Postmortem of the ten weeks game project.

Hello everyone. In today’s blog, I am going to write about what I have learned from our ten weeks adventure. There is a lot to cover, so I am just going, to begin with, what I have learned and how it has impacted me.

In ten weeks we made a game which is all about to belong to a group. We did not want to do a network game, so we tried to create AIs that is smart enough to give the player the feeling of belonging. The creation of the AI has taught me so very much, how to make six different entities, interact with each other and the player. The AIs is a central part of our game as they were the ground for our aesthetic. I learned to create responsive and ”smart” AIs by doing many examples and ask the internet for help if I got stuck.

Another thing which I have learned a lot about is teamwork, how it works in a more prominent game development group and how the game development pipeline looks alike. I learned this by working on the same project with the same people for such long time needing to hit milestones and in the end have a fully functional game.

I also learned a lot about coding and code cleanness and how to make the system more easily readable by other and making everything more modifiable and flexible. This skill came to me the more I programmed and read others code it is a natural thing to happen when a person wants to become better at what that person is doing and gaining more experience.

The result was a game which you play as a bee and take care and help your swarm of six AI bees. All the while shooting down flies, wasps, dragonflies, and spiders to get to your hive which is assaulted by a bear. We did not have time to add the bear as a boss, but we added in the end, you chase the bear off with the help of your swarm. To combat all of the different enemies you as the player can call all of the AI bees to you and in turn add their firepower to yours.

Comment on Samantha

https://artdevsam.wordpress.com/2018/03/20/moving-on/

Hello Samantha, Adam Olsson here programmer from group lycanthrope. You give a reasonable explanation and recap of what you and your group has been doing these past weeks. I find it interesting to read what challenges you have met under your work, and I can relate to your struggle with the group changing things you came to agree to the last week as my group tended to do similar things from time to time. I can see the problem on having excellent communication, backlogs, and planning if the group is not adamant about updating the backlog, or the sprint plan or if they do not check the communication channels as they are essential things to have a smooth development and an excellent group dynamics. It is fascinating to read how you have grown as a group and how much you have grown in these weeks.

All in all: I find this post useful and fun to read, that explains what problem you have faced and how you overcame them. You also gave a summary of what you have been working on so anyone could come in and read it and still get an idea what you have been doing.

Fast question what do you mean by ”nkfeladsnkjfas.” in the Challenges section

Adam Olsson 97 adol2655 group lycanthrope.

Postmortem of the ten weeks game project, afterthoughts and what I have learnt

Hello everyone. In today’s blog, I am going to write about what I have learned from our ten weeks adventure. There is a lot to cover, so I am just going, to begin with, what I have learned and how it has impacted me.

The most significant subject I have learned a lot in is programming. More specifically on how to solve complex problems i.g, data sharing, enemy behavior and how to make a modular spawning. All of these has been a big bump to overcome but very awarding to overcome and learn how to solve them, another crucial thing that I have been learning in a slow and grueling way is Unity and all of its quirks.
It has been a tedious and slow thing to learn as things I know work in regular C# programming does not work, so I need to find a way to go around that problem that usually is pretty easy but takes unnecessary time from actual development. There are many more examples I can bring forth, but another mayor is when unity does not remove objects all the way, so there still is some preview object left on the screen with is invisible, but if you search for a tag it is found and break the game. The only solution I have found is just to restart Unity, there is probably a much better solution out there, but I have not found it. (Sorry for that rant)

 

The other subject which I have been learning much about is group work and file sharing, and this has been important as it is a central pillar of today’s companies. We chose to use Git and GitKraken to share files with each other and working together. We have also worked together in the same room to get a more interactive working environment for all of the members.

The last but not lest subject is game developing, this has been extremely interesting to create the different part of the game with the group and all, but the most important lesson for me has been the ability to better scope my work. I am no way perfect, but I am still learning how to do it better. The ability to scope better is going to be a life savior for me as it has been my weakest point until this day, and I usually take on so much work I get so stressed that I get burnet out.

