Cory Zicolella, Week 9 PPJ, Blog Post 9

Garnering Playtest Data - 5 hours
Editing Playtest - 1.5 hours

This week was pretty standalone from any other for me.  While I usually do many other extraneous things, this week was focused simply on getting all of the playtests we needed since we had to have 44, and we didn't get much testing on the motionbase this term.  A secondary objective I had was to get more footage for the video so I could edit it this week; while I did get the footage, the labs were full when I was available so I couldn't make the necessary edits.

Getting the playtest data was mostly done on the Wednesday group playtest where I spent 4 hours, and on the following monday where we reserved an hour to get even more.  I recorded testimonials of some people before and after their ride experience if they didn't mind being on camera.  I also had to edit the playtest for each of these sessions before they happened to make sure they were good (and in some cases, to streamline it).

That was all I really did this week.

Total Time Spent: 6.5 Hours

This is a personal post mortem, and as such I will be measuring my work I did against my team as a whole.  I personally think I was a great asset to Alien Arcade; I was part of the original team a term ago and my placement as a sound/idea person carried through to this term as well.  Of course I did other things such as modeling as well, but my main placement seems to have been unofficially in the sound & video department, and idea creation.  This all being said, there was definitely good and bad that came with this project.  I',m happy I got the chance to work on it, but given another opportunity, there are somethings I would change.

What went right?
1. Reporting to the team.
I always made sure I would report back to someone if anything I did was finished (along with a direct path to that thing), or if anything somehow was an issue.  This really helped the team I felt because I was capable of doing more than I thought (if I told someone I didn't have much to do), and the team also knew exactly what I had been working on, and when it was finished.  Some people didn't do this as well as me I feel, and certain games may have slipped slightly because of it--they were always fixed, but usually never arrived to class in the state they should have been in.

2. Democracy
It is a weird label, but honestly I have no other clue what to call it (maybe team synergy).  Whenever I had an idea regarding a game, or an issue I had with an existing facet of one, or even a trailer decision, I ran it by the team.  This made it so everyone was aware of whatever idea/issue I had, but it also made it fair as to what we should do with it.  This essentially made everything a team decision, which I feel is really important for morale; everyone feels as if they have a say and in the end as if something important was credited to them.  This occurred often when brainstorming new ideas (this method of thinking eventually led to Draw at Noon) or during what I call 'issue meets' where we go through every game and list what is wrong (this is how we agreed to handle certain bugs).

3. Documentation
Personally, I didn't do a lot regarding this, but I think the amount that I did certainly helped the team largely and made the necessary processes faster.  When i gathered all of the sound effects for use in Alien Arcade, I made sure to document all relevant copyright information as well as a brief description as to what the ound actually is.  This made it extremely easy for David to add this into the GDD later as well as the credits of Alien Arcade; and it also helped everyone else who was trying to put music into the game.  Aside from this, my changelog submitted both to perforce and slack whenever I did something was very succinct and included exactly what went in and where each time, making finding those things easy.

What went wrong?
1. Timeliness
I am really bad personally when it comes to working in a timeframe, specifically because I work the best under pressure.  That being said, I always got things in on time and never really failed to do a task that I was assigned to do for the week.  I simply waited a long while or put the assignment on hold until the ladder end of the week to do other things in the meantime because that's how I've always worked.  It wasn;t necessarily a detriment to the team, it just forced me to change over time--I went from working mostly Monday or Tuesday on the project to starting to work on Saturday for it.  In some ways, this can be a positive thing; but it took 8 weeks to get there and I feel as if nothing but good would come from having me start and finish things earlier.

2. Not Getting Enough Playtests
Being in charge if playtests for Alien Arcade, this falls heavily into my hands I feel.  However, a few others and myself always mentioned playtests to people and we never seemed to meet our quota like we did from last therm (which is probably due to the huge influx of team members).  This means both on and off the motion base too; we managed to get many playtests our final week, but that was a desperation attempt because it was really required in order to fix bugs.  If we had more testers in general, and specifically more on the motion base, I feel like a large number of bugs we discovered could be fixed, and the motion could certainly have been tweaked already.  This was probably largely in part to there needing to be 3 people free, and 2 xbox controllers to even do a single playtest at all.

