Dev Log 1: Serena Shafer – Team Lead, Art Producer
April 30th, 2023
Hi Everyone! Serena here! I just wanted to post a Dev Log about progress with Left Hook that we are currently making! For the past several weeks, we have been in a ideation / pre-production stage for a vertical slice of what we want Left Hook to look like. This week we actually started the development for the project. The design team finalized designs for the gameplay loop. The art team started working on finalized sprite assets that are going to be used in game. The tech team worked on finishing a functional gameplay loop for the game, with some bugs popping up. Finally, myself and the Tech Producer, Stanley, worked on a presentation that we will be sharing in our next group meeting summarizing our progress and our next steps. One of the biggest challenges we have had so far is using Perforce. One of the requirements for this project, as stated by our program director, is that we have to use Perforce as our version control system. However, there have been many glitches and we have not been able to set it up. The past several weeks, we have been trying to set it up using help from a TA, a professor, and even contacting our program director. This has caused our tech team to fall behind in our schedule. During our tech meeting, I made the executive decision to switch to Github instead of trying to continue to make Perforce work for our team. I wanted to cut our losses and not loose any more progress due to a technical issue when there was another version control program we could use instead. The tech team really started to make some progress in their work that we have not seen since the beginning of the term. I know there are probably going to be consequences to going directly against the rules that our program director set in place. Because of this, when I informed Adrian of this decision, I also let him know that this was my decision as a team leader and that I should be the person to serve those consequences instead of the tech team. I made the call so I should take responsibility for any consequences that happen because of it! There will be more updates the weeks progress but I wanted to leave it here on a fish joke: Where do fish go on vacation? Finland
Dev Log 2: Serena Shafer – Team Lead, Art Producer
May 7th, 2023
Hi everyone! This week reached the halfway point for our team’s vertical slice and we have all made some awesome progress. We are now importing our pixel art assets into Unity using GitHub as well as focusing on our GDD and overall game documentation. I personally attend all project-based meetings and try my best to document notes and ideas stated in meetings but there are often times where things discussed in one meeting are not reflected in our documentation. My goal this week was to help our Creative Director, Heath Bailey, in accessing all of the information needed to update our GDD. I also switched our project from HacknPlan to Trello because I got permanently locked out of HacknPlan for some odd reason. We as a team also assembled a Perforce team in order to continuously try to fix our perforce issues that we have been having.
Dev Log 3: Serena Shafer – Team Lead, Art Producer
May 14th, 2023
Hi everyone! Serena here! This week our main focus was to get our alpha build for the game in. We had both our fighting game and reel in game into the alpha by Monday so our main goal was to add a shop where a player can purchase upgrades. I also wanted to start animation implementation within the game so I had the art team primarily focus on building sprite assets. We also finally fixed some of the perforce issues and we were able to get our first group of people into Perforce that isn’t our dedicated Perforce team. We got several members of our programing team in the Perforce and started the process of switching over our assets from Github to Perforce. One main obstacle this week was communication. There had been a miscommunication on who would be adding the shop into the project. I had assigned one of the people in the Perforce to add the shop; however, due to some last-minute scheduling miscommunications, they were unable to add it into the game. This caused a slight panic on the team as our main game had been on the Perforce but the shop somehow was not on the Perforce. This led to us emailing builds to each other and it got very messy. Going into next week, my number one priority is to start getting everyone on the team on the Perforce, that way this miscommunication issues can be fixed in the program and can be avoided going into the future.
Dev Log 4: Serena Shafer – Team Lead, Art Producer
May 28th, 2023
Hi everyone! Happy Memorial Day weekend! Serena here! This week we got two more artists onto the Perforce. This week, the team laid out everything that needed to get done for the Beta build and assigned people to task that needed to get completed. This was very important because after the Beta, our team is going into a production freeze where our main goals is to bug fix and polish for our gold build! This week, Mason worked on the trailer for Left Hook and it looks awesome right now! One of the main issues came along with our good old friend Perforce. For some reason, people’s work was not getting pushed into the overall build so there were people doing work that had already been completed. This cost our team a ton of development time due to the main focus being to get Perforce working.
Dev Log 5: Serena Shafer – Team Lead, Art Producer
June 4th, 2023
Hi everyone! Serena Here! Not much to update everyone on for this week. With finals coming up around the corner and my team starting to really look burnt out, I made the executive decision to tell the team to prioritize working on finals for other classes rather than working on our project. This would either allow the team to get much needed rest from the project before our big deadline push or allow them to prioritize other classes so they can have more time to focus on Left Hook. This seems to have worked because the team seems to be in a better mood going into next week. I also ended up making a huge mistake earlier in the week. It is my responsibility to upload the builds for our Beta submission. However, last weekend, I was out of town visiting family and I missed the message from the team letting me know that the build was ready to be uploaded. Because of this, I completely forgot to upload the build until the day after it was due. Something I am going to try and do in the future is to have reminders on my phone, that way I do not miss when I have to upload the build onto the itch.io page. Next week, our gold build for our vertical slice is due. This includes our website, our GDD documentation, our trailer, our website, and a final presentation. Looking forward for next week, I want to make sure everything is looking alright so that we can meet our gold build going into finals week!
Dev Log 6: Serena Shafer – Team Lead, Art Producer
June 15th 2023
Hi everyone! Serena Here! The past week and a half have been insane. Right before our Gold build was due, there was an error that prevented me from making the build. I messaged our Perforce wizard, Harrison, and thankfully he was able to fix the issue an hour before our presentation. I have no clue what our team would have done without him being able to fix the issue but I am so thankful to have him on our team. On Monday June 12th, we had our final presentation with another Junior Workshop class. They are also making a fishing game so this entire term, we have been casually competing with the other team about who would make the better fishing game. I have called it “The Battle of the Fishes” to the team. We wanted to do something special for Adrian so we printed out a poster image of Left Hook and the entire team signed it and gave it to him!
We also rocked our presentation! Myself, Heath, Riley, Mason, and Harrison were the main presenters but everyone contributed towards the project presentation. The only main issue we had was that we encountered a new bug during the gameplay that had not been caught up until that point. That bug was that there was a way to skip the fishing game and head straight into the battle sequence. The first item on our agenda going into next term is to fix that bug.
Overall, I am really proud of our team and I am super excited to get working into next term! I will be taking next week off and will update this page once the new term begins!