3/29/2015

This week was spent playing the build that we have been working on and working to figure out what could be improved upon. I also spent time finding bugs and inspecting what things we have but have not yet been added. One main issue I was looking at was the difficulty curve. This curve seemed to change in specific circumstances and looked a lot harder than it should have. I will be continuing to look at this until I can better understand when this is happening and  then meet with Tim to correct the issue. During the meeting the team did well to knock a lot off of the list that we had for finishing alpha issues.

3/22/2014

This week has been a push for everyone to make Alpha a reality. I specifically have been taking somewhat of a backseat roll but have been part every conversation surrounding art, mechanics, and implementation so far. I specifically have been focusing on the newspaper art and implementation. I went through and spoke to Matt T about what should be featured for the pictures as well as helped go over choices for other headlines. I sat with Leif and went over re sizing the gave yard, making sure to highlight the exit gate for the zombies, as well as fixing the carry animation for the main character and the daze animation for the zombie. I also went over with Tim all of the mechanics that still needed to be added and how those mechanics should work Alpha.  

3/15/2015

This week was not as work loaded as it possibly could have been due to the fact I went to San Francisco. This was helpful in a different way in that I was able to meet with a relative that works at Zynga. This was very helpful and informative to how a studio runs, looks like, and how a week looks at a relatively large company. Not to mention it was a really awesome experience and a great way to meet someone who is actually working in the industry right now. For work this week I created a newspaper layout to Matt T in order to let him get an idea of what we needed. Over the week I also started spit balling possible things that could read depending on if we have time to add it after players complete a level. At the bare minimum there will be labels for how well the player did, Best, good, and  worse style setup.

3/1/2015

This week has been one of our more stressful and successful weeks of production. With the midterm check in rapidly approaching it was vital that we be clear on what needed to get done. One of the first things that I did that I felt help this process move along quite well was creating a list of tasks that needed to be met for the midterm milestone. There were several wish list tasks on there as well but prioritizing these tasks and diving them among the separate disciplines led to a very tight schedule and everyone understanding the work load and priorities they needed to be focused on. Once everyone understood this we went off and just worked. Most did a solid 3 and a half hours on Saturday starting from the easiest tasks and working our way up. The finished product was a very pretty build that had a good balanced feel to it with a lot of  animation components compared to our last build. We also have a much clearer understanding of what needs to get done for alpha and each of us seem to have a better understand of the expectations laid out for the game. The only draw back, which unfortunately was a rather crippling one was the repo. This week on two separate occasions updating the repo removed almost of the meshes that were  present in the game which forced us to re download the repo then add all meshes and textures back in manually. This cost us a significant amount of time to fix and hindered adding some features but overall i am happy with the progress of the entire team this week.

2/22/2014

This week has been very eventful for me. I was able to work on new sounds, respond and make decisions off of QA feedback, and continue getting the economy variables figured out for how the costs of different items in the game will work. I was also worked with cool downs and the amounts players will be able to receive from the money they spend per object. Another important note to make was taking the responsibility of lead. This is something I know I will need to focus on moving forward and work to make sure that the design direction and overall direction of the game will be responsive to my decisions. Moving forward I will be focusing on tuning the economy and other aspects of the game while continuing to test and make the appropriate changes according to feedback.

2/15/2014

This week was completely spent on finishing the balancing for the different variables included primarily for difficulty. I spent a lot of time balancing and retesting them to fit into the different sized maps and appropriate difficulties. I also found some new mechanics I believe will be quite vital in further increasing the player's experience for the better. Thanks to time all of the variables are now in game and are ready for QA. I have set my sights on balancing the economy in the game for purchases of items as well.

2/8/2014

This week has been spent in preparation for green light. I specifically have not have a lot to do with the necessities that came with this presentation specifically but I have been overseeing certain individuals that did. I specifically have been working on finishing the sounds that are on the spreadsheet that has been created. I also went through the process of citing all of these sources correctly according to the sites specifications. I have also been able to get accurate figures out of the game on the different variables i have been working with for balancing issues. This has greatly prepared us for testing which we will be doing this week.

2/1/2015

This week as been met with a minor set back that came with different difficulties but were overcome none the less. The main objective of the week was to implementing more balancing in game. the first issue that I ran into was that I was unable to access my testing branch that I had created in order to test out the different balancing possibilities in combination with each area size and difficulty setting. After figuring it was my version of unity I decided it would be easier to go to the labs and just work there for now until I could ask others if that was the true issue.  However, after looking through the project in the labs I learned that there was another issue that I could not fix on my own. I was able to set the length of each night and a general spawn rate of zombies in the appropriate area sizes and difficulties. Although I realized there was not yet a way to manipulate the number of zombies that spawned during each wave (The set times zombies were set to spawn). with this knowledge there was no real way to test the other variables without being able to control the amount of zombies. From there I passed this info onto Tim. In the meantime I decided to collect sounds off of the juiciness spreadsheet that Kevin, Ian, and I worked out earlier in the week. I was able to collect and successfully cut 12 different sounds off of that spreadsheet. This up coming week will be dedicated to balancing now that Tim has implemented a  way to access that variable.    

1/25/2015

      This week I spent a majority of it going over the different systems that were already present in the game and understanding how they work. I spent a great deal of time focusing on the difficulty that became associated with the size of the maps that the players could choose and also the difficulty setting. After looking at variables like how many graves spawned, how far apart they spawned from each other, number of zombies from the start to the end of the round, and how long a round lasted I started to realize that with the increase of difficulty the game was severely unfair after the advanced setting in the small areas and even unfair sometimes on the normal setting for the normal and huge map sizes. I also came to find that the difficulty of each round was only effecting the number of zombies per round and nothing else as far as I could tell. This week will be spent putting in my own numbers and estimates off of the game play I have already recorded and testing to see if it is easier, fairer, and still enjoyable. To this this I have already created my own branch in the repository to do my own testing. Thanks to Tim I can easily access most of the project variables I need and adjust them accordingly.
      Another section of this week was spent finding some new sounds to be used for zombies. I found several grunt noises and even a clip of zombies saying "BRAINS!". I collected several different clips all having a different direction to go in. I plan on cutting them up and creating simple script that I can give the programmers to easily implement into the project wherever they need to.

1/18/2015

This week as been spent getting to know the new team and the way in which we all function. We all seem to be working together extremely well as of right now. We have all been placed on different clusters in order to ensure that we are all accomplishing the tasks needed. I was placed on the cluster that will be developing characters. Specifically the main character and his appropriate animations. Along with what the zombies will look and feel like as the game is played. I did this by first watching different rewarding moves that the player could possibly do to place the zombies back into their graves after they have been knocked unconscious. After I decided which ones I liked I story boarded them out into segments and gave them to Shain to look over. I also gave some reference images to Noah to help him get the feel for the type of zombies I believe we should have. I ended out the week continuing on the master balancing sheet I have developed off of Ian's work from last semester.