3. Time Estimation
This almost goes hand in hand with timeliness, but I'm setting it aside because this was a large reason why things were handed in later than expected as well.  This term in particular, I ran into many computer issues (both on my personal computer and on lab computers) that caused my various tasks to slow to a slog.  Whether it be the computer i was working on not having enough ram to handle a certain edit I made, or my computer deciding to randomly slow until I needed to do a system restore, or simply having something take longer than expected; time estimation always was an issue.

Lessons Learned:

• Reporting to the team allows everyone to know what's going on
• Team synergy is really important in a large group project for morale
• Documentation, no matter the form, will always help a process
• Working under pressure can be good, but in team projects it is not usually the best
• Playtests are extremely important to working out the flaws of a game
• It seems that estimating slightly more time than needed wouldn't hurt anything amidst all of the computer issues I ran into this term

Cory Zicolella, Week 8 PPJ, Blog Post 8

Fixing up Survey - 2 hrs.
Faces for Poke Games - 2 hrs.

This week I hadn't anticipated a large problem: that the video edits I wanted to do to our final trailer in fact were impossible until our Wednesday large playtest.  There, I plan to capture new footage for our trailer in a much more quiet location hopefully) where the volume is normalized and it is easier to understand.

In lieu of this, for my other work this week I focused on firstly the playtest survey (since plenty of people (hopefully) will be taking it), and the faces for the poke games.

For the playtest, I had to figure out how to insert pictures into the questions that needed them so testers had context if they didn't know the name.  So time was taken first gathering the pictures, which took more time than it should because of the slot machine system; constant trial and error until I got the games I needed pictures for.  Then I reworded things that I thought needed tweaking, and removed a large amount of questions that either weren't relevant anymore or that we already got a large amount of data for.

For the faces, I wanted to start with something simple, then add more as I felt was needed, sort of like a template.  The part that took so much time was that I tried many different combinations of faces and the like before I settled on two that I enjoyed.  These can obviously be improved, with shadows or whatnot as needed.  They might look a little weird or creepy for what we are going for, but these are simple enough where they can be easily changed:

Content Positive:

- Fixed up the playtest survey for our big scheduled testing day (2 hrs)

- Made some faces for the poke games that are easily editable (2 hrs)

Content Negative:

- Didn't realize the scheduling conflict with the playtest date until mid this week, so I couldn't focus on the trailer like I wanted to.

Total Time Spent: 4 Hours

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As an additional thing to add to our PPJs this week, we were asked to go to GDC Vault and look up a post mortem of our choice, watch it, and discuss it here regarding how they handled it and our reaction.

The video I watched was entitled "4.5 Million Players in 100 Days: Lessons from Dying Light" ( http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022816/4-5-Million-Players-in ).  The video was ~30 minutes in length, and I believe nicely sums up the process that the company went through from production pre-release to work post-release.  The speaker went into detail as to how everything was created and handled with anticipation of release day, and the features they definitely wanted included in the final release (along with their priority).  For Dying Light in particular, there was an emphasis on choice: they wanted the player to enjoy killing zombies, so melee combat was their first priority.  This was quickly followed by the choice to not indulge in violence at all, instead being able to run from zombies using a parkour system they designed to be very fluid and intuitive to a player running through unknown areas.  I find this aspect to be perhaps the most important take away from the speech, even if it was work done technically before the release, as it highlights that having a goal in mind is extremely important, and you want to keep a certain vision for your product by the time of release.

Nowadays watching post mortems are pretty interesting, because games do not so easily 'die' as they used to.  Updates, patches, and DLC keep trickling in, at least for a few years, and so to get a true post mortem is difficult (particularly for successful games).  Dying Light is now exception; the conference was held about 3/4 of a year after its initial launch, and the speaker talked about how it is very important to keep the audience engaged in the product, so they keep coming back.  According to their stats, which they track meticulously (for patching reasons - i.e. if very few players use a certain trap, they might patch in a subtle way to show people they can use that trap), they had about a 35-40% retention rate on the game.  This was referred to as a 'good thing,' because not all players on release keep playing, and to have nearly half of all people play it a year into its life is amazing.  But the speaker stressed the importance of player content, and how using the Steam Workshop added life into the game, with nearly 150 user levels.  They also engaged the community on Youtube with various challenges, and set up Skype pre-recorded message centers for little easter eggs having to do with the game.

