CAGD 377

Blog Post 3 

I'm Matthew and I'm back to update you on the progress that I've made in Meld. For Sprints 5 and 6, we kept the vision statement of the game the same as before. The vision statement as a refresher is this, "Meld is a turn-based strategy game about continuously melding units together to make new units and defeat an overwhelming force." Sprints 5 and 6 we saw a great improvement in work flow and quality across the project. 

Over the course of sprints 5 and 6 

I was assigned 22 cards over the course of the 2 sprints

6 cards I worked together with my lead on in sprint 6. 3

Sprint 5 did have a playtest, but it was not with classmates, but instead with anyone we could find. The goal of this sprint was to get the combat working, otherwise we won't have a working system for the main mechanic. During the playtest we figured out that the combat was still broken and that we still had work to do to fix it. 

I was assigned 14 cards during this sprint

I completed 11 out of the 14 cards

 

The reason why I had 3 cards not complete is because the Enemy 2 sprite in particular took me a good portion of the sprint to complete, I was not able to finish the other the other small cards which involved making a grass texture and dirt texture. 

I mentioned in my other blog post about work I did last time which was partway through sprint 5. The tasks were the Blue and Yellow characters being properly implemented into Unity, with their working animations. In total I was able to finish the second enemy sprite and implement the Blue and Yellow characters into Unity with their animations though which is better than nothing. 

Sprint 6 did have a playtest in it, this playtest was a big one since this was the beta build. The goal of this sprint was to get the combat finished and to have all of the sprites that were made actually implemented into the build. We did get the combat to work in this build, and all of the sprites that we currently had made were in this build. There was only one issue with the build, the unit selector sometimes would not pick a unit after they melded, this caused players to fail the first level. 

I was assigned 8 cards in sprint 6

I finished all 8 cards given to me

I still had the 3 cards from sprint 5 that I need to finish

My main goal for the sprint was to get every single sprite that we made transferred from just images to working animations in Unity. This way we had every single enemy and player in the next build. This took me a little bit, but I managed my time poorly in this sprint overall. That is why I had some assistance by my lead with the sprites. My job was to give him all of the frames in Unity for every single animation, then he would animate them the way that he wants rather than me guessing. That is why for sprint 6, my lead helped out on 6 cards.

One final thing that I managed to pump out before the playtest, but could not be used was an animation for what units melded together. Overall these past two sprints have been pretty productive for the team, we got a working combat system and a working melding system. We now approach the final sprint of this game, I need to get working menu navigation for the tutorial section, and then some ground sprites. I'm looking forward to how this games turns out in the last sprint.

Blog Post 2

        Matthew Montalvo back again with an update post on how I have been doing with Meld. The vision statement for Meld is as follows, "Meld is a turn-based strategy game about continuously melding units together to make new units and defeat an overwhelming force." We made a dramatic shift that I lightly mentioned in the last Blog Post, we changed the direction of art for this game. We were originally going to have models, however the lead of the project changed his mind and had us swap to sprites instead to lighten the workload of everyone.

Over the course of sprints 4 and 5 so far

I was assigned 29 cards over the course of these 2 sprints so far

6 cards were transferred to my group member by my lead

 

Sprint 4 did have a playtest in it, specifically at the end of the sprint. We had 2 weeks of time to create recognizable characters and have a working combat system. We accomplished the recognizable characters portion, but we had some issues on the combat system. For whatever reason when you killed an enemy, that caused the rest of the enemies to not attack or move.

I was assigned 19 cards this sprint

I completed 10 out of these 19 cards

6 of these cards were moved to my other group member

 

The reason as to why I had 9 cards not finished is because sprite making takes me a while to accomplish. My group member finished his sprites very quickly, and was very good at it, so he asked to take one of my assigned sprite sheets so that he had more work. Sprite sheets that were assigned were a total of 6 cards, 1 for the base sprite, and 1 for each animation. Of the other 3 cards that I didn’t get too, 2 were given at the end of the sprint which I couldn’t get to, and the final card was another sprite which I didn’t have ideas to start.

In the last blog post, I mentioned what cards I finished in this sprint, those included a working level change, and I started on the main enemy sprite. I completely finished the enemy sprite with all of the animations, I also took all of these animations and made a sprite sheet in Photoshop which I then put into Unity. I also took the sprites that my group member made and turned those into sprite sheets and placed those in Unity with working animations.

 

Sprint 5 does have a playtest in the second half of the sprint. The goal for this current sprint is too get the main mechanic of Melding units together into the game, and also to fix the attack issues from last sprint.

I was assigned 13 cards this sprint (3 leftover from last sprint)

I have completed 2 of these cards at the moment

 

My current plan of attack is to finish the sprite sheet for the other enemy, and then take all of the other sprites and implement them into the game scene, and finally I will try to get some ground textures in so that the tiles aren’t just a solid black color.

