The Past Week
This week, the team tightened up the work done last week in preparation to wrap up this sprint. Systems that had already taken shape were being cleaned and adjusted in preparation for building out a new prototype for testing.
Content
We have completed designing eight different music levels with three accompaniment tracks each, including our introductory level, where it is possible to create the melody for “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as well as any other melody that fits within that chord structure. Even more exciting though is that our xml-file reading is working, and after a bit of manual conversion from sheet music to xml, we have been able to load our introductory level into the app. Next week, we hope to have a variety of levels implemented that we can begin testing with.
Programming
This was an important and sometimes frustrating week for our programmers.
As we have been merging various branches of our project in preparation to make our next test-ready build, conflicts and memory issues have arisen that our coders have worked hard to squash. Memory leaks in particular had been crashing the app when deployed onto the iPad, and there was an unusual bug with our line-drawing system getting tied up in knots – both of which have been significantly addressed. Memory issues with images are also being resolved by creating texture atlases.
Otherwise, we are continuing to build the menu / level selection interface as well as to move our music notation rendering function into Xcode.
Overall, the team is in a place where we would like the current functions to be less buggy before we move forwards. While bug-fixing is a necessary part of polish, it has made progress this week feel a little slower.
Marketing
The fun highlight this week was that the team has begun filming our project’s promo video. EA was kind enough to let us use their recording studio, and we’ve shot everyone on the team’s talking portions. Now, we still need to film with Jiyoung as well as need more footage of playtests and of gameplay.
Looking Forwards
Next week, the team plans to test our current build to discover any necessary changes needed before Soft Opening the week after. Beyond that, everyone will continue working on implementing our levels / tutorial and making sure the various systems are fully functional.