Sprint 2 - RPS Blog Post

  So far, the process as the designer for RPS has been a bit choppy and messy. I went through some personal issues for one week of the process, which put my work schedule back by a bit. Once I finally got back on track, our Trello board’s cards were a bit uneven in workload, and it took a vast amount more time to do one of the cards than it did to do the other ones that I had done previously. This was because the card that I had to do during this sprint was simply to complete the 1st level in a 3D space. So in other words, I had one card that was to put the entirety of the first level into Unity and have it working and fleshed out, which was noticeably more work than drawing the map for this same level. This was clearly just a mistake in our communication and in our making of the Trello board, and it has since then been changed for future sprints. Therefore, I will not be having this issue in our upcoming sprints.

But for every negative, there is always a positive. With the help of my team members Brandon and Joseph, and with all the assets they have gotten working, our first level now functions quite well and feels like a playable game. This is not to mention the other work they have done on the player model and the changes they have added, which along with the design of the level that I implemented, make the game feel fast paced and fun to explore, and give you the sense of choice in how you move throughout the level, whether it be gliding, rolling, or running. I believe with this more finalized form of movement, the level design can really shine a lot more with its somewhat large areas to explore and its small side tasks to complete, giving the player more to do in each level, without these bonuses feeling like a hindrance to the game.

As for what I have completed so far, as I had said previously the first level has been finished and the assets it intended to include have been laid out and changed enough that the level is not only playable, but fun to play. Of course to do that I needed to complete the map of level one, but I also finished the map for our hub world and am nearly finished with our second level’s map. Along with these things for the base of our game, I did some side tasks such as adding in NPC’s to the level and creating their dialogue, and creating the basic idea of our UI and what it would end up looking like in the end, including ink, health, and form. Overall, I believe I could have done better in my amount of work completed. I believe I was simply unprepared for what had happened, and did not complete my work in a timely manner, which ended up coming back to bite me when I had to deal with a personal loss in the middle of production. But even with this, I am proud of how the first level played out and how the town feels open and explorable.

As for this next sprint, I am currently working on our second level’s map, and once that is completed, I will be refining the character’s movement values so that the turning, jumping, and character speed feel natural within the level. I also plan to create the hub world in Unity, the second level in a very basic gray box form in Unity, and I plan to add NPCs to both of these levels. I believe this sprint will be a lot more productive than the previous one, as I have been getting into a better state of mind after what happened earlier in this process, and know that I will be able to handle a larger load of work than completed previously.