay.

Today we discussed next week “game panel” presentation and who is gonna make it and if we needed any new layout (or use the last one). We haven’t heard which people or from which game companies that will be present, so it might be the people from last presentation (better ask mr T).

Since we stated “major sprint 4″ this Tuesday we went though what went right and wrong in sprint 3. The coding is still a bit behind, but that’s mainly because Baba and Jakob have had programming classes the last 2 weeks. The 3d modeling is also speeding up and we’re on track there.

Sprint 4 is a pure production period, no more testing or concepting. The game is up and running, the level editor is stable and it’s just about putting content together and make a game.

On Tuesday it’s the end of (major) sprint 3. So this week will be testing all of the thing we’ve implemented and done the last weeks.

On Wednesday (major) sprint 4 begins. This major sprint (divided into 4 weekly sprints) will focus on coding, implementing of shaders & particles, level design, 3d enemies and play testing the games all new features that were added last major sprint.

The sprint last week was ok and we finished nearly all of our goals (two of our goals will be done in a few days). This was due to that our codes have had heavy lectures these past weeks. The good thing is that this course ended last week, so this week they will have 24h each day to code on PoH :p

This week sprint looks like this:

Code:
3D animations system
Physic and collision system
Implement basic character control

Level editor:
Continue to implement content
Write visual effects (shaders and so on)
Start to implement the trigger system for the scripting

2d graphics:
More enemies and models of them

3d graphics:
Fine tune the heroes
Skin 2 enemies and give them animations

Test:
3d characters with animation in the game engine (blending)

In the end of March we’ll be presenting a playable demo to our mentors for review, so it’s crunching time!

Because of lectures and misjudgments of our animations, we didn’t make last week sprint goals. We’ll make it up this week instead, which means working 10+ hours/day

This week sprint looks like this:

Code:
Physics and collision system
AI system

Graphic 3d
Animate all characters with textures
Model enemies for level 1-2Artists
Make list of all the enemies

Level
Sketch on level 5
Continue building levels
Make level shares list

Narrative
Continue as usual
Trailer
Suggestions for the next trailer

Level editor
Implement scripting according to schedule
2d menus

By the way, the spring seams to have arrived : )

At first we had “Scrum sprints” that lasted about 4 weeks, but after the first sprint we decided to divide each 4 weeks sprint into 4 smaller “weekly sprints”. This so that the goals were more easy “to overview” and reach. This is roughly what the sprint of this week contains:

Code:
- Physics & colliding system
- Implement character control (hit, jump, magic and so on)
- Sketch on AI system

3D graphics:
- All the main characters done and animated
- Model enemies

2D graphics :
- Textures for all the main characters
- Concept of gems & gem system
- Graphics to the teaser

Level editor:
- Implement scripting

Narrative:
- Continue as planed

Levels:
- Continue making levels

Start on teaser

As always on Thursdays we had our big weekly meeting today. Today it was the first time we discussed all the things that had been written down on the “wish list”. There were around 15 ideas and I think it was only 3 suggestions that were put away directly, 4 were considered to be implemented and the rest was considered “ok” (Ok = will be implemented if we have time).

We discussed the progress of sprint 2 and the beginning of sprint 3 (starts next week). We also discussed that we might divide the “major sprints” into smaller “weekly sprints”, this so that it becomes more of weekly goals instead on “monthly goals”. The risk of having a “monthly goal” is that you might focus and work 3 weeks with one thing and when the last week of the sprint comes you suddenly realize that you haven’t done all the other stuff you were supposed to do during the whole sprint.

We talked about motion capture (which we should try tonight : ) and what type of script function we would like to have in the game.

There were also some other smaller stuff that we discussed today.