CAGD 470 Video Game Production

Sprint Blog 1 - September 11, 2022

Hi, I am Jonathan Mills
I am a student at Chico California State University Computer Animation and Game Design program. I am a producer on a team of four people working together to upload a product by the end of the semester. Since we are a small team we must take on more than one role. Patrick is our Modeler and Level Designer, Pablo is our programmer (already a massive role), Liam is our Designer, Modeler, and small scripter, and finally myself as the Producer, small scripter, and Modeler. Our game is called Roto-Copter, a 2D side-scrolling physics-driven game about a player-controlled helicopter that is tasked with saving the goobers from a city on fire. The player will have a wide range of tools to use to either destroy buildings, put out fires, and of course save the goobers and achieve points from saving them.

In our first sprint, I assigned an average of 15 points worth of work to each member. I gave a majority of programming work to Pablo to get the player controller setup with the physics to be tweaked as well. Liam worked on the rag doll effect on the goobers to give that physics effect to the goobers along with an explosive barrel that effects objects around it. Patrick was assigned work regarding our tutorial level to help teach the player how to play the game with the tools and features. Of course not all of it is in the level yet but as models and scripts are being made the tutorial is being updated. I worked a lot on the user interface to have a working point system and health display along with a pause menu and start menu. I also start the destruction block script that deletes the solid block that is then instantiated with a prefab that mirrors the solid block with a model made up of multiple blocks that will explode and fall apart. Pablo and Liam have been a major help with that script as I struggled to get the models to stop scaling up and spawning more than one prefab as once. The scaling has been dealt with but unfortunately the multiplying has remained. We are starting to look outwards for help such as posting our issue on unity forums. Should hopefully be given some good direction to solve the issue.

From seen from the images above you can see we have had quite an eventful sprint with some good ground covered. What we are going to do with our next sprint is to really get the helicopter tools modeled and scripted. Pablo has been tasked with developing a script that will cover all the tools with have parameters that will applied to the tool such as damage, rate of fire, and etc. Liam will be modeling props to help populate the levels as well as Patrick working on modular buildings to help create some buildings quickly. I am working on more user interface menus as well as levels so that we can have levels tested on our first play test to get an idea of what players like and would like to see more off and maybe some things that did not work.

So ending the first sprint we completed 28 points worth of work. Unfortunately, one of our teammates had outside forces affecting his work, but this next sprint he will be able to complete much more work pushing the amount of points we can get done and ultimately getting our features in so that we can get to polishing and adding art to the game. Though that won't be for a while. Until then the team will be working hard at getting all our core mechanics into a functioning prototype.

Sprint Blog 2 - September 25, 2022

In this sprint the biggest thing was to have the team get more of the helicopter tool functions into the game as well as having destruction. I assigned myself cards for the level select UI design and as well as some prefabs for structures. Liam was to work on destructible objects and the goobers and their point system. Pablo worked on having the helicopter to be switched out for different configurations and more destructible items. Pablo worked on a bunch of models for spikes and helicopter weapon models.

The start of the sprint we were off to a good start with meetings on Mondays and Wednesdays. Unfortunately, work fell a little short because of some members got sick such as myself. Though the work did get done for most of the members. There was a difference when members couldnt meet up for time together, as we could’nt see or hear directly from them about their work. We could still see the work being done on the jira board but not their thoughts. I personally feel a lot gets done when the group meets because they can actively ask each other questions about how to go about things. Additionally, have their work checked right there and then so we can keep moving along without having to come back to it.

The team started out with 38 points assigned but only 31 points got completed (77%) which due to sickness set us back. 38 points is on point for 8-10 points per member which is doable for the team. Quite fortunately the cards that were not complete were not cards that would block anyone because when asked about the win loss screen, I told Pablo to just put in placeholders. That has been our thing this entire time like the rail gun. The model was not made yet so Pablo only needed to use a block to just hold a spot for it so when we got the model done we could just replace the the placeholder with it.

Another issue we ran into is Patrick is still having trouble with using Github and so for use to get his models he has made we told him to upload the models into the google drive group folder so we could get the models and just import them ourselves. Pablo will be the one to handle that as he is in charge of the Github and the merges for the development branch.

Going into the work I designed, I went with a grid panel for the level select for easy access and view for the player. Additionally not just setting it up visually but also making it functional with a menuManager script I made to control the scenes. It got a bit complicated but I have figured out the majority of it but the pause menu level select button is not working as intended. It still brings you to the main menu but not to the level select portion of it.

The other portion of my time spent was on prefabs of destructible buildings made out of destructible objects from Liam. These consisted of wooden and stone objects that have a script to adjust their strength so that the stone is not as easily destroyed like the wood.

Sprint Blog 3 - October 9, 2022

Starting off this sprint we wanted to make sure we had a functioning build for the electronic prototype build we had due towards the end of the sprint. What we needed to do was get the control scheme done, UI prompts for giving the user tips on how to play, Google Forums page to collect play-test information, levels that have been fitted with the prefabs and any and all finished work to show off and have tested. This work included a looped background that doesn't end, the claw tool that was also animated, and a level progress bar that showed the potential amount of points that can still be obtained from the damage that has been dealt to the goobers. Pablo was set up to work on the player controller, Patrick on making levels as well as finishing models, Liam on making finished levels that have scripts and prefabs added to them as well as his handcrafted background art, and myself on finishing up models, levels to be finalized, and the UI level progression bar.

In this sprint I completed adding and designing level 5 and level 6, building prefabs to populate levels with destructible objects, a level progression bar, a level button that pops up after 50% of the level’s possible points from the goobers have been saved, a model for the helicopter's mini-gun, and a model for the helicopter.

