Our Last Hope (Is Some Kid) - Blog Post 2

Sprint 2

With the completion of Sprint 2, I have realized a lot more about Trello than I knew before, and the difficulties in using it properly. One thing that I was unsure about was how to track the work that a team member or I do that occurred on the spot, rather than planned. The process of making games sometimes takes little things that aren’t necessarily part of an existing card. For example: after connecting level 2 to level 1, I added temporary ramps for players to be able to get back up on the desks if they fall. We originally planned to have the water kill you, but due to the need to have a kinesthetic prototype done by October 26, we were prioritizing all movement mechanics and not the additional features. I have since learned that if these small tasks took more than ten minutes to complete, then track the work with a card.

We were still dealing with the same GitHub issue from the last sprint. We worked around it by having the team member put his work in our shared Google Drive, so I could then put his work into the repository myself. While this wasn’t much of a problem initially, the new scripts now require certain objects in the hierarchy to have specific tags or labels. Due to this new factor, I also had to add all the necessary tags and labels myself, causing the task to take longer than it previously did. For Sprint 3, we are going to work on fixing the GitHub issue.

While we were still working around our issues with GitHub, my team and I encountered a new issue at Sprint 2 Kickoff. After our first sprint review, we learned that our movement mechanic may not be unique enough to fulfill the project requirements. We then decided that a previously mentioned feature of a grapple hand would be implemented as the main movement mechanic of the game. We were able to quickly adapt to the change.

After Sprint Kickoff, I completed the skate park. Even though our priorities changed, I wanted to complete the work I already started in the last sprint before moving on to new cards. We are hoping to implement the skate park as a sort of easter egg if we find we have the time.

After the skate park, I moved on to creating the script for the skateboard. I broke up that requirement into three cards, the basic skateboard movement, making the skateboard feel like a skateboard, and being able to switch between the player and the skateboard. The only card of those that I completed is the basic movement of the skateboard. We are thinking that using the skateboard to navigate the level would add another unique movement element and fun to the prototype, and having the basic movement allows for a small test of that concept in future sprints.

Later, I began work on the third challenge of level 2. The player has to grapple into a classroom; then the player uses the detachable hand to crawl through a vent, up a wall, and push a box down from the shelf that Kevin can use to move on to the next section. I placed fake zombies and spiders in the level to give an idea of the combat that could happen in the level. I wanted the hand to have more goals than obtaining keys because it seemed like the concept would get a bit too monotonous for a player.

Since the kinesthetic prototype playtest is in Sprint 3, I am currently working on adding the keys and doors to the levels that were already blocked out. We want to have a reason for the player to use the unique movements, and putting keys in areas that the player can only reach using the grapple hand and detachable hand gives them the motivation to do so.

Our Last Hope (Is Some Kid) - Blog Post 1

Sprint 1

So far, the process of building a prototype is quite different from others I’m used to because of the use of Trello. It is a concept that took some time to figure out, and I admittedly don’t have it perfected yet. The difficulty isn’t with remembering to move cards and where to move them to. It’s with making cards that are different enough to be considered different tasks, and not too long to be considered an epic user story.

The biggest issue that my team and I encountered, and is still partially dealing with, is setting up GitHub. Initially, I created a repository on my Macbook, but one team member was having issues pushing and pulling. We decided to have a different team member create a repository on his Windows computer instead. Still, only two of us can use GitHub properly, so we are adding levels to the main Unity project by making them prefabs and sharing them on Google Drive.

For the first part of the sprint, a lot of my attention initially went towards setting up a collaborative workspace and making the design treatment. I created a Google Drive, a Discord, and a GitHub. Unfortunately, GitHub created a lot of issues, which made it hard to combine everyone’s work into one Unity project at first. All members of the team worked together on the design treatment, so that way the plan for the game would be clear among all team members. The treatment asked for some concept art to be added, so my teammate and I worked on a couple simple sketches of elements of the game that represented the aesthetic feel, and even some humorous aspects that we wished for in the game.

I moved on to creating the paper prototype. It took some time to figure out how to translate a 3D idea into a 2D space, especially when a big part of the game is meant to involve a unique movement mechanic. I settled on making a grid with some enemies and items that you would pick up similar to a Roll20 campaign layout. Creating rules that were simple enough to learn in a couple minutes, but detailed enough to play the prototype correctly was challenging. It’s very hard to remove my own perspective from the equation of a rule sheet, since I already know how the game is meant to be played. I decided a good thing to do would be to playtest the prototype a day after completing it and its rule sheet, so that way the rules aren’t as fresh in my mind. It helped with making small changes before the playtest day. During the day of the playtest, I had to add a health pack since the first two playtesters died, and that improved the experience of the game for the other playtesters.

After completing the prototype, I moved to working in Unity. I created a particle system for the vent and the climbable walls, so when a player is playing the game, they would be less likely to miss a key element in completing a level. I haven’t worked with particle systems in Unity before, but it was a very easy thing to figure out for the purposes of the game.

I started on creating a skatepark, that would help teach players the basics on how to use a skateboard when it’s equipt. The limited shapes available in Unity made it a bit more difficult to figure out how to go about making something like this, so I had to think outside the box. It is not complete yet, but I will continue to work on it in the next sprint. I also did not add health packs around the level yet, even though I had it assigned.