Assignment Preparation

As the deadline for the group assignment gets closer, I created a list of tasks that need to be done before the submission. The team reviewed them and agreed. Once the plan was set, it was time to start iterating on the pitch deck and apply the feedback we've got during the mock pitch in week 6. However, a lot of time has passed since, so in order to make sure we don't miss anything I rewatched the recordings of both mock pitch sessions and recorded all useful feedback given to us and the other teams who presented. After gathering the feedback, I shared it with the team to make sure we are on the same page in terms of alterations we need to do on the pitch deck.

Watching back the recording highlighted that there are many similar mistakes made by many teams. This could be due to the mock pitches being too early in the course or common misunderstanding across all teams. I did focus more on the game development pitches as the apps pitches are likely to focus on different aspects and would likely have a different structure, however, they were interesting nonetheless.

The next step to prepare for the assignment submission was to make sure we don't miss any document we need to submit. To do that I created a new folder in the team's shared drive where I moved all documents I think we need to submit. I once again shared this with the team to ensure they are aware of it and to tell them to add anything I may have missed.

Once the preparation tasks were complete, it was time to work on the individual pieces. I took screenshots of our Miro (2021) and Trello (2021) boards and added a legend to the colour coding of one of our ideation documents. Additionally, I removed the goals section from our Team Charter document since we didn't use it through the project and replaced it with the Contribution section where we agree to contribute to the project. Lastly, I applied some of the feedback to our pitch deck by replacing the demo at the end of the deck with the teased at the beginning as well as changing The Team slide to specify explicitly who is doing what in the project.

Prototype Contributions

As the team approached the end of the prototype development it was time to focus on polishing. Since James was busy setting up our User Testing Questionnaire, I jumped in to help with finalising his level. I've added clutter around to make it feel more natural and prepare it for user testing.

Secondly, I looked into why our WebGL build wasn't working properly. It turned out that WebGL doesn't support Directional Lights in Unity (ref?). This meant I had to replace our lighting setup with something that is supported. Unfortunately, this change didn't resolve all of our issues as our Continuous Integration pipeline wasn't able to build the lighting. This forced us to send out a Windows build instead of letting play-testers use their web browsers.

Before I realised the limitation of our CI pipeline, I tried to fix a crash when changing abilities in WebGL. After a long investigation, I found that it was caused by inconsistency with the order of OnEnable and Awake functions. To resolve this, I had to create a custom initialisation for our Ability Wheel which ensures the class is initialised before calling any of the methods on it. While solving this issue I also reworked the HUD UI to ensure it is positioned consistently and animated appropriately.

Lastly, I had to add sound to the prototype. The team had great plans for the sound of the game and how it would be another layer of the storytelling, changing as the world of Construct dissolves. However, due to losing a team member and lack of availability the team doesn't have time to implement the original idea in the prototype. Instead, I took sound samples from FreeSound.org (2021), spliced the relevant sound effects and added them to the game. While the result is alright for sending out an initial user test and gather some early feedback, I am not happy with the result as the whole depth of the sound is gone. Shall the development continue, I would put a higher priority on the sound as it would play a massive role in the final product.

Teamwork

This week once again was filled with supporting the team. First, I worked with James to help him implement picking up the potion at the end of his level. I helped him create the animation and logic and the effect turned out great considering the little time we had to implement it.

Following my collaboration with James, I worked together with Luke Perry. I assisted him with animating the central mechanism at his level, as well as connecting all buttons together to allow for the sequential pressing he wanted. Additionally, we implemented logic for resetting the player if they fall off the platforms and I helped him put the water asset I've added into his level.

Lastly, Luke had a different idea as to what the Cloud ability would do. Originally we wanted to use it for platforming, removing the gravity of an object and allowing the player to create a platform to walk on. Luke, however, wanted it to be a way to go through impassable obstacles. Since the ability wasn't used elsewhere, there were no implications to the change, so I went ahead and made it possible for the player to pass through Cloud objects.

References

Freesound.org. 2021. Freesound - Freesound. [online] Available at: http://freesound.org/ [Accessed 9 August 2021].

Miro. 2021. Miro | Online Whiteboard for Virtual Collaboration. [online] Available at: https://miro.com [Accessed 9 August 2021].

Trello.com. 2021. Trello. [online] Available at: https://trello.com [Accessed 9 August 2021].

Unity Technologies, 2021. Unity - Manual: WebGL Graphics. [online] Docs.unity3d.com. Available at: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/webgl-graphics.html [Accessed 9 August 2021].

Sound files

Ivers, S., 2021. Underglow | Royalty Free Analogue Atmospheric Music. [online] Silverman Sound Studios. Available at: https://www.silvermansound.com/free-music/underglow [Accessed 9 August 2021].

kfatehi, 2021. land.wav by kfatehi. [online] Freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/kfatehi/sounds/363922/ [Accessed 9 August 2021].

kfatehi, 2021. launch.wav by kfatehi. [online] Freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/kfatehi/sounds/363921/ [Accessed 9 August 2021].

magnuswaker, 2021. Energy Bounce 1 by magnuswaker. [online] Freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/magnuswaker/sounds/523088/ [Accessed 9 August 2021].

monte32, 2021. Footsteps6Dirt_shoe.wav by monte32. [online] Freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/monte32/sounds/353799/ [Accessed 9 August 2021].

nomiqbomi, 2021. Sparkle by nomiqbomi. [online] Freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/nomiqbomi/sounds/578803/ [Accessed 9 August 2021].

spookymodem, 2021. Magic Missiles.wav by spookymodem. [online] Freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/spookymodem/sounds/249817/ [Accessed 9 August 2021].