Dev Log 4 - Pre Production & Starting Our Work

Hello everybody! Welcome to another Dev Log.

This week, our group got back together and kickstarted our project by creating a Jira board. We wanted to make sure all our tasks were on the board and that we each had a task to do for the Sprint this week. 

This week, my task was to create another layout for the game, with all new considerations in mind. However before I made the layout, I had another interesting lesson I learned this week. In short, there was some miscommunication with what I thought was one of my tasks for the week, and another teammate ended up doing it before me. I was confused, and worried they took over the task assuming I wouldn't do it. However, I decided to talk to them, and realized there was just a misunderstanding! They thought part of the task was theirs, while I thought the entire task was mine. This was a productive conversation, and I ended up feeling more comfortable with my teammate afterwards knowing we can come to each other if we have issues. I'm discussing this in my Dev Log to show that not all things are perfect in development, but we can become stronger as a team from having these conversations. I also realized I should be more clear with what I'm doing each week, and be more clear with my tasks in Jira, to avoid any confusion in the future.

In terms of my task, I ended up creating another layout for what the level of the game should look like. Since we are setting our game inside a cave on the planet, I wanted to update the layout to reflect this. I made the game space more rounded, and included all game pieces in a way that would hopefully be helpful and interesting to the player. I also included the player's size and the size of the game screen, which can be dragged around on the layout in Miro to show what the player would see. 

Considering the design is rounded to look like a cave, I knew there could be some considerations with art or the camera that would make it harder to implement. For this reason I also created a rectangular design. 

I discussed with the team if this would be an issue, but the team decided it could be worked around, so we are sticking with the rounded one. Once this is put in the game, we can see what needs to be adjusted further. 

Overall, I hope to do more for this sprint and continue to drive the game forward. See you next time!