Blog 3 Redux: Scrumroll Please

While working on the game “Aetherial,” my group and I are applying the development framework known as Scrum. Before I began this course, I didn’t even know what Scrum was, let alone how to apply it. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to grasp.
The bread and butter of Scrum is the “Product Backlog.” A product backlog is where everything that needs to be included in the game to create a ‘minimal viable product’ is placed and organized based on things such […]

Blog 6 Redux: I’ll Kick the Spear Habit This Time. Honest.

After a period of ten weeks where a fair few felt like days and months at the same time, Archon completed the game “Aetherial.”
What is Aetherial?
Aetherial (or rather, Group Archon’s interpretation of Aetherial) is a 2D shoot ’em up where the player flies through the sky in an airship. The player can fire a harpoon as a normal attack, but may use the limited “Aether” available to them for two special abilites. They can fire homing missiles that return to […]

Comment Archives: Week #6 – Michael Degirmen, Team Gnoll

On the bright side, you and your group managed to get a workable game out despite the feeling like the universe wanted otherwise. Also, the fact that you and all of the remaining team members didn’t let these setbacks get to them says a lot about you and them.
I know my knowledge of the inner workings of your group is zero and with what I’m about to say, I’m not trying to take away or demean anything about your grievances […]

Thus, I Give Up the Spear: A Postmortem on Archon’s Aetherial

Archon’s Aetherial has been completed. It’s a strange feeling to be working on something for an extended period of time and then no longer. It’s like there’s a part of your brain that still hasn’t fully registered that fact. If I could sum up the overall experience of the development process in a word, it would be ‘disappointed.’ Disappointed at the end product, disappointed at myself, and so much more. Even so, there is a silver lining to this cloud.
What […]

Comment Archives: Week #5 – Yinsong Hong, Team Flytrap

Seeing everyone’s games and the work they put into them was probably my favorite part of the playtesting as well.
It is good that you mentioned the feedback from alpha regarding the floodlight and power-up, however it would have be interesting to know how that feedback was applied in the beta. On a similar note, you talked about that you know what to polish for gold, however you did not expand on that. Even just one example would make a substantial […]

Testing, Testing, One…Two…Seven!? Oh No, Not Again!

The importance of a fresh pair of eyes on a work in progress during game development cannot be understated. Work on a game long enough, and the obvious problems start to become not so obvious. There have been two official playtesting sessions over the course of…the course, one before alpha and one before beta. While my group’s first playtesting session did not yield much as there was not much to test, the second playtesting session offered valuable insight into our […]

Comment Archives: Week #4 – Benjamin Harbakk, Team Ettin

I found your post very informative. You clearly know what you are doing went it comes to sprites and Unity.
If I do have a problem though, it’s that your post comes across as very dry to me. It does not feel like there is any ‘you’ in here, if that’s makes sense. Without ‘you,’ this just looks like a “How to use the Animator in Unity,” and if I wanted to know about that, I would look elsewhere. Though to […]

May Ahab a Moment of Your Time?: Designing the Leviathan (and Friends)

I do not view myself as someone who thinks outside the box. Instead, I prefer to believe I bring a shovel before I go inside. By working within the confines of what is given to me, I feel I am more creative than if I was without constraint. It is this mentality I adopted as always when I began working with “Aetherial.” (Disclaimer: The following work is representative of an ongoing process and subject to change)
Brainstorming
In the beginning of development […]

Comment Archives: Week #3 – Carl Leong, Team Devourer

Don’t sell yourself so short. Despite saying otherwise, you clearly do have something to say about it. From reading your post, it’s obvious that you understand what scrum is, the way it works, how you and your group are applying it to develop a game, the accompanying ups/downs, and how you have been dealing with them. Even if you aren’t necessarily familiar with scrum, I can see and say you still ‘get it,’ and any growing pains are just part […]

Comment Archives: Week #2 – Alexander Sinn, Team Cockatrice

I can appreciate how you’ve chosen to take the harder yet potentially more fruitful path by going with the fog instead of nighttime. You explained your process clearly and the way you described it was also clear. I feel like me or someone else could possibly reverse engineer what you did, which, if that was your intention, you’ve succeeded.
Some English advice though. Words like ‘basically’ and ‘essentially’ are similar to ‘like’ in that there are mostly used to fill in […]

Scrum + Grumpy = Scrumpy, A Coincidence I’m Sure…

Applying the scrum methodology during development of ‘Aetherial,’ reminds me of a quote from the composer Leonard Bernstein: “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” In theory, scrum seems quite suitable at creating these conditions. In practice though, our group has yet to get there. However, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Scrum, a term taken from rugby, is a development framework where a team creates a “product backlog” (which is a fancy term […]

Ray, Ray, Go Away. Come Again Some Other Day: Animating an Aether Ray

This week, I’ve been working on the animations of the ‘Aether Ray.’ I devoted the majority of my time towards the basic movement of the attacking animation where the ray fires the projectile from last week at the player. This is partly because it was more complicated than I had originally anticipated, and partially because I wanted to make sure it was ‘right.’ The ‘skeleton,’ much like our own, is the foundation upon which everything else is laid upon. If […]