When applied to Alien Arcade, I think it is important to keep in mind the audience we are trying to attract as well, and to keep them occupied with our game.  Obviously it is really different as this is a small college assignment with a team of 11, which won't be continued in any way past this term - unlike Dying Light which is patched still.  But being able to realize if we kept our initial 'vision,' not only though this term but through all 20 weeks of development, and if we considered our audience enough will be a large portion of the personal postmortem for me.

Cory Zicolella, Week 7 PPJ, Blog Post 7

This week is a bit harder to calculate, as I sort of did everything at once.

-Video Editing (4 hours)
-BMG Finding (In and out during renders of the video)
-Playtest Analysis (1 hour)

This week, as the team discovered we had a video sell draft due, I decided to tackle it.  The GDC panel we presented to about a month ago had used a testimonial video to try to pitch to the judges, so we used that as the base.  It definitely required some updates to reflect the game, and also needed better editing work done in general.

However, this process proved far more difficult than it should have.  Namely, I ran into many video issues.  The plus side to this is while waiting for the multiple renderings to finish, I had alot of combined time to search for background music files.  After awhile of rendering troubleshooting (to no avail), I managed to get together all of the music that we'd need so far.

The first of these issues was that I had some de-synced audio for some of the clips.  Very well, fixed easily enough.  Took about 15 minutes and done.  That was the easiest problem, though.  The second was that I knew in its current state, the video needed captions because we captured it in a noisy area.  So I spent at least an hour (if not more) using Adobe's captioning tool, following their official steps.  When it got to the final step for caption display, it simply wasn't working as advertised.  I asked around for some people's opinions, and they didn't know how exactly to solve it either (most people never used the actual captioning tool, but just title cards).  So that was an effort that ultimately went wasted for this draft because I couldn't find anyway to get them to appear.  The final and largest problem I ran into was that when previewing or exporting the video draft, it would constantly get stuck at 62-64% with an 'Unknown Error'.  Because it didn't know itself what the problem was, I didn't ether.  I had to sift through all my footage that would be around the 60% area, check settings, change encoders, render in different ways--when it came down to it, after too many attempts, I disabled two video layers and it exported fine.  This leads me to believe that the computer I was working on either didn't have enough RAM to render out the edits I wanted to (it was a heavily edited portion of the video), or there was some sort of RAM cap on Adobe Premiere.

That eventually got finished though, and I made efficient use of my rendering time to find music, as I said above.  This week wasn't perhaps as productive as the last, but it definitely had me ripping my hair out.

Content Positive
- I got the Video Draft Finished
-Unique BGM for all games now yay!

Content Negative
-So. Many. Premiere. Editing. Issues.
-WHY DON'T THE COMPUTERS HAVE ENOUGH RAM IN THE GRAD LABS

Total Time Spent - 5 Hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 6 PPJ, Blog Post 6

Gathering Sound Effects/Licensing Info - 6.5 hrs
Editing Sound Effects/Normalizing extensions - 1.45 hrs

This week was pretty time consuming and busy, but relatively straight forward.  As far as content went, I used freesound.com soundbytes to find all the audio that we currently need for our games, with the exception of background music.  This took a long time because I was screening hundreds of sounds, and wound up with around 60 effects in the end for 15 games.

After having a discussion with another professor, I decided to make all the audio files in .ogg format because it is slightly compressed (which is good when we need so many sounds) and also no royalties are owed to any company if this format it used.  For background music, I plan to use .wav format.

I made sure to include a readme .txt file along with all the sound effects that document all of the licensing information, so we can credit people appropriately and document it all in the GDD.

Again, this week was pretty straightforward so there isn't much else to say.

Content Positive:
- All of the Sound Effects for the currently created games should now exist on Perforce and are edited, ready to be added to Alien Arcade
- I documented each sound's individual license info for ease

Content Negative:
- Took a looooooong time

Total Time Spent: 8.15 Hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 5 PPJ, Blog Post 5

Preparing for GDC presentation - 6-8 hrs
Creating Powerbar - 1.5 hrs
Creating Pointing Hand - 1 hr
Website update - 30  mins

This week was largely taken up with time needed to prepare for the GDC presentation that was on February 5th.  Some of it was spent at the motion base gathering people to make testimonials towards Alien Arcade, some of it was tweaking the presentation and brainstorming what we should add, some of it was creating the Testimonial video from the various footage we shot, and of course lastly we had to practice the live demo and presentation multiple times and troubleshoot things as we caught them.  Needless to say, it was a very busy week!  Just in this portion alone, we ran into some editing issues, scene loading issues in the demo, and overall technical difficulty.  We powered through it though, and now as a byproduct of our hard work for that presentation there is also more content to market Alien Arcade with.