Comment on Oscar Vines

08-03-2018

Hello, Adam Olsson here, another programmer. Your post is informative and exciting and explains what you have been doing in conjunction with your opinion and insight to playtesting. I find it relatable with what you say about not being able to find all the bugs yourself, as I have my self-been in that situation many times. The ever tiering argument about fresh eyes are very used but also accurate as you state in your text.

I like your solution to the background problem you encountered I find is pleasing and creative. I understand what you mean about very time consuming for the artist to hand-draw a giant map. It is also ineffective as you state code can solve it.

All in all, I would say it is an excellent post that explains the importance of playtesting and getting in your own opinions in the matter, and not only that, but you went into a problem you found when you coded and broke it down and explained it to the reader. A big plus for trying to explain to the reader how you solved the problem, the only problem I can find is that the explaining in the latter part can be a bit high level and hard to understand for non-coder. Great job

// Adam Olsson (97 adol2655)

The impact of Playtesting

Hello everyone. Today I am writing about playtesting more specifically how playtesting has affected our development. We had two playtests one for the alpha and one for the beta. Playtesting is important because we get outside eyes to help us to see problems, bugs or game breaking tactics in the game. As the tester played our game, some members took notes of everything they noticed, i.e., how the player moves, or how they react to different encounters. After they have played the game, the team member asked some question about their experience. We choose to have everything verbally because we thought we could get more out of our tester as the person monitoring the examiner could ask a question if they found an answer especially exciting or vague. 

The picture depicts some of our notes we took during the playtesting

 

In my opinion, is playtesting an excellent way to see if your project is going in the right direction, or if there is something that needs to be clarified or changed. It is easy to get blinded by your creation, and by including an extra pair of eyes who is not biased can save a lousy product.

We got much information about our game from the playtesters. A lot of what the tester said has changed in the game, for example, the way the player moves as many players did not think it felt enough like a bee. Our power-up got much confusion, so it confirmed to us that it needed to change for the future, we had already thought about changing it. So the playtesting gave us a new view of our game and helped it get to a new height.

All in all: The playtesting has been an invaluable thing that has helped us in more than one way. It has helped us get the feeling of our movement right, confirmed that our power-up system needs to change and clarify some of our art assets as some were hard to notice (getting covered by bushes) or getting confused (our honeycombs looking and sounding like coins). Another essential thing it has taught me is the importance of player feedback, as that was the basis of most of our misunderstandings.

Comment 4 Kaijun Wang

Add a new enemy type: shooting enemy

Hello Kaijun.
It is clear on why you wanted to create the new enemy type. To engage the player in more ways, to put a new enemy with new behavior that the player has never seen before is an excellent way to add more diversity to the game.

You also explained what you had been working on because you give an excellent description of the behavior of the enemy and what it is going to do.
You also explain the method you used. I think that it is interesting that you choose to use the Rigidbody 2D to move the enemy as personly I did not know that beforehand.

All in all: I think that this is an excellent post. Being able to describe your thought process when making the enemy. You also explained how you made the enemy using the Rigidbody system and other behaviors of the enemy. You also state what you are going to do in the future with the Sky ray which I think is interesting to see that you have thought about things you want to improve or change.

// Adam Olsson 97 (adol2655)

 

Enemie Polish

Hello everyone. I have been working on and polishing the enemies in our game. In particular the Dragonfly, Spider, and the Wasp. First up was the Dragonfly. We wanted to clean the enemies as they play an essential role in our game and because what we had was mainly placeholder enemies so we could focus on more critical issues we had.

I modified the pattern to how it moved so it would be more erratic. More specifically I made so it gets a random position moves to it then it multiplies the Y position by minus one, so it inverts it the place it occupies in the Y-axis. Then set its Y position to what it was before it starts to move zigzag, and it repeats this process till it gets outside the screen border. 

Then I worked on the spider. The spider just needed to start moving up and down and the projectile required to aim at the player. The moving just changed it direction randomly to move up or down. Moreover, it inverted its course when it hit the camera border in Y-axis or hit the zero in the Y-Axis. To make the projectile to aim at the player, I used Pythagoras where the spider position was the top point, and the player was the bottom point. By removing spider position in Y-axis from the player Y-position, I got the delta Y, the same was used to obtain delta X. When I got delta Y and delta X, I could use Pythagoras and get the hypotenuse from that. When I got the hypotenuse, I used arc-cos to get the degree. Unity gives you the degree in radians, so I needed to convert it to degrees using the formula degree = radians * (180 / PI) then I added the degrees to the rotation of the bullet and voila it aims at the player. A minor problem I encountered was that if the player was above the spider the bullet still pointed downwards, so I put a check in if the player was above the spider, it inverted the degrees, and everything worked like butter then.

