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.

11/22/2014

Having been very sick up until the time of presentations has been one of the most stressful things I have had to do in a very longtime. Preparing for the presentation has taken up a lot of my time. I have made three different iterations on our power point and the wording that I want to use on each slide. I am dedicating myself now to learning this completely new slide  along with the addition of note cards. I am still deciding whether or not I want to actively use the note cards I created, not only does it feel more awkward to be using them while i am presenting but it also adds at least a minuet onto the entire presentation. They also disrupt my flow while I am presenting and make me into a robot that is putting out information rather than a developer talking about their game. I do feel ready however, in that I have rehearsed a great deal for this presentation and even though I have changed the order and wording I know that I have a firm grasp on what I want to communicate to the audience about our game.