The actual plan for this week from the art team was to divide what was required for the games we were making for midterms week.  As it worked out, each person basically got assigned to two art related tasks and had to complete them.  For me, these were the Powerbar for the Ram the Planet microgame (and others that may need it moving forward), and the Pointing Hand for the Poke the Alien minigame.

For the Powerbar, I decided to make it blend in with the dash of the UFO and the menus we already have set up, this way it naturally looks as if it is an extension of the ship in some manner.

As for the Pointing Hand, I thought taking a (more) realistic approach would be silly and accessible in Alien Arcade, so I created a vector hand based off of an actual photograph and tried to get it to match.

The website update was just adding in and formatting the content that we had made for the GDC pitch, which included the gif of the motionbase and the Testimonial video.

Content Positive:

- We worked really hard to get our demo and marketing material up to snuff for GDC!  Everything we needed clocked in at under the 5 minute allotted time and we have things to use for the site now.

-  A Powerbar was created primarily for Ram the Planet, but also can be universally incorporated into games that require it.

- The Pointing Hand is finished and I think came out quite well for what I was shooting for.

Content Negative:

- All of these things took a super large amount of time out of my (midterm) week

Total Time Spent: 9-11 Hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 4 PPJ, Blog Post 4

Troubleshooting tent/Attempting to texture - 1 hrs.
Creating 3 gun models - 2 hrs.
Creating another version of the play test survey - 1 hrs.
Getting motion base footage/interview for GDC pitch - 2 hrs.

This time around I tried my best to make a variety of gun models for the Draw at Noon game, so we have a few options to choose from.  We also could potentially just use one of the two unused one in a 'clone game', so the effort spent on them doesn't really go to waste.  The initial ideas for these came from my sketchbook, where I spent a good amount of time making 15 or more drawings to later be used for model reference.  I then pitched them to the rest of the art team, and put their votes together into the top 3; I then modeled them as I saw fit.

A small amount of my time this week was spent fixing the tent.  I was informed that the normals for the model were on the outside instead of the inside, so it wasn't able to be used as an environment object.  This is mostly due to the fact that I haven't really specifically modeled for a Unity game before and forgot that the normal directions actually matter or else there is viewing and collision problems.  I fixed this relatively easily, and moved on to try and texture it.  The problem is that texturing isn't something I'm good at; I wasn't taught how to do it and easily get confused when my Maya scene doesn't reflect exactly the same way the tutorials do.  I tried this for an hour and couldn't make heads nor tails of the UV problem I was having, so I moved on so I could complete tasks instead of being stalled on one thing.

Another version of the playtest survey had to be made this week; this version is mostly grammatical/answer tweaks for the existing questions, and two new question blocks for specific games: Draw at Noon and Press/Don't Press.  I decided not to remove any questions, because although we think as a team we know where most of our current problems lie, we don't have enough data to support those thoughts yet.  So until the next time I have to edit the survey, I'm not removing any particular question sections.

Xavi, Angela and I also went earlier in the week to the motion base with some playtesters to get their testimonies before and after they played the game, as well as to capture some footage of the Drexel Ride in motion.  We ran into an issue where it took twice as long as expected because despite the fact that we scheduled a particular time, the person that could operate the computer didn't show up.  We still discussed Alien Arcade with the riders until the operator showed up though.  Hopefully we can turn some of the rushed ride and testimony into a useful video to use in the pitch of judges that determine if we will represent Drexel at GDC.

Content Positive:
-I flipped the normals of the tent so if it isn't this week, next week it should be able to be an environment.
-Another version of the play test survey was created (1 hrs)
-Created 3 gun models for Draw at Noon or potentially anything else (2 hrs)
-Obtained motion base video for GDC pitch (2 hrs)

Content Negative:
-Still not great (see: can't) when it comes to texturing. (1 hrs)

Total Time Spent: 6 hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 3 PPJ, Blog Post 3

Revising Survey based on feedback - 1 hrs
Carnival Tent - 2 hrs
Reusable Targets - 1 hrs

This week, the art team made sure to focus on the games that were being currently developed rather than just have random resources be created for games that are not yet completed.  As this was the case, I ceased production on the gun for Draw at Noon, to work on things that can be universally used for games.