What I have currently have done is getting the rest of the sprites into Unity, my group member is so fast that I am getting assigned all of his sprite sheet cards. The sprites that I got done making sprite sheets for specifically were the player 2 and player 3 sprites.

 

Overall, I am happy with my groups progress on this game, I know it is all a team effort in the end. I am happy with myself and how I did over Sprint 4, but I need to get some more work done to compensate for a rough start to Sprint 5

 

 

 

Blog Post 1

        Hi, my name is Matthew Montalvo and I am part of Archon Games responsible for the mobile game Meld. Meld is a turn-based strategy game about continuously melding units together to make new units and defeat an overwhelming force. I would like to talk about my experience working on the game so far and what I can improve about my current workflow in the future of this game. The progress of this game so far has not been ideal, we are missing the main mechanic of the game and are missing an attack feature. These features are crucial in making the game come together, we have 4 more sprints to turn things around for the better. For me at the moment, this mobile game has been a harder experience to develop than the pc game we made last semester. My reason for this statement is because the agile process seems to be going faster than last semester and I was not ready for the sudden shift. I have been struggling to put out my share of the work and I personally want to perform to my best ability. In the following writeup of the current state of the game, I will put down every single task I was assigned, how many I finished, and what problems I encountered along the way, let us begin.

        I was assigned 16 cards over the course of 4 sprints so far

        3 Cards were transferred from me to my lead

        I have 8 of the 13 cards completed so far

        I have 3 cards in the in progress

        I have my last 2 cards in the to verify list.

Sprint 1 was the paper prototype of the game; this sprint our lead tasked us with getting the main mechanic of melding working in paper form.

      I was assigned 4 tasks in this opening sprint.

     The tasks I completed in this sprint were 4 and one of those was a group card.

 

The first task I did was to write an opening story statement for the game, this took me a day to come up with. When I submitted the card, it got sent back with the feedback saying to make the story statement more like a hook. I tried again and the card was sent back and my lead said that he would just finish the card, this really discouraged me. I then tried to create the environmental hazards for the game, this took a few hours. The card was sent back with the feedback of making the hazards less complicated, I dropped most of the hazards and got 2 that were simple and moved the card back, and this time the card was accepted. That boosted my confidence and made my next task a breeze, which was to create a shared Unity teams project.

Sprint 2 did not have a playtest, so this was a 2-week period of progress on the game. The goal of Sprint 2 from my lead was to create the base objects for a working level.

      I was assigned 5 cards in Sprint 2

      I was able to finish 2 cards out of the 5 assigned

 

Sprint 2 was a rough sprint for me, I bit off more than I could chew. I am not that great with code, but decided to take 3 coding related tasks. I spent the first quarter of the sprint struggling to figure out how to flip control from the player to the enemy. I did not think to just create a test player and test enemy to try flipping between the two. I then moved on to creating a particle effect for when the anyone moves. I failed to read the card correctly and created the particle, but also tried creating the script to have it follow the player, I spent way too much time on this just for it to not work in the end. I had to ask my lead to transfer my coding tasks to him because I was not confident in my coding ability for this project. Since I struggled really badly on the simple beginning cards of the game, who knows what the later cards could have done. My final card of the sprint was to create 20 enemy types so that we can have new things to place into the game later. I did not have any issues on this card.

Sprint 3 did have a playtest, the goal of this sprint was to get a working level that has player movement and turns, along with enemy movement and turns.

      I was assigned 5 cards in sprint 3

      I was able to finish 2 cards out of the 5 assigned.

 

Sprint 3 was not as bad as sprint 2, but I was unable to finish 3 of my tasks because I did not have the proper information. My first task was to create a title screen, this task was straight forward with no issues. I was then given the task to have a script that easily picks the next level, I underestimated the difficulty of this coding task, especially after I gave 3 coding tasks away. I was overthinking the card and spent most of the sprint on it, I had my head wrapped around the idea that the script takes you to the next level when all enemies are dead. I did not finish this task in this sprint, but I did finish it at the start of sprint 4. The 3 cards I did not start were all related to the models of the 3 enemies we were having in the game, the only problem is that I never got what enemies we were having from my lead.

Sprint 4 does not have a playtest, so 2 weeks of time towards the progress of this game. The goal of this sprint is to get the attack in the game and working, then we will push for the melding mechanic. We are also aiming to have recognizable obstacles and people.

       I was assigned 5 cards this sprint

       I have already done 2 of these 5 cards

Sprint 4 has not been bad so far, we decided to change the cards that were for modeling, to sprite making since it would take less time and would be easier to identify. I got the level change script done and I have started the first enemy’s sprite, that should be done soon. I’m looking forward to the rest of this sprint.

Sprints 1-3 I have been very unhappy with my performance, I wish to improve this factor over the next few sprints. Sprint 4 I’m attempting to make a bigger push towards work completed, because right now I have not done nearly enough to say that I have done equal work. Over the next few sprints, I’m going to try my best to make Meld the best that it can be.