End of Sprint 5
I can't believe five sprints have went by since the second half of Camera Shy development started! In these five weeks the team has had amazing accomplishments that I couldn't be more proud of. I have been able to witness individuals step up and become amazing leaders, while also watching the new team members find their place in the project. For example, Jamie became a bad-ass lead artist with her exceptional planning and management skills.…
3 Weeks of Amazing!
Last post, I talked about on-boarding the 6 new team members onto the Camera Shy development team. That went better than we could have ever hoped for, and because of that we got to get right to work on building out the Camera Shy concept into a fully fledged game. To do this however, we needed to do a whole lot of planning to make sure the game is built out in the right ways…
Senior Production Begins!
As a new semester begins, so does more work on Camera Shy. Last semester, we were lucky enough to get chosen to move forward in development. Because of this, our team has now expanded from its original 5 to a total of 12. This created a whole new set of challenges for our team to overcome during the first few weeks. First of all, we had to onboard the new members. This involved team members…
Capstone – Final Reflection
Where am I now? These past few years attending Champlain College, I truly have developed the skills necessary to manage diverse teams of different sizes. When I first got to Champlain College, I had managed projects before, but none to the same skill and dedication as here. Since coming here, I have obtained agile project methodologies which have become industry standard. This includes the Scrummaster Certification as well as the Product Owner Certification; both taught…
Capstone – Step 3 Reflection
Introduction Let me start off by saying this. A TON has changed with the game’s identity as well as the team dynamic since my last reflection post – both for the better. In Step 2, our game was decidedly a camera game where we focused on polishing the polaroid camera feel and function while in VR. We were entering un-explored waters in terms of what gameplay could use this camera, and what should justify its…
Capstone – Step 2 Refelection
At False Panda Studios, we are working hard to narrow down our ideas and select the best game possible to continue developing for capstone. We have realized that the “camera” mechanic that was prototyped in the detective game was amazing and showed lots of potential. For this reason, we wanted to focus our engineering time on this feature. We first wanted to go for more of a time travel theme where the camera was showing…
Capstone – Step 1 Reflection
It is finally capstone, and my new team is focusing on VR yet again! This time around, we are going to be working on three distinct prototypes to decide the right genre for our team. The three we picked are as follows. The first prototype is about exploring the idea of a rogue-like in VR. This genre is often done in VR, but we want to sprinkle the additional mechanic if having all movement be…
The Oculus Start Program
Early on my team realized that we need to apply to get more development hardware. We had a serious lack of VR headsets, so we decided to apply to the Oculus Start program. This involved me creating a company website, working on a central brand, and also typing up important material on the game. I applied to the Oculus Start program and heard back a few weeks later with a half-approval. It was contingent on…
Snowball Showdown Beta Postmortem
In doing our final team postmortem, we reflected on the project as a whole so far. We talked about what went right, what went wrong, and what we can improve on future projects in our careers. Starting with what went right, we felt like we really delivered on what we set out to achieve. Our game was mostly bug free, had a complete game loop, and was very fun to play. Everybody who plays the…