Getting Started

We had our first proper day of working on our project today and it has been a busy one. We started out with a morning meeting, going through what we want to achieve this week and what everyone were supposed to do today.

When that was done I had to sit with the lead programmer, going through the entire game so that we could fill in the backlog. For this project we are using Trello to manage our scrum, we are still quite new to it but it seems really promising. It is easy to just drag and drop cards to the appropriate stage in the pipeline, commenting and attaching images. There are also functions of seeing the deadlines on a calendar and filtering the cards by labels, so that for instance the artists only see the art assets, which gives an easy overview while everything is still in the same place.

Another program that we have decided to try out is Slack, again we have not explored it a lot, but it is kind of Skype and Dropbox in one, you can share files and chat, both privately and in groups. We have for instance a general chat where we talk about the game and things that might be of interest to everyone and separate channels for art, code and design. So far we really like it and nearly all communication takes place there instead of us using Skype or Facebook.

I also managed to squeeze in a meeting with one of our teachers regarding our animations and concept art which was really helpful. We are well on our way with the concepts although there is still some work to be done. Here is one version of the main character that I have been working on today.

Other than that I have been busy answering questions from coders about the game and the artists about their tasks, as well as checking up on them regularly to give feedback and see how they where doing. This is something that I will keep doing, we need to communicate a lot to maintain a cohesive style.

Most importantly perhaps (although we still lack necessary equipment such as sockets and monitors) we went on a shopping trip, getting ink for the printer we brought down to the office so that we could start decorating our wall of inspiration. I hope that in a short while we will have completely filled the walls with inspirational artwork as well as our own art from the game. We also went to get a kettle, and buy some tea and cookies to keep the team happy (coffee is still WIP).