Most of my time this week went into designing the Carnival Tent to be used firstly with the Water Gun Game; the intention is that it can be used for more than one game though.  It took me quite awhile to devise a nice way to make a tent, and I ran into more than just a few snags-- I would often have to deal with n-gons and many of the edges of the model end in tris just because that is how the vertices worked out.  I have no idea if this is necessarily Unity friendly as a model just yet, but this is only v1 of the tent and I am fully prepared to go back in and flesh the design out more.  I know there are more than a few areas with very little subdivs, and the flow of the mesh isn't exactly spectacular.  With that being said, I think I achieved my goal of making something that looks like a carnival tent--and he problems that I'm mentioning here most likely won't be seen in game, so it isn't even necessarily an issue.
(The texture is just placeholder)

My other objective, rolled over from last week, was to make some target ideas that could be used in multiple other games.  These weren't too hard to model and didn't take much time because of it,  I didn't consult anyone with ideas of what they should be, so I have  standard target and 2 very unique ones (such as a boat target).  If these end up not being used, then not much time was wasted so it's no problem.

The final task for the week was to revise the survey based on the feedback I was given. I did that, as well as fix a few bugs in the survey itself--for some reason some questions had contradicting double validation on them, which made completing it impossible.  Once I found the problem and got it fixed though, the survey worked just fine.

Content Positive
- I completed a Carnival Tent that can be used as the environment for multiple games if needed (2 hrs)
- I revised the survey based off of some very helpful feedback (1 hrs)
- Targets were created that can be used for any game that needs them (1 hrs)

Content Negative
- Not that it is shown here, but the blizzard we got hit with really impeded my workflow, and made getting playtests pretty difficult this week.  Hopefully next week I'll be back on track for my usual productiveness, I aim to spend at least 6-8 hours.

Total Time Spent: 4 hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 2 PPJ, Blog Post 2

Making new survey framework/first draft - 3 hrs

Sketching ideas for 'Draw at Noon' - 1.5 hrs

This week, I did probably the least work that I've done, including last term.  It was still productive, but I also feel personally really bad that I couldn't get more done.  Most of the lack of time stems from an issue I ran into last term, and having to apply to jobs for co-op in B round.

Nevertheless, I still managed to put in some work.  My main task for this week anyway was to create the first draft of the new playtest survey, including personalized questions from those on the coding team that tailored to specific games if needed.  This took the majority of my time this week, between making new questions and creating working survey logic.  No doubt it will needed to be edited in the weeks to come (to accommodate to the newer games), but every week the game-specific questions should rotate out.

As for what I decided to do during another class I had while i had time, I went in and created multiple sketches for what the guns in the 'Draw at Noon' game could be.  I decided to just go with whatever was on my mind at the time, and see where I ended up.  Altogether, I ended up with about 15 designs.  From here, I will use one of these to go forward with a design and model a gun for the game.

Content Positive:

-I made the first draft of the new playtest survey (3 hrs)

-I made a plethora of gun designs for 'Draw at Noon' (1.5 hrs)

Content Negative:

-Although I completed my primary task, I didn't get to do as much as I wanted to this week.

Total Time Spent: 4.5 hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 1 PPJ, Blog Post 1

Group Meeting/Idea Pitch - 2 hrs
Setting up the website/Trello setup- 1 hrs

This week was pretty slow as far as everything has gone so far.  It is the end of the first week of the term, and as such we had to combine two teams, and get everyone up to speed on means of communication.  We made a Trello for organizational purposes and got everyone in a single combined slack.

We had a large team group meeting where we had an overview of what needed to be done by the team itself, then split into two groups- art and coding- and from there we went over what each individual within those teams needed to do.  I was part of the art group, and we talked about what assets still needed creation or touched up for our current games, as well as stabbed in the dark for what we may need for our future games.

From there it was my idea to brainstorm a bunch of new game ideas on a whiteboard.  We must have came up with at least 30 games, which we then axed off the weakest ones, and reinforced the better ones.  These are just ideas--but if they get a working prototype, it could help us greatly in this term of development.

I also made sure everyone on the team had site access, including admin rights, and knew how to use it so they could post their PPJs!

Content Positive-
- Pretty much all of it is positive news, no negative stuff this week.

