Producer Devlog 01

Hello there! My name is Brandon Farris, and I am the new producer for Leggy the Robot Arm! I am excited to embark on this journey and keep you updated on the latest progress being made with Leggy the Robot Arm.

Leggy the Robot Arm is a game where the player controls a robotic arm to accomplish various goals. The player has a limited amount of time, which is represented as a resource referred to as ‘Happiness’, to complete a level’s goals. This happiness level is persistent across all levels. Each completed task adds happiness back. Tasks can be completed fast or correctly. Completing them correctly grants additional happiness but it is more difficult. 

I joined this project when it was at a low point. We were almost halfway through the second sprint when I was requested to be the producer for this game and the current state of the backlog and sprint backlog was rough. When I started, there was confusion from the developers about what they were asked to do with several of the cards that they had assigned and the checks/acceptance criteria of the user stories were ambiguous, even to the designer, Els, and myself.

When I decided to take on this project, the first thing that I started with was planning in-person meetings with Els so that I could establish a foundation for what the vision of the game is, going over the backlog to look at what had already been done, any issues that are currently present. Over the next week, Els and I met for more than 15 hours going over design details and discussing possible ways to approach certain issues, particularly on our modeling/programming side of things.

This also included 15+ additional hours working on the backlog and making sure that people knew what they were working on, as well as writing many new user stories so that when we conducted our kickoff for sprint 3, people knew what they were being asked to work on. This includes giving them good checks and acceptance criteria. I don’t want them to have to redo work more than they already had to through the second half of that sprint, due to issues with clarity of what was being looked for with certain cards.

Our team is comprised of 10-13 people, 3 of those being specialized disciplines (Audio engineers and animator) and floating between teams throughout the semester. Els is our designer; Magnus and Elmer are our two 3D Artists; Jasmine is a 2D Artist; Mariely, Ismael, and John are our Level Designers; Joseph and Shane are our Programmers; Linus and Phae are the Audio Engineers; and Mari is our Animator.

Modeling

On the modeling side of things, our top priority was getting Leggy’s model finished. The model had already been done twice, but the first model had 600k tris, which were then reduced to 80k, but that still didn't meet what we were looking for.

With the goal aesthetic to be low poly models, 80k tris for the model was far too much. This was one of the things that Els and I decided to add to the documentation for the requirements for models. Leggy's model could be a maximum of 10k tris, and all other models after that point are required to have <1k tris. This requirement was set for both Elmer and Magnus.

During the meetings Els and I had with him, which we had over Discord voice chat/in-class, I tried to focus on encouraging Magnus. I know his talent for modeling and the quality of models he has produced, and I knew for a fact that he was capable of doing this.

One of the tactics that I took was to adjust his perspective. I had him look at this situation as a chance to learn a new skill, as well as diversify his portfolio. I also connected it to what he should expect in the industry, which is modeling based on certain requirements. So, if you are given a limit of 10k tris, they won’t accept it if it is 80k tris.

By adjusting his perspective, having a few conversations about possible ways to reduce the tri count, and encouragement/affirmation to really make him realize that he can do this, he was able to meet our requirements and was happy with how it turned out.

This was a valuable experience and helped me really think about how I should approach the situation. Since Magnus had convinced himself that low poly modeling is not something impressive and that the work he produced would not make him proud, I considered several different avenues that I could take and chose the ones that I believed would be most productive to progress him towards our goal.

For Elmer, he worked on getting the modular child's room pieces modeled/textured, as well as a low poly wrench set and a life jacket. The life jacket that modeled will not be used until one of the last levels of the game, which was one of the issues that we ran into with prioritization from before I joined the project. However, the models had turned out good and when we were going over the texture aesthetic with him, he was able to understand/adjust what he already had textured with ease. 

Magnus

Elmer

2D Art

This sprint, Jasmine focused on working on some amazing concept art for the different areas that the levels will be placed in, as well as some sprites that will be used for buttons to visually indicate to the player what the controls are. She also worked on making a color scheme for the workshop tools, which look really good and match Els's aesthetic vision excellently. 

Jasmine

Programming

 With programming, there have been some substantial roadblocks that have been encountered. With this game heavily relying on physics, Unity's physics engine has been particularly difficult to work with. This has caused massive headaches for Shane and has been a massive bottleneck for progression. However, Shane has been working hard on looking at different methods to implement this, as well as Els giving a helping hand.

Joseph worked on getting the happiness bar implemented in the UI, which includes visual functionality (not actual implementation), as well as the on-screen control cues and the prototype Main Menu. Joseph, among most developers, was not set up for success with the user stories that were assigned to him. However, he did get things working how we were looking for. With the happiness bar, Els wanted it to appear like the Dark Souls resource bars. For example, when you use mana, the blue bar immediately moves, leaving behind a yellow bar that slowly lerps to the new blue bar location. This was something that Joseph executed terrifically and did a really awesome job with getting it to work.

Joseph

Shane

**Video link coming soon**

Level Design

 This sprint, level designers kicked out a ton of work and did such an awesome job! Ismael, John, and Mariely all got most of their puzzles blocked out and are mostly at a point where they are ready to playtest. Unfortunately, we do not have Leggy's controls to a point where we can conduct playtesting for each of their levels, so we are working on figuring out options to conduct playtesting in some way.  However, they really killed it with their blockouts and went above and beyond by adding actual functionality, as a demonstration, to their blockouts. I am very proud of the work that they did over this sprint.

Ismael

 *Video links coming soon*

John

Mariely

Animation

 For animation, after Magnus was able to get Leggy's model retopologized, Mari went to work on getting the rigging/animations implemented into Unity. They did such an awesome job! Both Els and I were very impressed with how it turned out. She really did an excellent job. Also, since they were able to set it up in Unity, it really helped the progression, as we don't have to have as much of a setup process from our programmers to get that working.

Mari

Production

After joining this project, the total number of points completed jumped from 48 points to 89 for sprint 2, the number of points assigned was 137 and we had 48 points that were assigned but not moved. This was a substantial boost, and I am happy with the direction that we are progressing in. Right now, we have an ideal velocity of 56 and a current velocity of 69.

We still have a lot more work to get done, but I feel like we are headed in a good direction. So far, the team seems more at ease and has been doing a good job of kicking out work. I anticipate our velocity continuing to increase as we start to really kick things into gear, and especially after we get our controls working for Leggy.

Thank you all for reading through this post and I can't wait to update you on how things go in sprint 3!!