Hello everyone! Another Sprint completed and you know what that means! another update on the production of our game Citadel. Once again I'm Conner Howard, the Producer for our Rouge-Lite Clicker game, and I'm excited to once again go over the work completed by our wonderful development team and to talk about how things are going from a production standpoint. The team, myself included, are all starting to feel the end of development approach, so with only 2 sprints left to go, let's not waste any time!

As per usual, our burndown chart for this sprint in all of its glory!

 The formal point values are as follows:

Points Assigned: 88

Points Moved To Verify: 66

Points remaining In Verify: 0

Points Moved To Complete: 66

Points Assigned But Not Moved: 2

Similar to last time, we saw a slight decrease in overall points completed, but also similar to last time, the team is still well ahead of schedule, even with the natural addition of some points to the backlog and to development, and as a result, I still see us completing the game on time at the current pace, as a stated in my last production post. Even with the team slowing down a bit naturally the closer we get to the end, they are making great progress still.

Programming:
Chase

Andrew

Hunter

As always our programmers are hard at work bringing new systems to our game! Chase go the AI for Squigmarr finished, meaning you can finally fight him in all his glory! He also got a basic pause menu set up, to allow the player to get a break from the action, or to quit the game either completely, or simply return to the campsite to end a run a bit early. Hunter got more spells finished for the game, showcased here is the icicle spell. Finally, Andrew has been getting more advanced AI set up for the enemies, to make them that much more threatening during your encounters with them in-game.

2D Art:
Kevyn

Of course, we have more awesome art from our 2D expert Kevyn! Here we have various icons that he completed for the UI of the game, specifically icons for the various powerups and potions that the player can receive while exploring the depths of the castle itself. Some of these items include the serrated stone, the double jump boots, the ring of resurrection, and much more! The artwork for these icons is based on the models that were already made for these items, meaning that there's good consistency between these icons and what you'll see in-game, and I'm excited to see these properly implemented!

3D Art:
Beren

Bert

Another sprint of course means even more amazing models from our two 3D Artists. Beren got some models made for the various lighting effects that will be added to the game, and made one huge addition: Squigmarr himself! The model turned out better than either my designer or I could have ever imagined, and we love seeing him fully realized. Bert made some awesome additions as well, getting models for the spells in the game made that will be using physical models, that being the aerorang and the icicle, and he also got some cobwebs and a new background texture created, to make the castle look even better! Our game is shaping up to be quite the looker with these two doing our modeling.

Animation:
Arturo

Arturo once again brings the many enemies to life in this game through his awesome animation work. Here we have the tentacle swinging for Squigmarr, attack animations for both the skeleton archer and lancer and a walk cycle for the lancer. Arturo's work has made a huge impact on the look and feel of the game, and he really knows how to showcase his ability to animate none humanoid entities.

Level Design:
Jonathan

Branden

And as always, last but certainly not least, we have level designers. Here we have the very last of the annotated maps that will be finished for the game. from here on out, it's purely level construction and polishing for our two-level designers Branden and Jonathan. It's crucial that they have as much time as possible to make these many levels that they've created as best as they can be, both in how they feel to play, and how they look. Beren, one of our 3D Artists, will be working closely with the two of them to help with art passing and getting things like lighting set up. At the end of the day, we'll at the very least have one very pretty game!

With another sprint behind us, and the end of development fast approaching, I want to take a quick second to talk about something that's quickly becoming apparent in both the team, and in myself, and that issue would be burnout. Personally, I've been working on two other entire games while producing this project, and quite a few members of my wonderful development team tend to work extremely passionately both to the benefit of the game, but also to the detriment of their energy. Slowly but surely, the team has been finishing less and less as burnout starts to settle in for all of us, and it's made it clear how important it is for myself as the Producer to make sure that my developers are not only completing work but that they are also not doing too much work. Even if they want more work, I need to make sure that I'm pacing them properly, to make sure they don't burn out too soon before the finish line, myself included! The team has done an awesome job so far though, and I'm confident that If I direct them properly, that we should finish Citadel without any issues. Thank you once again for taking the time to read my annual production Blog, and I'll see you in the next one!