In Week 7, we focused on developing the narrative and defining a series of 3 code sprints for the game prototype, leaving some time at the end of the module for playtesting and feedback, pitch development, and creating and refining the demo video.

Examine and Analyze

Our team leader has embraced the role and is bringing great structure to the team. Our meeting mostly revolved around development tasks. The team introduced an abundance of new ideas, and I attempted to keep us focused on producing a demonstration of our innovation and differentiators.

As an action plan from a previous reflection, I encouraged “safe conflict” and actively promoted collaboration, and I believe this resulted in a better outcome during planning. Further iteration on the narrative enabled me to set up a series of user stories within a GitHub project, allowing me to further optimize our limited time in line with the “many little improvements” concept of continuous improvement (Bessant et al. 1994)

This week also saw the finalization of the team charter and signatures through adobe’s e-signature platform. Our supervisor also requested that we enhance the team charter to include a time commitment and an end date. I will come back to this after development is complete after some additional research on contract amendments. <!— swot

  • metrics for success
  • using GitHub projects to track progress.
  • ambitious stretch goals
  • healthy mental status–>

Considering metrics for success was this week’s topic. One team member proposed a standard SWOT that I spent some time completing; however, I wanted to take this in a different direction and focus on the team’s mental health. Thus ensuring that we’re all coping with the stress of the environment, as high pressure leads to lower quality output and potential depression (Manz and Neck 1995). I set up a poll in Discord to check in on the team. I didn’t want to be gathering any personal information, so the poll asks for a smiley face. This poll should give us a view into any issues happening with team morale and tackle appropriately.

This week I spent a considerable amount of effort on animating and controlling the location and direction of particle effects generated when the player placed a wood log on the fire. The concept here illustrates to the player that the wood transmutes into player health and additional time on the fire timer. However, the idea is relatively simple; however, this was a significant undertaking in practice. Many hours were spent working on the lerp function and translating local to world coordinates, never actually achieving satisfactory results. Tutorial after tutorial, with no improvement in sight. Finally, relief was discovered by reviewing unity manual pages for Vector3 manipulations.

Learnings and Actions

Maintaining a continual focus on the MVP and design pillars has been invaluable for avoiding distractions and rushing to implement “Fun” features which have no bearing on the overall game experience. While this could be confirmation bias, I feel the application of this learning from the previous module is holding true.

Reflecting on the effort surrounding the easing and redirection of particles, I recalled the issues I experienced earlier in the course. I often used Unity tutorials or guides online, which either made no logical sense or, when moved out of their test environment, no longer functioned. Being early in my unity programming journey, there were significant gaps in my knowledge, and I was unsure how to identify quality materials. In the meantime, I believe my skills have developed such that I can now identify “Cargo Cult Programming” examples, which are very prevalent around LERP and are even included in tutorials on Unity’s website.

To avoid confidence in comfort (Dubner 2020) I moved away from Unity to GameMaker due to an inability to distinguish between good advice and overconfident advice (Sanchez and Dunning 2018). I am now more aware of how little I know and am double-checking advice and tutorials. I consider these journeys into known unknowns (Graham 2014).

References

  • BESSANT, J. et al. 1994. ‘Rediscovering Continuous Improvement’. Technovation 14(1), 17–29.

  • DUBNER, Stephen J. 2020. ‘Why Do We Seek Comfort in the Familiar? (Ep. 445)’. Freakonomics [online]. Available at: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/nsq-ep-30/ [accessed 2 Aug 2021].

  • FRENCH, John. 2020. ‘The Right Way to Lerp in Unity (with Examples)’. Game Dev Beginner [online]. Available at: https://gamedevbeginner.com/the-right-way-to-lerp-in-unity-with-examples/ [accessed 11 Jul 2021].

  • GRAHAM, David A. 2014. ‘Rumsfeld’s Knowns and Unknowns: The Intellectual History of a Quip’. The Atlantic [online]. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/rumsfelds-knowns-and-unknowns-the-intellectual-history-of-a-quip/359719/ [accessed 2 Aug 2021].

  • MANZ, Charles C. and Christopher P. NECK. 1995. ‘Teamthink: Beyond the Groupthink Syndrome in Self‐managing Work Teams’. Journal of Managerial Psychology 10(1), 7–15.

  • SANCHEZ, Carmen and David DUNNING. 2018. ‘Overconfidence among Beginners: Is a Little Learning a Dangerous Thing?’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114(1), 10–28.