Total Hours: 3 hrs

Cory Zicolella, Week 12 PPJ, Blog Post 8, Personal Post-mortem

What went right?

1. We successfully created a system capable of pooling selected mini games

The primary focus when this game was initially pitched was to create a platform in which you can select games out of a pool and play them; secondarily we were to use the base code from our initial 10 week development period to use as a foundation for most future game ideas.  Considering we have a wide unique array of motion in each mini game, I would say that this venture has been successful.  The code base for driving, flying, sudden jerks, and bipedal motion are all included in our current build, with a WIP idea for boat physics--these things cover most groundwork for code that we would need.

2. Collaboration

Despite every person approaching the beginning of this term with unique ideas, each person was able to neatly collaborate on this game, partially due to the doors it opens.  Half of our tech demo games from week 3 were used in Alien Arcade, and the team was able to incorporate changes easily and without debate.  Those that didn't get to incorporate games had great input into the current build at hand and didn't fuss about ideas they weren't partial to.  If there was a problem at any point, the group addressed it simply and found out a way to solve it, together.  I'm fairly certain there were no points in which there was a disagreement between us, and the work we accomplished really speaks towards our willingness to function together.

3. Capable of Solving Issues Efficiently

It is no secret that despite everybody's best efforts, there simply were issues that we had to deal with over the term.  We are only human after all, and when these issues arose they were always either highlighted to the responsible party and dealt with post-haste, or it was mentioned to the entire team at which point we split off to fix whatever went wrong.  This was the case in multiple cases; when the work on the Mech Game was delayed, when I accidentally created 3D models (instead of cardboard models), when everyone was still cranking out new resources with only 2 weeks to go.  All of these issues were dealt with very well and this is just me speaking from the art end--I'm sure that the coders handled many more issues (One I'm aware of is the motion base bug).  Because we were capable of this efficiency, it allowed us to complete alot more in our allotted time.

What went wrong?

1. Lack of a Gantt Chart

I think this is pretty straightforward.  Had the team been referencing a Gantt chart or other similar project management, we wouldn't have had to be confronted in the 11th hour to stop making new resources/adding to games.  We could have adhered to a strict schedule and been aware of what we needed in the weeks ahead.  Granted, we ran into a few hefty bugs that took awhile and inevitably some portions would run into other weeks--but it would without a doubt have kept us all on the same page, instead of meeting once a week and delegating tasks randomly based on current progress.

2. Communication

In the early onset of this project, we communicated via email.  Needless to say, this was disorganized and worked horrible, especially with Drexel's email system: some people just wouldn't get group communications because their mailbox was full, and others just wouldn't check.  After 2 weeks of this nonsense, we moved to Slack, which alleviated much of our communication issues to almost 0--to those who used it.  Many did what was asked of them regardless, but some didn't check the slack often or got notified when they should have been.  I was on constantly and almost instantly replied when I needed to, as for others I can't say the same.  Some people barely used the slack at all.  And communication mediums aside, sometimes tasks were garbled and confused, causing people to not do the right thing or nothing because they were unsure of what to do.  This happened very few times, but communication was surely a factor.  Communication issues will always ensure when there is teamwork though, and overall I think we did moderately well.

3. Work Ethic

This is a bold statement, I know-- and it surely doesn't affect everyone.  I can really only say this at a personal level, but sometimes my work ethic suffered.  Of course everybody has more than just this project to do, and I'm understanding, but most of the work for the majority of the term was completed seemingly last minute.  As time went on I got better with it, not doing all of my work on Wednesdays and instead having it finished by Monday night or Tuesday afternoons, but I certainly feel like others also waited a similarly long time (or longer) to complete their work.  Again, I only can accurately measure my time spent: I did complete everything I was assigned to do usually (unless surprises occurred that took more time).  I just work well under pressure, so naturally I wait in order to give myself that motivation.

How are these issues resolved for future projects?

The answer to this one is quite simple, I feel.  We'll most likely have laid out groundwork for what needs to get done so the team isn't delegating jobs on a per-week basis; it allows a better insight into our final goal.  Communication will always have somewhat of a rough road, but if we are more aggressive with standards or simply having people report in once a day it will probably solve all of the issues there.  As far as work ethic goes, that is up to the individual to fix.  To a certain extent team members can add pressure, but that isn't necessarily good or helpful for the team as a dynamic--ultimately it is up to each of us.  For me, I've already accepted that I need to complete my work sooner.  For others, it may be similar or it may come later.  Meetings will iron out most of the remaining team problems and enforce (what should be) these new policies to insure that we won't have to deal with as many problems next term.

