16 – 22 February, 2015:

Hilman, Sam, Hannah, Wei and Cheryl-Jean were happy to join Lending Hearts on a tour of Phipps Conservatory, on Sunday.  It was great to get to talk to the kids and also get a feeling for what the monthly events are like, so that we could think more about how to connect these to the design of our experience.

 

This week’s work was finishing up the constellations mini-game with the game design elements, completing the Lending Hearts home star navigation, and getting started on the customisation for personal planets.  We started mid-week meetings where everyone shows what they are working on and what they’ve made.  In addition, Sam showed the team how to use bug control and version tracking to test the current Unity build, and Cheryl-Jean showed the team how to comment and tag issues in Google docs, which the designers are expected to use to respond to the team’s queries in the design document to make it as comprehensive as possible.

Some of our work done this week included:

 

On Friday, we had a chance to not only show these new features to the client, but have our first (unofficial) playtest.  Vasso’s kids Nina, Stephen and Eirene came to the meeting and were excited to draw their own planet and play with the constellations game on the mobile devices and look at the customisation options we had on the computer.  We got a lot out of this playtest, including some great art that now hangs in our project room, and we are happy to have had the chance to see kids interact with our game.  We also talked more about the goals of the project and how the features linked back to our core values of creativity and companionship.

 

Next week will be focused on playtesting, including a “Playtest to Prove” workshop on Wednesday and a playtest session at Elizabeth Forward School District on Friday.  One of our challenges will be coming up with a strategy and plan for our first official playtest.  We will also need to balance this with completing the work that needs to be done and assets that need to be created for the customisation of the personal planets, and getting the constellations game to full functionality with the latest design.  We are also looking forward to the Lending Hearts Gala on Thursday evening.  It’s going to be a busy week.

 

9 – 15 February, 2015:

With a direction in mind at last, we spent a solid amount of time on Monday overhauling our previous project backlog and writing new user stories for the project as it is now.  For this week’s sprint, we focused on three user stories, regarding the constellations mini-game, the navigation menu and the Lending Hearts home star.  By the end of the sprint on Monday morning, we hope to have these items completed.

Our quarters walkaround occurred on Wednesday afternoon, and we received feedback and questions about our project.  There are still concerns about scope and scalability, as well as the large age range, which we will try to address over the course of the project.

By Friday, Hilman had put together a prototype for the constellation mini-game and Sam had put together a prototype for the navigation map of the galaxies, which we showed to our client.  Wei has completed art assets for the constellation mini-game and Hannah has created the backgrounds for the constellation mini-game and the galaxy navigation menu.

Drawing constellations mini-game prototype:

 

Galaxy navigation map prototype:

This Sunday, we will be joining Lending Hearts for their excursion to Phipps Conservatory.  Cheryl-Jean is also working on organising a tour for the Lending Hearts families to the ETC for 21st March.

Our next backlog items for the coming week include the planet customisation and login systems, once we have the mini-game, navigation menu and Lending Hearts home star.  We hope to test what we have every week and iterate on the design and components.

2 – 8 February, 2015:

This week was about locking down what we are making this semester.  It started out with the team name change and a quick turnaround for Wei to produce our final branding material and team photo.

Stellar 6_poster

By Wednesday, we had finalised the bare bones of our concept: a Lending Hearts galaxy with individual planets circling around the home “Lending Hearts star”.  Hilman, Ruchi and Hannah also attended the Playtest to Refine workshop to gather more feedback on our narrowed down idea with a new composition box.  We shared the concept with our client during our meeting on Friday.

In tech, Sam and Hilman began prototyping  ideas for mini-games to see what can reasonably be done this semester.  Now that our concept has been narrowed down, artists Wei and Hannah will be starting to create concepts and assets, while Ruchi will be focusing on UI.

Sprint planning this Monday will be especially important since we will probably overhaul our backlog and create many new user stories based on our decisions this week.  We will also be preparing for Quarters.  Next Wednesday, we will have our Quarters walkaround, where we will share our goals, process, and progress with faculty and receive feedback.  This will transition us into the Production phase of our development schedule and we are eager to get to work.