Sprint Two Production Blog – Synoptic Project

Week 1:

7/02/20:

Throughout today, I have been organising and preparing my team’s scrum board so that we are prepared and know exactly what to do as sprint 2 begins. Below I have included some screen shots of our updated scrum board. Me and my team decided to switch from a traditional scrum board to a digital one which can be made on Trello – a website that specialises in scrum boards. Me and my team discussed moving over to using Trello because the website is far more efficient because you can easily track your teams progress and receive updates on their work due to there being an activity section, in which your team can write in an post messages on the scrum board cards. Another reason that we chose to switch to using Trello is because it is easier to manage and maintain when compared to a tradtional scrum board.

This morning before we started off production of Sprint 2, me and my group held a meeting about what we will plan to do, as well as set out and achieve within the sprint. During the meeting with my team we wrote down all the goals we aim to meet within the 3-4 week time period of the sprint and then gave each objective a number ranging from 1-10, one being of less importance and ten being needing to be done urgently. Some of the things we discussed were targets we set during the previous sprint, such as having Olivia create a crouching animation for our main character and Michael creating a Unreal Engine level layout – both of which were not completed, and are examples of objectives we categorised as a priority level 10.

Here is the list that I wrote down during my group’s meeting, which details what we set out to achieve within the time period of sprint 2. I posted this list in my group’s Discord server which we set up before the start of sprint 1 – we use our Discord server to help share certain files like concept art that I or Oliva have made or to share the scrum meetings we hold every morning.

Above you can see the tasks that me and my team had set during our meeting documented and filed into individual objectives on Trello. Below you can also see the full scale scrum board that I took a screenshot of. I have added my group to the scrum board and assigned them to these tasks. I like Trello because it displays the profile pictures of each team member that I’ve assigned to each task which allows everyone to immediately see which task they’re meant to be working on.

These are some screenshots that I have taken to show that I have gone into detail about the tasks that need to be done, so my team knows exactly what they need to do without relying on having to keep asking. I thought writing what needs doing was also a good way to ensure that my team would still know what to do if anyone went off sick or overslept.

Link to Trello Bored: Get it here

12/02/20:

This morning, I have started researching into creating magic VFX within Unreal Engine. I started researching so that I could learn the process of creating these effects and materials. I will not be using the material I have created today for my group’s project, this material is only a practice of setting it up. I can pass what I have learned on to Michael who predominantly works within Unreal Engine to save him time researching into setting up VFX. I’m also researching into VFX because I can help Michael in Unreal Engine when needed.

I created the effect by creating a new material within Unreal Engine and then importing a texture that I believed would be suitable for a magic energy type texture to then set up so that it could rotate and pulsate. I set the texture blend mode to translucent and changed the settings to change the visibility of the texture.

13/02/20:

Continuing from yesterday, I have been working on setting up a magic texture so that I could learn how to create VFX and materials like this for my group’s game. Yesterday I was able create a a magic texture and get it to pulsate and rotate. I have focused on adding colour to the effect and lowering the opacity of it to make it come off as slightly more translucent and aura like.

With the creation of this effect, it is now possible to begin experimenting with a magic system that could be used for something such as possession mechanics which was one of our core game pillars in which the player would use magic in order to possess and NPC and then use that NPC as a means of distraction to others in order to help complete quests etc.