Dawn of The Final Semester...

Thesis Year - Blog Post 14

New, sort-of-a-whole, Semester ahead of us, a little under 100 days before Thesis projects are due, and about 9 weeks of real work time ahead of us before thesis exhibitions need to be prepared, thesis defenses happen… essentially, not a lot of time to work on a project (again, about 9 real weeks, starting now).

Recapping pre-semester work, I revisited the Museum environment, fixed any remaining geometry issues and re-UV’d everything. The environment is ready for texturing (I may return one last time to the mode to smooth some specific geometry out… maybe, but it’s done and ready).

I also completed a museum “centerpiece” model (the 4th of 10 needed in the project), titled “The Pandemic Now”, a diorama depicting the virus as of now. The model is complete, UV unwrapping and texturing are all that’s required from that piece.

My Thesis questionnaire has also been prepared for volunteer members of my team and beyond starting late next week hopefully, the purpose of this open-ended questionnaire is to identify changes to overall well-being and perspective regarding the ongoing pandemic resulting from the playing and development of video games for use in my paper.

Moving into the first week of the semester itself, I committed myself to the tasks of minor Google Drive cleanup (preparing slides for this semesters sprint submissions, a couple new folders, little things like that), an updated Hall for Museum environment (originally the hall was a simple cube, now has been updated to look more in line with the rest of the environment – the task would’ve been given to Ed, but he would not be arriving at Clark until Saturday, so I decided to lighten his load a bit and just do that myself), and the "Movie Industry" Centerpiece Model (the 5th of 10; like “Pandemic Now” this piece just needs UV’s and textures. Pictures for everything will be included in the next post.

The team has been given tasks in line with meeting this semester’s milestones (listed below).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. All remaining essential Models completed/textured

2. Playable build with a majority of completed assets implemented (priority given to essential assets)

3. Play-tested end of semester project build

Breaking it down further…

For Milestone 1…

o All essential models (including Free Assets & lightly altered primitives') should be fully modeled/UV unwrapped by Week 6 (02/23 End of Sprint 3)

o Textured by Week 8 (03/16 End of Sprint 4)

o Digital Paintings, non-essential models, stretch goal work, and additional project supplemental material will be worked on until Week 9 (03/23 Mid Sprint 5)

For Milestone 2…

o First 9 weeks (First 4 and a half Sprints) of the semester will be used refining, polishing, and adding mechanics to project on Unity. This time will also be spent implementing essential assets into project.

o Build with essential assets and mechanics will be made no later than Week 10 (03/30 End of Sprint 5)

o Final Build can be made after polish (not essential)

For Milestone 3…

o Playtesting commences as soon as 1st build is ready (see above) and continues until the final build is made.

o Play-testing time will be used to break the game in as many different ways as possible to try and fix as many bugs as possible before the end of the semester.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We’ll see how much we can get done. I am optimistic this team is capable of meeting these milestones and putting together something playable and presentable.