Something I wanted to get done was in the level select scene on each level tile there is a level completion score on it showing the player their awarded points or stars. This is to give them a sense of completion and a desire to replay the level for a better score. I have this card in progress because it was reliant on the level pression bar being done first to have the score tracked in the first place.

I had an additional two cards assigned but not moved and those two are a UI prompt of what tool is enabled and showing what tools are available while cycling through tools. The other card being a visual display of a lock on levels that havent been unlocked because it requires the prior level to have 50% completion in order to unlock the next level. Hence the next level button.

The biggest issue that came out was the script for the level progression bar. I made the functionality of it connected to two keys to make sure the points reflected onto the UI bar. Then came the long hard part of figuring out the logic of now connecting that to the goobers in the level and also taking in account of their damage to then reflect that on the UI bar. I started out using a system to check to see how many goobers are in the level and have that debugged to the console of any objects tagged as “C_Goober” to see that it could then take that number and calculate that into the equation for setting the max amount of points possible in that very level. The thing is it is suppose to be able to be flexible on any level because it will count however many goobers are in the level and then it can set its 50% mark based on the max amount of points possible. Though soon became a problem for both Liam and Pablo as all three of us were on discord as Liam was sharing his screen and the rest of us watching and coming up with ideas to solve our issue of the logic. Four hours later we had a script that was mostly working and seems to reflect exactly what we want. We are still monitoring it as there are concerns it still isnt doing it right but it has been suggested that it is just the blurry image art that is the placeholder for the time being.

Sprint Blog 5 - Nov. 11, 2022

This sprint was a sprint for the guys to continue doing more art and sound so it was allowing the team to be pretty creative with their tasks. Pablo of course was still programming and editing important scripts such as the player controls to improve them upon the previous iteration. Patrick was finishing up on gathering the rest of the sounds and adjusting them so that Pablo could apply them to the game scenes. Liam worked on a lot of major art pieces such as ground and building interiors. I myself worked on more UI art work changing the look of the level progression bar and adding a percentage box right next to the bar.

I believe the overall sprint was a pretty good sprint. We completed 40+ points for the sprint which continues to keep our velocity were it is at fluctuating around that level. BUT there is also room for improvement and that is getting a head start on work. That means starting work right at the start of the sprint instead of a little later or later in general. The reason being, it'll help with catching issues that are not implemented correctly or just not what it is supposed to be. So instead of just trying to do everything in perfection make it great and send it in so that work can continue to flow. There can be time to go back and polish as they say. Though of course, you want it polished as much as you can because then there isn't as much to go back and fix or touch up.

As a producer and looking at how the semester is coming to the end and there only being two more sprints left with one of them only being half of a sprint it was time to really look into the backlog with the designer Liam to check in and see what features need to be cut and what needed to be prioritized. What we decided on was cutting out the fire. Unfortunately, it was something we did want but we wanted to really buckle down on the shooting mechanics and the way objects worked in our physics-based game. Another idea that had been sitting in the backlog was goobers turning into zombies. That was a dream of ours but if a team were to pick up this game to go gold in the 475 class that could be where they add the fire and the goober zombies. We also cut out level saving just because we have been handing a lot of coding tasks to our single programmer Pablo but he is absolutely amazing, we just give him a lot of things to do. Additionally, we wanted to focus more on levels so we have many levels to build which we are looking forward to making. Liam, Patrick, Pablo, and myself have all been tasked with making at least one level to allow everyone on the team to create a unique level that was made by themselves and we plan to have everyone to also to paint their rooms into one of the buildings to add a bit more personal touch to the art of the game.

One of the other things I was tasked to do this sprint was to also create art for the cycle tool display. Basically, it rotates through the images to show the player what tool is currently selected while leaving the other tools slightly transparent which also allows the player to see what tool they can select by hitting either the LB or RB on the controller. Additonally, I hand painted a texture for a wooden wall and the broken version of it too.

Sprint Blog 6 - Nov. 20, 2022

The goal of this sprint was to get all major features either finished or finally made. Additionally, a functioning build needed to be made that does not crash or have any groundbreaking bugs in it. We have one more sprint after this sprint but that sprint is reserved for bug hunting and any art changes. There should not be any more changes to the code or at least any major changes that can potentially break the game.

Everyone was assigned cards to make levels with the current assets that we have. I personally altered the Level Progression script again as the constraint UI bar was not accurately tracking. Pablo worked on implementing additional sounds into the game that were collected and mixed by Patrick. Liam had his roommate create music from scratch on his phone for our team to use in the game and it sounds amazing! Liam continued work on the textures and other background art for the UI. One major part of that was the control prompts that Liam created to help teach the player with visual UI elements instead of text being displayed on the screen.

The above images are of this sprint's work and I believe we did a good job of maintaining a steady amount of completion for tasks assigned to the team. This sprint was definitely just packed with cards to get as much as possible done. Anything that was model-related or script is not going to be carried on unless it was already in and in progress then nothing NEW is being added in our final sprint.

One of the tasks I completed was the texture for the stone foundation as it was one of the last ones needing to be done. I did my best to mimic what Liam had already been doing with the other textures in order to keep the art style uniform.

The above images are of the additional levels I had made for the game. There is just a wide variety I attempted at making so that the levels would not be the same. One thing I will say is Patrick thought outside of the box and actually made a hold in the ground by dropping the soil blocks down to create space below for goobers to be put into a pit like space. It was a really great idea and Im glad we had everyone do levels instead of just one person because we really got to see some creativity from everyone which I think really benefits the game.

What we will be doing now is just bug hunting and cleaning up anything that needs to be adjusted and test, test, and test the build to make sure the game is at its best and nothing breaks the build. Anything else is just a dream now for a potential future if this game was to be adopted by the 495 class.