This past week I have been working on trying to get the game’s planning up to scratch. I have been especially interested in coming up with workflow solutions in order to help us prioritise, as we often do have problems with meeting the necessary deadlines.

As we have more time than ever before to plan our time, I made sure to spend an entire day of scheduling, so that we make the most of every day as we possibly can. This included recording an asset list, where we listed as many assets and features that we could think of at this point in time. I also had us agree on particular deadlines and milestones that we need to meet throughout the course of the project. This kind of planning becomes increasingly important when the milestones and deadlines reach longer than two weeks, as it is incredibly easy to end up working on minutiae that doesn’t need to be worked on!

Next I also wanted to implement an actual Kanban board in the room – something physical which we can look at every day. It became increasingly apparent that a spreadsheet wasn’t cutting it, as no one was actually referring to it in order to find out what to do. The I set up colour-coded Kanban cards organised, emphasising the sprints we had already set up in Hansoft so that our deadlines and goals for the week are understood.

My own tasks this week have included some greyboxing and planning of levels throughout the game. This also allows us better quantify the amounts of assets we would need to make, and how to tackle each of them. Identifying what can and needs to be built, as well as determining our priorities early, make the overall task seem more possible than otherwise.

The project is also looking like it will become a rather animation-heavy game, and it became rather difficult to discern the multiple states that the character is in at each point in time. As a result, for visual feedback purposes while we test the game, I made some quick, hilariously bad placeholder animations. They’re here just so that we know when the player is on the ground, attacking, or is defeated, and until our final character is rigged and ready to animate: