DogChain Development Details

Development Log

[Edited: 6/7/2021] This log lists the work completed by each developer throughout the duration of the project. The project is broken down by weeks to show the work content of our sprints. Our work-weeks ended on Friday with our weekly status report meetings.

Week Name Description
5/7/21 Overview This week, we finished deciding on the game's concept and defined the minimum viable product by a list of mechanics. Those mechanics were split up between members of the team to start writing the starter code.
Kez
  • Oxygen for breathing and moving as a health bar
  • Friction zones spawn on a trigger
  • Make door objects disappear on a trigger in a sequence
Jacob
  • Player movement behavior using oxygen spray
  • Player movement behavior change when passing over friction zone
Talon
  • Dogs create a chain when they are within a specified range of the player
  • Scenes transition on a trigger
Additional Notes Recently completed:
  • Conceptual Paper Prototype Presentation
  • Agreement on what each prototype should have implemented
Development Obstacles:
  • Struggling to determine how each mechanic should interact
Reflection on Current State:
  • We have a strong definition for our minimum viable product
  • Next step is to convert the ideas to code
5/14/21 Overview This week, we created our first test-website for our Digital Prototype, created a powerpoint explaining our progress, integrated our independent mechanics (each in their own scene), created triggers to traverse between scenes, and gave a presentation about our progress.
Kez
  • Add content to a website design template to display the demos and explain the mechanics
  • Work on slide deck content and design
  • Manually merge isolated mechanics into main
Jacob
  • Perform integration testing
  • Work on slide deck content
  • Manually merge isolated mechanics into main
Talon
  • Connect each scene using a scene-transition trigger
  • Work on slide deck content
  • Manually merge isolated mechanics into main
Additional Notes Recently completed:
  • All mechanics are implemented in isolated scenes
Development Obstacles:
  • The gitignore file was blocking meta files. This led us to believe that unity projects could not be merged successfully using git. We wasted a great deal of time manually merging our work into main.
Reflection on Current State:
  • We have a solid proof-of-concept for our game by showcasing each mechanic
  • Next step is to combine all the mechanics into a single scene
5/21/21 Overview This week, we started working on our Alpha Prototype. We developed the foundation for our game by adding the code that allowed our mechanics to interact smoothly, and we started work on auto-generating the more redundant assets of the game (bricks for the walls, bricks for the doors).
Kez
  • Develop a script to auto-generate a perimeter around the main camera and add obsticles within the map using mathematical formulas (this eventually became a level editor)
Jacob
  • Improve on the player movement script to allow the player to collide with walls and doors
  • Create a door script to allow doors to open when enough dogs are collected (eventually switched to Keziah's implementation so that it smoothly interfaced with the level-editor's deserializing script)
Talon
  • Improve dog-chaining script and fix bugs discovered during testing
  • Create artistic assets for the Alpha Prototype
Additional Notes Recently completed:
  • All mechanics are integrated into a single scene
Development Obstacles:
  • We wanted to keep a record of our previous work, so we kept our Digital Prototype code and our Alpha Prototype code in the same root folder. This started creating major namespace conflicts that we did not understand.
Reflection on Current State:
  • We had a successful presentation of our isolated mechanics which had us ranked at the top of the class by our peers in a feedback form.
  • We had the foundation of the game set with our integrated mechanics.
  • Next step is to work on interfacing between mechanics to make the Alpha Prototype presentation a playable version.
5/28/21 Overview This week, we took the lessons we learned from the class playtest of our Alpha Prototype and split up a list of backlog items to work on for our next deliverable.
Kez
  • Create a map using her level-editor
  • Write a new door-unlocking script to interface with the level-editor's deserialization of it's generated doors
Jacob
  • Write scripts to improve the player/dog interaction with the spaceship
  • display a message that clearly shows that the spaceship interaction is significant
  • Place friction-zones throughout the map
  • Fix the friction-zone spawning script to work with current implementation
Talon
  • Create a main menu for the game
  • Create artistic assets for the Beta Prototype
  • Place dogs, oxygen refills, and spaceship in the map
Additional Notes Recently completed:
  • Finished the level-editor, the Alpha Prototype, conducted our first playtest, and designed the layout for our map.
Development Obstacles:
  • We ran into a strange issue with unity where it would randomly duplicate every script in multiple places, rendering the entire unity project unstable until each duplicate was found and removed.
Alpha Playtest:
what we learned
  • The player movement felt great to users
  • The dog's following movement felt choppy
  • The player hitbox felt ambiguous and unfair
How we responded:
  • Dog movement was made more smooth
  • The player sprite was given a box outline to indicate its boundaries
Reflection on Current State:
  • We had a major time crunch this week. We expected the Prototype to be due Tuesday afternoon and playable on Wednesday afternoon. We found out on the weekend that the due date was moved up to Monday. This meant that instead of using the level-editor to create a map, we had to throw together a quick, unplanned, hard to navigate map that users did not like.
  • We got lots of useful feedback from our playtest.
  • Next step is to make a list of backlog items from the feedback we received and work on the Beta Prototype.
6/4/21 Overview This week, we focused on making sure all our final deliverables were complete and the game was updated to accomodate user feedback.
Kez
  • Download the template for the final website (after testing 4 designs)
  • Update the main.css file to match our color scheme
  • Move all content into the website
  • Edit photos to integrate into the website
  • Remove secret keyboard hacks (created for testing) from the game
Jacob
  • Go through all our team notes and discussion to reformat them into our development log
Talon
  • Create a game trailer
  • Create and integrate assets requested by users (instructions on unlocking doors and directions back to the spaceship)
Additional Notes Recently completed:
  • Finished the Beta prototype (with full map, friction zones, audio, etc.), presented our progress to the class, and conducted our final playtest.
Development Obstacles:
  • The game required very little work, but we struggled with the time crunsh of finishing our deliverables during finals and final project deadlines.
Alpha Playtest:
what we learned
  • Due to the complexity of the map, users got lost and struggled to find their way back to the ship.
  • Doors were not clearly labeled with the number of dogs required to unlock them.
How we responded:
  • We added signs pointing to the ship at all intersections.
  • We added labels next to all doors with the number of dogs needed to open them.
Reflection on Current State:
  • We had great success with our final playtest. The class loved it and laughed at the light-hearted audio assets.
  • Next step is to finish polishing the game and complete the final deliverables.