Sanctum Infernum - Week 3 Development Blog

Overview

During this week I will outline the following:

• Collaborative and Agile AAA workflow (Scrum)

• Page idea documentation

• Targets for improvement next week

Collaborative and agile AAA Workflow (Scrum)

Communication regarding scrum up until this point has been relatively passable with most information being understood by all departments of the games production. This week however, I feel showed real issues regarding communication within the group. The primary issue was that communication was severely lacking, leaving most of the Guildford campus in the dark regarding changes and new ideas that are to be added to the game. This is problematic as because I am a mechanics designer it is important that I am kept in the loop regarding what is wanted for the game as I may need to balance or design an entirely new system depending if a change is made. In regards to workflow however, I believe that the work that I am doing in both content and implementation could be attributed to a AAA workflow as the tools I am utilising to upload my work I.e. confluence act as a wiki site for the game acting somewhat as a largescale GDD (Games Design Document) for a AAA style project.

Page ideas documentation

During this weeks sprint the primary task that I was given was to create a document outlining possible Page ideas for the games page mechanic. The pages will act as a more powerful version of the basic attacks and will be found throughout each of the levels. These attacks can also be chained together using the DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) mechanic where the player will have to hit specific inputs to successfully do an action. Working alongside George M once again I feel that we were able to develop and outline a various amount of ideas for the page mechanic having a sizable amount for the four different action types (attack, heal, defence and debuff). Furthermore we also flushed out a speed and combo system which would scale depending on the power and rarity of the card used. Speed refers to the time it takes for the DDR input to reach the bottom of the screen and become "inactive" with combo referring to how many successful button presses are required to use a page. These ideas would be reviewed in the next weeks scrum meeting and a selected few will be chosen by the leads to go in the game.

Targets for improvement next week

Once again when reflecting upon this week I feel that the work I have completed is to a sufficient enough level to justify a AAA workload and that if continued I will be successful throughout the entirety of the games production. Where I think there is grounds for improvement is in the communication of the entire development team which I currently feel is lacking. This doesn't solely rely on me to fix however by making sure that I entirely understand tasks that have been given to me, it will make sure that no time is being wasted on something wrong and also ensure that no duplicates of the same work is taking place.

Targets:

• Make sure that the task in which I am given makes sense and I understand what the leads want me to do.