Ready-Robot Sprint #4

This is a combination of the planning and retrospective documents from the fourth sprint of the game, reformatted and uploaded here for your viewing pleasure.

Planning Notes

Goals

Just like in our last sprint, we plan on iterating on and polishing our game because we already have the core created. During the last sprint, we did a lot of polishing to make our project feel more like a game than a tech demo, and one of our major goals for this sprint is to actually make it into a game by fleshing out the layout of the overworld and designing an actual level to explore with things to do in it. Another plan for this sprint is to have a tangible way for the player to see how much progress they have made in capturing bees, as that was one of the things that Emily suggested would help our players feel like they are making progress and accomplishing something. In our last sprint, we planned a lot of improvements, many of which we added with the realization that they may get pushed back to this sprint. We plan on completing as many of those now, like adding enemy attacks and more variants.

Planned Improvements

• Overworld Objectives
  • We would still like to add some way to make progress in the overworld thanks to the bees that you collect. Realistically, this would just be a path that would only be opened after capturing enough bees.
  • Because this is something new that we would have to develop and isn’t just something that we can create using existing code, likely, we won’t be able to finish this by the end of the sprint. If we have enough time though, we would like to implement this.
  • Working on This: Alessandro
• Enemy Attacks
  • We are going to add in enemy attacks to make the core gameplay loop more engaging to the player. For this sprint, we would like to implement at least one basic attack per variant that would make it harder to circle them during that time. Time permitting, we may add one or two more.
  • Working on This: Alessandro, Mike
• Enemy Variants
  • We would like to continue adding enemy variants to the game, as they definitely help to spice up combat and keep things fresh and exciting. Because of how simple we made variant creation in the code in the last sprint, this goal will depend mainly on art production.
  • Working on This: Abby, Alessandro
• Overworld
  • With the tileset done and implemented, we would like to design at least one fleshed-out level for the player to explore and capture bees in. This will help the game feel more alive and less like a demo.
  • Working on This: Cori
• Audio
  • Currently, we have some amount of audio built-in, but it’s a bit inconsistent. During this sprint, we’ll replace the temporary audio with a more cohesive soundscape to match the overall theme. The specifics for this goal include making custom battle music, creating better sounds for the bees, and adding more ambient sounds in the overworld if time permits.
  • Working on This: Cori
• Smoother Combat
  • The combat with the circling has some off things about it when it comes to the rendering of the lines and where the enemy touches it and each other. Not too noticeable, but we do want it to be fixed and flushed out better.
  • Working on This: Mike
• The Bee Ranch
  • Emily suggested that we show how many bees the player has caught in some way to give the player a sense of progression and accomplishment. We decided that a fun way to do this would be to create a “bee ranch” that the player could go to and see all of the bees that they have caught and befriended. It would also help push the cute factor of our game!
  • This shouldn’t take too long in theory since we already have the code for bees to wander around and collide with walls, so making a scene where they can wander around and won’t trigger combat shouldn’t be too complicated.
  • Working on This: Alessandro, Abby

Possible Roadblocks

• Other Things Come Up
  • As always, we can’t exactly control how busy we are and how much work other classes give us, especially as finals and project deadlines are drawing near, so there will probably be times when we can’t all work on things as much as we would like. As long as we keep in touch with each other and communicate often when such things occur then this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
• Communication Dies Out
  • This has always been a potential roadblock that has been magnified by all of the impending finals and projects looming over us. If our communication dies out because we’re too focused on something else or don’t have the time, our productivity will take a major hit. We were pretty good about maintaining communication during the last sprint though, so we will hopefully be fine during this one as well. We always have the Trello board to fall back on if things get too out of our control as well.
• One of Us Can’t Make a Meeting
  • Again, this is a tough time of the year, so it’s very likely all of us won’t be able to make it to every meeting. As long as we make sure to fill in what people missed from our scrums and as long as they update Emily when they miss her meetings, this won’t be too big of an issue. We’ll all do our best to be as flexible as possible too, so we can change around meeting times and dates to accommodate each other as we need.

Retrospective Notes

Game

What went right?

During this sprint, we focused mostly on polishing and some finishing touches. We were able to get the bees loading into a pen after they were captured. When captured, their sprites change from angry to happy so the player can tell the difference. We also got bee variants implemented. We ended up with three variants with slightly different stats, so gameplay is slightly varied based on what bee you encounter. Along with that, we also added some small “juice” elements. When a bee breaks the lasso in battle the screen will flash red to alert the player. When the player successfully loops around the bee a sprite with flash for a second to reflect the bee taking damage. We also added in a lasso limit, which makes capturing a little more challenging.

What went wrong?

There were some bugs we were unable to work out before the deadline. The lasso is still purple and the bees still move a bit strangely, but neither of those is game-breaking. We also ran out of time to add in an incentive, which was going to involve changing the landscape to be more green and lively the more bees that you caught. Along with this, there were stretch goals that we did not make but would lie to include if we continue to work on this game beyond the class. 

What would you do differently?

If we could do the sprint over, we would have spread out the work over the course of the sprint. We waited until the last couple of days to really buckle down, which meant we were unable to get as much done as we would have liked. We would have also prioritized an incentive to capture the bees, whether that be through a small story or some other means.

Team

What went right?

For this last sprint, there were lots of things that our team did that went right. We fully moved over to using slack a couple of sprints ago, and that once again helped us keep everything in one cohesive place regarding communication. Along with that, we also kept communication up with our weekly stand-up meetings, even after the meetings with Emily stopped for the last week. Having this meeting outside of the meeting with the T.A. helped us focus on what exactly needed to be done outside of the broad questions given during the TA meetings. While we weren’t all able to work during the duration of the sprint, we were all able to come together for one final push to polish our game. 

What went wrong?

Since it was the end of a very difficult semester, our team was very burnt out during this sprint. There were some points where we would meet and none of us had added to the game during the period between meetings as well as some times where we dropped communication completely. This lost motivation was difficult to overcome, especially as we come to the end of the school year as two of our team members are graduating. Despite that, we were able to come together as a team for one final push to get our game to be the best we could make it be.

What will you do differently next sprint?

I think that the only thing that we could do differently would be to keep communication up even through burnout. We all ended up getting all the work we promised done, but we should have tried to let each other know more about how we were doing emotionally which was something we dropped once we moved from discord to slack. Other than that, I think that we did the best we could do under the circumstances.