PPJ Final – Julie

Last PPJ! Found more bugs, mostly things that happened through perforce and got lost in the upload, like missing textures or animations, but still found them. Also spent 6-ish hours trying to get updated gameplay footage for the power point and teaser, but my computer refused to capture any smooth footage whatsoever. I tried multiple capture software, went through multiple game builds, and finagled the settings in many programs and my computer itself to make things work, but all I ended up with was about an hour’s worth of choppy, awkward footage, which a some points got so slow it seemed like a slide show with terrible transitions. Thankfully Brodie was able to get some good footage, so we’ll still have a good teaser, but I’m sad all my work ended up being useless.

Anyway, excited to present our game tomorrow, and see the other games. It’s been fun working on the game this quarter, though I guess I am ready to move on to something else, after working on this game for 6 months. I hope out presentation goes well! It’s been a struggle, but I’m glad we came through with something cool to show for it!

PPJ #8 – Julie

Postmortem

3 Things Right:

1. Got to help flesh out the story and had fun doing it. Coming up with backstory and plot twists and sad endings are always interesting, and to be able to do that on a larger game than just something I did by myself was really great.
2. The team worked together really well and there weren’t really any disagreements or drama, so we were able to discuss ideas quite easily and without tension. Team meetings were always productive, we were able to assign tasks to who was the best for the job at hand and despite the many bugs that cropped up in game, we didn’t have a problem working together to fix things.
3. Took up a leadership role in a large team, and I think I did pretty well. Once people got the models finished and things advanced to rigging, or people just got in the groove and already knew their tasks, there wasn’t too much to be leader-ly about after the first 5 weeks, so my responsibilities in that regard dwindled fairly quickly after that, but I was good about communicating with the team and helping people when they needed it. Even lead a couple of the meetings (or co-lead, depending).

3 Things Wrong:

1. Productivity on certain things tended to get backed up when one section was waiting on a different one to finish something, since most of the time people wouldn’t finish or submit their work until sunday/monday, so it did slow us down and cause pipeline problems, especially with rigging, since it just takes so and long and effects so much.
2. Everybody messed up submissions (both on BBLearn and Perforce) and we tended to be fixing and submitting things at the last minute or late on mondays, just in order to turn in something that was at least mostly up to date.
3. I personally had trouble keeping up with some of my work, especially after week 4 and the panic attack, and while things got a little better after withdrawing from one of my classes, I just wish I was a bit better at handling stress and time management, considering I tended to fall into the “submits on sunday” group.

Lessons Learned

1. Unity colliders are finicky as heck and will mess everything up.
2. I’d probably insist on having people actually do some of the work at meetings instead of just making decisions,  delegating the tasks, and then leaving, because when a lot of us had problems we had to rely on slack and hope someone was online to help us, and working in the same room is really good for giving feedback and making sure people actually work.

PPJ #7 – Julie

Mostly just play testing this week. Tried to make some more cave paintings, but nothing really came out well, so I’ll see if I can fix up what I have for next week. I hope we’re able to fix up some of the bugs; some of them, like the wolves not even noticing you, and the multiple problems with the climbing walls, really kinda ruin the game. Plus I found that if you exit a level without beating it, the hub world doesn’t really work anymore? So you have to restart the whole game, which is really annoying.

I really wanna do some overhaul on some of the art assets like the blank green ground plane or the trees, but with all my other classes I don’t know if I’ll have time, plus with all the bugs we’re still having it might not be a priority. We’ll see, I guess.

PPJ #6 – Julie

This week was nice. Finished the pillar and crystal altar models.

Crystal Altar – sideview

Pillar

Crystal Altar – front

Spent a good amount of time on those crystals too. I couldn’t figure out how Weidi made the other ones, so I just made my own and put a couple of hers around the bottom, so the art styles match.
For the pillars, I made the bases so when Rick hits them with the pickaxe, the rocks can get pushed out of place and cause them to fall, so we don’t have to texture or animate cracks and breakage. Hopefully we can put a cool glow effect on the crystal in unity, make the atmosphere all spooky and magical.

Now I can help out with tweaks and bugging, and fixing textures and stuff. Maybe make some more small cave paintings too.

PPJ #5 – Julie

This week went pretty well. I helped write some of the note collectibles, and started work on the cave paintings and some models for the boss level.

Collectable example

Prophecy painting

Bear painting

Worship painting

Also got in some good play testing on the new build, my friend spent a couple of hours trying as hard as he could to break the game, with some interesting results.

standing on a bear

stuck on invisible wall

stuck in a tree

still stuck on invisible wall

climbing problems

stuck on the corner

He spent ten minutes jumping off the wall to land on the bear. True Effort™

Anyway, gotta finish up the models for next week, should be fun.

PPJ #4 – Julie

Worked on the design for the runner level in unity, but I really won’t know what length to make it until I can get the controller in and test. So far its mostly just gray boxed, cubes and a long plane, but maybe I can put the bear rig in and bump up the speed to test, depending on how long the controller takes. Was able to upload all my environment assets to perforce though, yay.

Need to work on the cave paintings this week. Again, more interviews, and I had a panic attack from stress, so I’m withdrawing from one of my classes to lessen some of my workload. Hopefully I should be able to focus better with only 4 classes.

PPJ #3 – Julie

We started the week off well, had a big team meeting and set up tasks for everyone. A lot of work on the levels and UI got done, which is great.

This week I modeled the mine cart and some tracks.

Cart Side View

Cart 3/4 View

Cart Top View

Unfortunately, due to a heavy workload and preparing for co-op interviews, this is about all I was able to get done. Hopefully this week I can start trying out runner level set ups in unity.

PPJ #2 – Julie

This week went pretty good. Had meetings with the other leaders, the story team, and the design team, worked on my environment assets, and got some great results. I modeled a barrel, 2 crates (a permanently closed crate and one with a lid that opens), and a house variation for the settlement.

Barrel

Crates

House Front

House Back

Open Crate

Trello board got made this week, helpful for keeping track of everyone’s tasks, which is nice. We also utilized slack for feedback from other group members on how we were doing or if someone had questions.

Hopefully by the alpha I’ll have the runner level design done, and have started on the story elements like the cave paintings and journal entries.

PPJ #1 – Julie

First two weeks with the new team went pretty well, in my opinion. I’m so excited to be working on UA, especially on the story. I’m a team leader now, so I have to stay way more connected to the team communications, but it’s been fun, and we ironed out a lot of the things we needed to get done this quarter and even started working on some stuff, like level and world map designs, more 3d assets, and how the story interacts with the game play.

I attended 7-ish meetings (I believe it was 7? I went to a lot of them) and even led a couple of them, like the art/story one and the second full team meeting.

I helped write out notes for a bunch of the meetings as well, and have them posted on our slack, so everyone can reference them. I also made a world map concept, helped come up with the final story in the story meeting, and have been working on a couple runner style levels for later in the game.

In the future, I plan to work on my 3D assets for the asset list, help create the journal entries for both the settlers journal pages and rick’s, finish my level designs, work on the cave drawing art we need to place in the game world for story purposes, and look back at some assets I have from earlier projects, and see if I can re-texture and re-purpose them for the game. It won’t all get done in the next week or so, but I’m excited to see the results when they do get finished.