Devlog 05

This week, our group had a short 40 minute meeting to schedule when we were going to get everything done for the remainder of the semester.  The reason our meeting was so short was because we were very productive and stayed on topic, so we got our schedules made quickly.  We also did not talk about any tweaks or clarification about the game itself.  I think we got that out of our system the meeting before.  It's great that we are all on the same page now because it allows us to have these shorter more on topic meetings.

We created a spreadsheet and updated our Trello with due dates.  The spreadsheet lays out what we need to do week by week until the end of this semester and sorts tasks by discipline.  The Trello features all the tasks listed on the spreadsheet, but only has what we need to do this week in "To Do" and the rest in "Backlog".  The Trello is where we can see who is doing what task.  I like having both of these because with the spreadsheet, we get an overview of what we need to do so we don't forget and lose sight of that.  Then we have the Trello for a more detailed look at what we need to do and only focus on what needs to be done that week.

This week (10) we are taking inventory of scripts we have from other projects to save us time writing everything from scratch.  We're also going to be creating a list of scripts we are going to need and who is going to be writing each one.  A more detailed overview of the game's narrative will also be created this week (10).  Next week (11) we are determining what we are going to need for our proof of concept, get even more detail with the narrative, and take inventory of any art assets we have.  Week 12 is dedicated to everyone working on a separate section of the proof of concept and week 13 is for putting all of our parts together.  As we work on these things over the week, we will continue to update our GDD when necessary.

We decided that we are going to need a digital prototype rather than a paper one because we felt like we wouldn't be able to convey the mechanics properly with our style of game.  Another driving factor for jumping right into Unity is that we can have three of us working on coding and one of us working on the narrative.  This way I get lots of help early on and puts us in a good position for next semester to get all of our features in and fix any issues that come up.  It will also leave me with more time to work on original sound for the game!

Creating this schedule is super helpful for knowing that we have set aside time to get everything done.  I am a big planner myself so not having a schedule would definitely stress me out.  Having this makes sure that we are not underestimating how much work needs to be done and ending up doing a lot last minute.