Corwin Belser | PPJ Week 7: Nice To Haves

WEEKLY NARRATIVE

This week saw the beginning of implementing "nice-to-have" features, and tweaking behavior. We've reached the point where we're tweaking instead of creating new.  I was not in class or online Monday, so the task assignment was not handled by me this week.  We're quickly reaching the point of not enough programming work as well.

My two tasks for this week were to implement a save-load system, and tweaking Screenie.  The first required creating a data structure to store game information. Currently we're only storing what powers the player has unlocked.  The second step was storing that data and reading it back.  Finally, and most difficult, was to load the lobby and give the player the powers they had already collected.  This proved difficult, as the way level loading was implemented required no scene have the critical gameObjects (player, camera, etc.). I made all critical gameObjects Singletons, allowing all scenes to have them. This made testing much easier, as well as allowed me to load the lobby level right away.

My second task was tweaking Screenie. The first change was adding an "alert" animation when spotting the player. I created a little "!" to use as a placeholder until we get an animation to play.  The second tweak was to make it harder to lose Screenie by running around them. We aren't sure how best to do this, so for a first attempt I modified the behavior to turn around after losing the player, attempting to catch the player behind them.

CONTENT WITH HOURS

• Meetings (2 hours)
• Builds of game (2 hours)
• System for saving and loading save data (2 hours)
• Modified critical gameObjects to be Singletons (4 hours)
• Modified manager scripts to detect level loading, and recalculate/relocate information (2 hours)
• Bug Fixes: (2.5 hours)
• Fixed doors not setup correctly (1.5 hours)
• Added missing critical prefabs to scenes (1 hour)
• Code Review (4 hours)

POSITIVE OUTCOMES

• We're starting to implement our "nice-to-haves"

NEGATIVE OUTCOMES

• There needs to be a large focus this week on finding work to keep programmers busy, or find other areas they can work on

NEXT TASKS

• Begin planning a proper Options Menu
• Compile a list of programming features we'd like to have

TOTAL HOURS LOGGED THIS WEEK: 18.5