Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Pre-production week 7

Did we skip a week? Sort of...the "Day Of Reckoning" post was technically Week 6 of pre-production, but no status reports took place that week since teams were still being restructured. For week 7 it was also an odd week with the restructure, teams doubled in size, seating arrangements were shuffled around, and chaos eventually became calm. Read on for more on the new teams!

Drifters
Drifters ended up as the larger of the two teams by a slight margin, and the newly added programmers, artists and producers decided a whole new team structure was due. Art, Design and Programming each have their own team with a lead, and then the leads from those three teams, along with leads of other categories such as Quality Assurance and Sound Engineering, all form a central team. With the increase in team size making it impossible to relocate to either side of the Cohort 5 space, the Drifters team fought for their freedom and won the battle to move operations over to the previously barren Cohort 4 space. The larger workspace pods allow for 4-6 team members to sit together and work, creating a programming, art, and design pod, as well as a central pod, with the liaison producers sitting near their respective teams.

With these newly formed teams, the SCRUM meetings have also changed slightly. Each team now meets for their normal 15-minute daily SCRUM in their own assigned war room. After these meetings, the leads all go to the central SCRUM meeting to make sure all parts of the development are on the same page. The increase in manpower and streamlining of communication allows for the scheduled tasks to be completed in advance of previously projected dates. With critical components expected to be completed earlier than scheduled, the team is now open to more polish time or the inclusion of optional features that were marked as "if we have time" additions. Additional worktime comes from stretching the pre-production schedule to March 24th, meaning the development plan can be solidified more soundly and allowing the production phase to be started in a more directed and concrete state.

More designers means more design ideas, and the team is looking to integrate these new ideas into more features for later consideration. They're also creating a class system for the NPCs to diversify movement and interaction, as well as create distinct advantages and disadvantages for drifting to certain bodies. The new artists are able to up the speed of production of more models, including starting the work on female models. The model format has been broken into a 3-part system with head, torso, and legs created in separate pieces that can be switched around to create more combinations without making whole new models. The expanded programming team is now working on researching the networking technology needed to get the full multiplayer experience done, but in the meantime they've gotten pickup interaction on the Drifters picking up artifacts, so they're still progressing quite well in the midst of research and testing.


Sultans of Scratch
Just like Drifters, Sultans also spent the week with growing pains of their own. Relocation for them involved taking over the entire left side of the Cohort 5 space where the original team was located among Delirium and Chain Game. They're continuing the spiral development cycle and cycle 1 is scheduled to end March 5th. Their main goal is the flash prototype to be finalized and nail down their mechanics in a visual and tangible format. The 2nd cycle is over on March 26th where they hops to have complete mechanics solidified and the custom shader working in-engine.

One of the major ideas proposed was the idea of freestyle dancing, rather than scripted moves with arrow triggers as was previously shown. The new design team is working with this idea in terms of gameplay, while the art team is now working on environment designs that forgo the arrow fields for a different venue look. With all these new ideas coming in, a designated whiteboard in their cohort space has been put up for all outside suggestions for dancer styles, looks, and music ideas.

New assets have still been coming in this week in the midst of the restructure chaos. The latest mocap shoot gave rise to 81 new animations of dance moves and idle states from their breakdancer, Nelson. An animation model is being attached to the rig data to allow for better cleanup of the animations, which need to transition smoothly from one move to another to allow for a true freestyle dance experience. The original music tracks from the DJ have also come in with 3 of the 5 being the favorites of the team and making the cut as the definite tracks to be included.