Made first pass for the character & its animations
Worked on art assets for the Puzzle
Explored how to implement in-game feedback VFX
Kshitij’s character model.
DESIGN
This week, I started building levels in earnest. I tuned the jumping so that the game was more playable and worked with Akshay to get our movement controls more usable. I designed and built the base level geometry for Charles’s Law island and put in the Charles’ Law jump puzzle. Cheryl-Jean and I also drove down to Washington, PA to visit the Trinity School. We were very pleased with their level of excitement about the project. They were very cooperative and offered many opportunities for us to test with their students. This turn of events has caused Cheryl-Jean and I to fast track the design of our evaluation methods. This week I was frustrated with the amount of time I had to spend on non-project work. I feel like Charles’ Law island could be farther along. Next week I’m looking forward to getting a lot of different physics puzzles into the level and begin polishing the gameplay. I also hope to work with Akshay to get our version control working for Macs. This will allow us to build to the iPads more quickly as well as allow me to work on the project from my laptop.
PROGRAMMING (Akshay)
Implemented heating character ability
Added Kshitij’s art assets into the game – container, cylinder, piston, connector, gate, etc and got them working with the existing code.
Tweaked our particles to look better and similar to Kshitij’s concept art
Handed off physics tools to Julian, so he can drag and drop the prefabs into the scene and they’ll work as intended
Created our first physics puzzle, the piston jump puzzle with these tools
I’ve been using JIRA every day, creating and managing my tasks so we can all be on the same page in terms of organization.
Had our first build day (to test the first Charles Island level) and hopefully received some helpful feedback from everyone.
PRODUCTION
On Monday, we had our first retrospective and began to nail down sprint planning. Retrospective gave us a good insight into what we struggled with in the past weeks, and I am working towards solving these problems throughout the semester. Organisation has proved more important than we previously planned. Sprint planning gave us concrete goals for up until quarters, and I tried a new method of doing this using the whiteboard to list and break down stories into tasks. Team buy-in has definitely been a challenge with using JIRA, but I continue to try and show its effectiveness at keeping us all on the same page. With Akshay’s build meetings, I hope the team is better able to see our progress more concretely. The biggest success this week for me was the teacher meeting with Trinity High School, which was very productive. Our school contacts there are very excited about the game and have provided us with numerous insights about using technology in the classroom, evaluating students, facilitating discussion and even provided lesson plans. It is fortunate that we have found experts who are engaged and enthusiastic about the work we do. I hope to foster this partnership and playtest regularly at their school.
This week, things have become more concrete. My focus has shifted from designing mechanics to creating actual level geometry and testing. I’m having to brush up on level design process so that I can create levels that meet learning goals in a timely manner. The feedback for interacting with thermal systems have to be stressed this coming week. Next week I want to meet regularly with Kshitij to get feedback designed and give art passes on levels I’ve designed. I’m happy we have a plan and I want to make sure everyone is communicating and using the organizational structures Cheryl-Jean has set up. We sometimes ignore organization and it is to our own detriment.
Displaying our design goals for the game as a whole and design sketches for level elements.
PROGRAMMING
Deployed our platformer prototype on the iPad 3 and 4
Handed off some level building elements to Julian so he can mock up some levels
Tweaked controls for the mobile device
Worked on some basic jump control, camera follow, tiling and parallex effects for the art layers
Constrained the physics system to 2 containers for now, will work on gas splitting later
PRODUCTION
We spent a lot of time this week preparing for quarters, and a large part of that for me was trying to get communication going so that the prototypes could be built in time, as well as working on the slides and practising. We had some underlying production issues that came to the surface, as we hadn’t been communicating much and we had been neglecting daily meetings due to our busy schedules. So, we had a full team “intervention” meeting on Wednesday where we each voiced our concerns and got back on track with standups, goals and tasks. It looks like next week, I need to hold a workshop for teammates to better understand JIRA. Some changes that came out of that meeting include a mid-week full team update meeting, a deeper commitment to daily meetings/project management and a build day (Thursday) and build meeting (Friday) for Akshay. I have learned that too little structure for this team can be a recipe for disaster. During quarters, we got a lot of useful feedback, mostly centred around getting the look of the game to match our design goals. I will be typing out this feedback for the team and we’ll be acting on it next week. I am also still in conversations with schools and have set up a meeting with Trinity High School for next Thursday. Most of all, I am happy that my team seems to be re-motivated due to quarters and on the same page again, and I hope to keep fostering communication and organisation as I have seen what happens when we take it too lightly.
Got the full license for Cinema 4D, so was exploring it
Early level layout.Early puzzle layout including a first pass at our “piston & stuff”.
DESIGN
This week, I continued to make progress on the design with an eye towards our quarters deliverable as well as went on the adventure module. The puzzle elements and mechanics designed in the prior weeks have been synthesized into several level sketches that will be implemented in Unity. These sketches have made the gameplay resulting from the previously designed mechanics more complete and given a jumping off point for further iteration. I have also been preparing for our meeting with the Ellis School. This has involved working with Kshitij to get some of my level sketches made into illustrations for documentation that we will give teachers during our meetings with them. On this same front I have been taking steps to ensure that our meetings with teachers yield as much design relevant information as possible. I’m very excited to learn more about how thermal concepts are currently taught, the difficulties teachers see their students having with the material, and how technology is currently used in the classroom. This week I will put together my parts of our quarters presentation and hopefully get my hands on the level editor to see my puzzle designs in action. The adventure module was a lot of fun; the hiking at Bedford Springs is fantastic. Next week I hope to communicate the design to the team more clearly and more often.
