Producer Blog 2

Hello again everyone! 

Welcome to my blog post for Sprint 2 of Gobby’s Farm! Again, my name is Nolan Owens, producer of Gobby’s Farm, a student capstone project here at the Chico State CAGD program. Our team consists of 9 amazing developers all here to learn all there is to know about video game design and animation.

During Sprint 2, I assigned 123 cards, 90 of which got completed and verified. An amazing improvement from last sprint! This sprint also saw the completion of our first electronic prototype. So let's dive into what went right, what went wrong, and what did we learn in this sprint! 

The goal of sprint 2 was to complete our first electronic prototype with as many features as possible. Our 3D artists completed the rest of the produce of which Gobby will collect, the hedges for the mazes, the models for Gobby’s hands, and more! Our coders were hard at work flushing out Gobby’s movement and interaction scripts, super important for the prototype to function as intended. They also completed the turret enemy, which will track your movement and fire a deadly beam after charging up its shot. The level designers worked on finishing the blockouts for the 4 sections of the map. It was also necessary for them to run around the blockouts and test them to make sure to make sure the player will have fun (spoiler alert: they will). One of our level designers Riley also made a blockout placeholder for a big wizard statue that will sit among the flowers, see below for his amazing concept. Lastly, our 2D artist made some sprites for the produce which the player will see in their inventory, as well as art for the HUD. Super amazing work from everyone!

The electronic prototype ended up being one of the best ones in the class! (aka, one of the most functional). Players had fun trying to find their way through the intro maze, as well as collecting produce to reach the quota. As for what went wrong, some players found a block that they could walk through and fall into the void. Some also found the maze hard to navigate and spent too much time in there. Overall, we decided it was a success and got good feedback to consider as we move forward into the next sprint. See the attachment to this post to download and play the prototype. Here's the feedback form, please fill this out if you play! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf4NOuS0UNPwNMgrBCxaU9PMaBTSBOLzc7IrXt3...

As the producer, I found this sprint to be a great success. Our team’s velocity went up, our developers are falling into their work nicely, and we got great feedback on our first prototype. Tune in next week to read about Sprint 3!

Thanks for reading, gamer :)