Overview
Below you can see the planning I have put into managing my time for this project, this sort of thing is very useful as it allows me to make the most of the very limited time I have whilst ensuring that everything is done. This board was of course made on the website Trello which will be linked above the images, the images are purely there to ensure you can see how much effort went into the project incase of a Trello outage or shutdown.
What Categories Are There?
This Trello board features 4 main segments, these are listed below.
Planning/Research
Development
Playtesting/Feedback
Evaluation
The planning and research section contains just that, planning and research. This includes things like the GDD as well as conducting academic research and researching the best programming methods. Since 6 weeks of this project are dedicated to the research and planning, I expect that I will have plenty of information and an overall strong foundation to begin my development work on week 7.
The development section contains things like animating, implementing things into Unreal Engine, programming interactivity and more. Some of what you can consider development work can be found in the last weeks of my planning and research where I say that I'll do some drawing for some basic concepts of what I'll be making, I still believe they're best off left out of the development section as they aren't going to be used in the game itself and are more than anything just planning work for when I finalise the characters and items in the development section.
Next there is the feedback and playtesting section, during this time I expect to evaluate what my peers have said about my work at the end of the project and perform major last minute bug fixes before the project is due the week after, this will hopefully allow me 7 days to polish my game after the highly technical blueprint work.
The final stage will be my evaluation, this is the stage where I willsay my final thoughts on how I did, how I could have done better and much - much more. I should realistically only need a week for this as it should take around a day of writing, any longer would mean cutting into the development or research/planning sections which could really negatively impact the project as a whole.
How Will Tasks Be Marked Complete?
Tasks completed won't be moved from their respective weeks, just coloured in green. This will allow me to see what I have completed and will let me understand how the project is coming along. I will also be putting things that are behind schedule in red so that I notice and pay attention to them more often and so won't forget to do them, hopefully ensuring everything I need for the project is done.
What Do I Need For Each Phase?
(This will all be done in both College and at home)
Planning/Research - This phase should only require a computer with an internet connection, though near to the end of this phase I intend to do some pixel art and so might need access to some sort of an art software such as Asesprite or Photoshop. I will also be using google sites to log all of my findings from my research as well as Trello for my time management and Miro for my overall idea management. I could also use access to Microsoft Forms
Development - The development phase will include using a computer with an internet connection alongside Unreal Engine 5, Asesprite, Photoshop, Pixilart.com and youtube as an emergency site to let me find tutorials on anything I'm extremely stuck on and can't progress without.
Feedback - For my feedback section I should just need a google doc, a working computer with internet and unreal engine 5 with my game file loaded on it. This is all that people should need to judge my work. I should also have access to everything from the other phase so I can implement changes and bug fixes based on feedback.
Evaluation - My Evaluation should only need a google doc on a working computer and access to my game file, so nothing different from what the other phases needed. This will allow me to write down my thoughts on my project and effectively evaluate what I could have done better, what went well and much more.
Link
Currently Not Available
Small Change -
To stop the confusion around the meaning of the colours on my Trello, I decided to make it more easily understood by adding a tab that shows the meaning of each colour at the start of the mood board, I feel like this is a major help for this project as understandability wasn't great before this.