PROGRAMMING
This week I added continued to work on the core physics system of the game. I made some changes to the code’s design including the way that gases work in the game. I changed the system to use particle systems to visualize the motion of gases, rather than individual sprites. I also added heat transfer to the containers, so now the containers respond to stimulus in the form of external heat/forces and also natural loss of temperature. Through gates and connectors, gases can move between containers based on differences in pressure until equilibrium is reached. Gases behave as independent entities so the system should be expandable which is my goal. This week, I also set up the mac dev environment and am in the process of getting an iOS developer account. I plan to integrate the core system with the platforming prototype and create a jump puzzle with art from Kshitij in time for quarters.
PRODUCTION
This week, I made further contact with teachers from the Montour School District, the Ellis School and Avonworth. So far, we have a meeting scheduled with the Ellis School next Tuesday, with hopes that we can get some results in time for quarters. Additionally, I’ve set up our presentation document for quarters with an outline of what we can present. I’m eager to see what the rest of the team has achieved this week, and I feel that more meetings as a team would be beneficial but difficult to come by given everyone’s conflicting schedules. Next week, I will be primarily working on quarters but also trying to maintain contact with the schools and arranging for upcoming visits and meetings.
Strategized the Art-Development pipeline & process
Created concept art of for a default scene
Kshitij’s concept art for an initial scene.
DESIGN
This week, I continued to work with Kshitij and Akshay to flesh out the art and technology needs for the design. I also wrote the copy for our teacher outreach document that will be provided to teachers who are interested in collaborating with us. This coming week I will begin prototyping puzzles using our physics engine, meet with interested teachers, and work with Kshitij to make our teacher outreach document more aesthetically pleasing.
PRODUCTION
This week, I set up the project website and the JIRA project for our team. We did our first rounds of Scrum, and though it’s kind of messy with everyone’s electives and schedules I hope that doing this digitally and calling over Skype each Scrum will be helpful. I don’t know if these processes are useful for the team at all, everyone seems to be doing their own thing, but we will see once we do a retrospective next week. We also had visitors from SATE this Thursday, which helped us practise explaining our project. Through Mike Christel, I’ve gotten us in touch with teachers from the Montour School District and the Ellis School and hope to set up meetings with them soon. As we approach halves this week, I hope to work on making sure we organise what we are going to present and have the branding ready for critique.
This week went into exploring new Art/Design softwares like: Cinema 4d and X-particles plugin.
Made Poster, Logo, Half Sheet.
DESIGN
This week, I continued to apply Schell Game’s transformational field guide to our project. This resulted in the creation of a set of transformational goals and the primary barriers for players reaching those goals. Using the goals/barriers as a guide, I designed several game mechanics that would move players towards our goals while addressing key misunderstandings. On Thursday we brought our goals, barriers, and mechanics to Jesse to get feedback. He feels the design is going in a good direction and gave us further notes/resources that I will be incorporating in the coming week. I’m beginning to put together a list of questions for teachers that will give us information about problems they are having teaching the gas laws as well as the place of technology in their classrooms. Next week I will be finalizing this list and sending it to the teachers who have already agreed to answer the questions on it. In anticipation of our physics engine coming online for my use, next week I will sketch out several levels so that I can dive straight into the editor once it is ready.
Transformational goals for our game.Barriers we identified for students learning gas law concepts.
PROGRAMMING
This week, I worked with Julian to solidify some of our design ideas into a few prototypes that I could develop. I looked for common features between the prototypes, such as particle motion, heat transfer and possible state change that I could test out in Unity. I decided on the Unity Asset Server for version control and had it set up. Then, I began working on two prototypes that contain elements of our game design: One to explore particle motion and heat transfer and another side-scrolling platformer to test our Alchemist’s “abilities”. By developing some of these features I gain a better understanding of what our physics engine should be capable of. One of my goals is to keep the codebase modular. I have been working on code layouts and studying design patterns with the aim to de-couple the architecture as much as possible. The ultimate goal is to have a tool that Julian can use to drag and drop physics engine components into the scene and have them scriptable and functional.
PRODUCTION
This week, the team was in contact with Mike Christel who kindly offered to bring our information to teachers at the STEAM showcase. We don’t have any new leads from the event yet, so I am planning to reach out to other sources. We also had a design meeting with Jesse Schell to go over some initial concepts for the first prototype. Jesse seemed enthusiastic about our ideas and gave us some good feedback, an example maths game and a book full of interesting puzzles that I am enjoying looking through when I need a break from work. In a discussion with the team, we have decided to create 3 vastly different prototypes to test and evaluate before quarters, when we will decide on a direction based on these prototypes. Overall, I’m feeling a little disorganised but I hope that daily standups with the team, starting next week, will help bring some clarity and transparency to what everyone is working on, make us more aware of our progress and obstacles and keep us on the same page. Although I had hoped to have JIRA and the website set up, there were delays and we only got login information late in the week so this will have to take place early next week. Next week, I also hope to be in contact with teachers for upcoming meetings and playtests, which I anticipate being tricky since the school term has started.
Discussed the Art requirement and core vision of the project.
PRODUCTION
This week, I wanted to set up groundwork for our production practices through the semester. We accomplished a few administrative tasks for the week including meeting with advisers and setting up a weekly meeting time, coordinating our schedules, exchanging contact information and communicating with Steve Audia for equipment and software requests. On Thursday we had a team meeting to talk about production goals and outline a semester schedule, and I formalised our discussion along with some other important information into our production primer, which will be useful as a reference throughout the semester. One of the challenges will be ensuring that team members are on the same page, since we have very different schedules. Next week, I hope to have digital project management on JIRA set up by Steve and start our daily Scrum and weekly planning meetings so that we can get organised and start working. I would also like to get a better idea of what we can hope to achieve by quarters and plan accordingly.
