This, as our first sprint, was ultimately successful despite a few speed bumps we had throughout. The main goal of this sprint was to begin laying down the foundation for the rest of the game. There are a lot of pieces for this game that need to work well together in order for it to be successful, and since this game is primarily a Simulation style game, most of these pieces are visual in nature. Fortunately we have a lot of talent in the 3D and Animation departments so we should be seeing some finalized products very soon.

This is a breakdown of what each department did for the sprint

The 2D Artists were focused on creating Concept Art and gathering reference pieces. However, we soon realized that this was taking too long as the modellers were blocked by the lack of reference material before they could texture. So we decided to shift gears to making moodboards so that we could move forward in the 3D department.

The Modellers started modelling and UV'ing small asset/environmental pieces, but I told them to hold off on texturing until we had good reference materials so everyone was on the same page. We got some cutlery made, candles, candleholders, boxes, barrels, tables, stools, chairs, and the main character model ready to be textured. A very good start.

The Animators started doing storyboards and blockouts for our main animations such as the character animations (walking, sitting, standing, and idling) as well as for our opening animation. While they were collaborating they also came up with a list of different personalities that they wanted to give different animations to so we could diversify the town of NPC's. Since I'm not experienced in animation, I am trusting their judgement that adding these animations won't put a strain on them at all, so hopefully it will all work out! I also had them practice and learn rigging so that when the character model was finished they could get started on rigging that asap.

The Level Designers worked with the programmers to make a little paper prototype that focused on the tavern serving aspect of the game. I also had them start making some annotated maps for the first level tavern, as well as create some asset lists for the modellers to give a better idea of what we will need to make the world.

The Programmers helped make the paper prototype with the Level Designers, and after that I had them writing up some pseudocode for the AI and other aspect of the game. When they did that they created some of the very basic mechanics like character movement and interaction, plus they went ahead and made some of the UI elements we wanted to utilize.

All in all, it was a successful sprint and I feel like my team did an excellent job with the work they assigned, and I would have to say that in this sprint, I was the weakest link. Mostly because I am not used to this kind of position, I did not prepare quite enough material spread evenly among all the departments, so halfway through the sprint I was still creating and assigning cards on Trello. However, my team was very accommodating and patient with me while I was getting my bearings. Fortunately I had this mistake early on, and as such I have a much better grasp on what it will take for each sprint and preparation for each team member; and barring that, we still had a good amount of work completed these past two weeks.