Zak Olyarnik | PPJ Week 2: Playing Well With Others

WEEKLY NARRATIVE

This week was about the team finding its footing.  We used the Monday holiday to get together as a full group and really hash out what we're expecting from the game in ten weeks.  Then we divided up the first real tasks of the quarter.  After reading everyone else's PPJs and the debriefs from the countless meetings that went on over the week, it looks like programming got off pretty lightly.  We decided to utilize a pair-programming approach as a way to get the new members up to speed.  By tackling their assignments alongside someone who had worked on REM last quarter, the team built both code familiarity and trust.  On a team this size, it's an extremely efficient strategy as well, because there's less chance of initial error and less chance of us all tripping all over each other.

My individual part in all of this was importing Rewired, as one of the highest-priority features was getting controller support working.  After senior project, setting up the maps was no sweat, but the challenge came when we tried to integrate it with the Cinemachine import.  Luckily, Noah and I found some help online and actually fixed a different problem along the way.

My last duty is of course making the progress report and encouraging everyone along towards the deliverables we needed for the week.  A scrum-master's job is never complete! 

CONTENT WITH HOURS

• Meetings (6.5 Hours)
• Rewired porting and bugfixing (4.5 Hours)
• Converting last year's playtest survey to Qualtrics (1 hour)
• Project deliverable facilitation and creating the scrum presentation (5 hours)
  

WORKFLOW EXAMPLES

Rewired is extremely easy to set up, and works like a charm!

POSITIVE OUTCOMES

• Pair-programming turned out even better than I was expecting.
• I've been able to slow down a bit.  The team is really strong this term so I can focus on what I'd really like to.

NEGATIVE OUTCOMES

• We're already having late nights, and it's only Week Two.
• This only happened because things were left until the last minute.
  

NEXT TASKS

We need to move to Perforce and start tackling the known-bugs list, but other new game functionality will have to wait until we get specs from the design team. 

TOTAL HOURS LOGGED THIS WEEK: 17 hours

TAGS

#{Zak Olyarnik}
#{Week 2}
#{Programming}
#{Rewired}