Lastly, it was the wasps’ turn to be upgraded. It was mainly the movement that got improved, before the upgrade the wasp always turned back to its original position. However, thanks to unity magic and the function Random.insideUnitCircle it was solved quickly. There were some problems tho, and one was that the circle always had the radius of one, but Unity documentation had solved it by multiplying the function with the space we wanted, so it was easy. The second issue we had was that the circle always was centered at zero X, zero Y, and zero Z, I solved it by adding the original position to the randomized post.

So just like that was all the enemies upgraded and polished.

Blog post 2 Comment on Edin Karakurt

The reader got a clear picture of what the author has been working. The writer also explains why it was essential and the teams thought process when the power-up was developed and made it a reality. The reader also got a sense what the writer encountered when he created the power-up, how the power-up became a suicide by making all of the enemies targeting the player. The reader would personally like a bit more on how that problem was solved because that part as it would be interesting to see the solution to that problem. The blog explains the creation of the power-up satisfyingly, but a bit more in-depth analysis of the creation would elevate the blog standard a fair bit, mainly because the reader would get a more in-depth understanding of the creators’ struggles and breaks through.
All in all: an excellent post that explains the creation of the power-up with solid arguments why and how it was done. However, it lacked a bit in depth and details in the how department.

Comment created by Adam Olsson 97 (adol2655)

Blog Comment week 3 On Natasha Bianca Mangan

The Effects of Scrum on my Game’s Development

 

Hello Natasha, as a reader I got a clear picture what how scrum have helped you both as a game designer, programmer and how it has helped your group. It is fascinating to be able to read about Scrum in depth, and the effect of what scrum has had in examples the group has had. What the blog mentioned about how Scrum has helpt the group to be a better group is very interesting and relatable.
It is also interesting to read how the group has solved how to work in Scrum as it is a learning experience for the reader also. The comparison between Scrum and waterfall was fascinating. It was nice to read that you had experience with Waterfall so we could get a more detailed description of why Scrum is better.
Overall this post is excellent and learning experience for everybody that was reading it. The only thing I noticed was that the structure of the text was a bit messy but otherwise a magnificent blog.

// Adam Olsson 97 (adol2655)

Blog 3: Scrum in our development

Today’s blog will be about Scrum and how scrum have affected the development of our game. Scrum has had a positive impact on the game as the development has been smooth and we have been able to change things we did not like and adapt to other things we felt were lacking or did not match our expectations. It has also been smooth using the sprints as we got a goal to work towards, and the daily stand-up meetings have been good as all of the group members got an insight what the other group members have been doing, and what their problems have been. Another thing that has helped tremendously is the sprint planning, and we have been using a site called HacknPlan to help us with the sprint planning and the sprint backlog. HacknPlan has enabled us to streamline the process of sprint planning and sprint reviewing as we can quickly see what is in need for more time, what has been finished or what we can test in a playtest. Scrum has also helped us to get a better group dynamic by using the sprint retrospect where we write down everything we think we should start doing, what we should stop doing and what we should continue doing. The sprint retrospect has made it possible to adapt to everyone’s need and make the entire project more fun and enjoyable for everybody in the group. Another essential thing scrum have helped with is to make everyone in the group have the same goal and in turn, made a goal which is reachable where everyone has a voice and opinion.
All in all: scrum has helped our group exceptionally much, with planning as it is much easier to see what needs to be done, with structuring with the help of HacknPlan and the backlog and the sectioning of weeks into sprints have made everything easier to put into perspective. The capability to change things while developing them has made everything more fluent, and it has also made the project easier to create because if the artist or programmers see a problem with they did not see from the start, so it is changed to fit the new view. Lastly, scrum has helped us with the group dynamic, making everyone have a voice has made the entire time enjoyable.