Lessons learned for future projects?

The lessons that working together with Team VIIcious for 12 weeks have taught me:

• Most bugs, however large, are workable for your goal
• Communication is key to creating content
• Even though mini games sound easier than a single game, there is just as much work
• Version control is a lifesaver sometimes, even if Perforce is the devil
• Keeping momentum at a high is important for productivity
• If a team is able to collaborate, it makes teamwork so much more enjoyable

Cory Zicolella, Week 11 PPJ, Blog Post 7

Creating Textures/Editing Models for Mechanized Warfare - 4.5 hrs
Trailer v2 (Footage Edit) - 1.5 hrs

This week I was tasked with getting textures on all of the models I had previously made so they look pretty in the new mech environment that I also modeled and textured.  I managed to complete this task for every model except for two; the waves and the lifeguard chair.

This first part of my work this week probably took alot longer than it needed to only because I'm not trained well at all in texturing; in fact I was initially told never to texture with UVs and only use projections (go figure, that was horrible advice).  So not only did it take me long to do relatively simple tasks, I also had to get help from online tutorials and forums when something went wrong, and in rare instances contacted Riley to assist me.  Whenever I ran into a road block it either took a time longer than it should have (I feel) to fix it because of my inexperience, or I found myself redoing textures because Maya would randomly decide to crash multiple times -- this is partially why the lifeguard chair was never finished (After 7 crashes I lost hope).

The alternative work I did for this week, which was not originally done, but touched upon because I had time, was to give the trailer a much needed footage update, to include all of the most current build's games as opposed to the Alpha I versions.  This took about as long as expected, and came out really well.  Because I did this update now, that means next week I'll only need to add footage updates if it is required from polish, and to redo my voice over in an actual studio with a better mic.

All in all, and considering it was Thanksgiving the week before, my inexperience in texturing, and the fact that I actually had become sick a few days ago; I feel as if I did a good amount of work for what I set out to do.

Content Positive
- Most of the models for Mechanized Warfare are textured! - 4.5 hrs
- The new trailer looks great and is a truer reflection of our game! - 1.5 hrs

Content Negative
- My inexperience with texturing lead to difficulties that probably wouldn't exist if I were well-versed with doing it
- Getting sick sucks
- Thanksgiving happened.  Which sorta impeded workflow.

Total Time Spent - 6 Hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 9 PPJ, Blog Post 6

Creating Alien Arcade Teaser Trailer - 6.5 hrs
Getting soundbytes - 1 hrs
Playtest Survey Update - 1 hrs

This week I had the privilege to make the trailer for our game.  It is only the v1 of the trailer and includes footage from an earlier build of the game, so when I update it to make changes I will definitely include the art from the more current build.

The main amount of time was put towards making the trailer the best it could be.  I wanted to go to the Music Industry labs to use the proper microphones there with pop filters and what not, but the labs were taken up with classes so I couldn't do that.  This means that I also couldn't edit any audio with Pro Tools but rather had to use what I had locally at my disposal, which was Audacity and a Razer headset.  So the voiceover isn't amazing, but it will certainly do for a draft concept.

An hour of the editing was actually going on location to film the motion base and attempt to capture the CCTV there.  Even though not much of the footage was used, I'm glad I took enough of it because much of the shots of the motion base were too shaky or had something wrong with it (someone in the shot, finger on the side of the camera, etc.).

For the most part though, the meat of the time was used to stitch together various clips after I sifted through them.  Then I had to watch it numerous times and reedit it for continuity and style, then once again had to keep re-editing for adjusting sound levels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieix62MVyeo

Another part of my task this week was to retrieve various sounds we intend to use for our game.  It is still unclear whether or not we will be able to hear them in our game, as the speaker system inside the ride currently needs maintenance; but I did find a multitude of things we need.  I don't know necessarily if I found everything we'll need, but I think I got it mostly covered.

The Survey update took awhile because I was adding questions and fixing some problems we ran into, but nothing really notable here.

Content Positive
- Finished the teaser, and it came out great! (6.5 hrs)
- Got required Soundbytes (1 hrs)
- Survey Update (1 hrs)

Content Negative
-Underestimated how much time the teaser would take

Total Time Spent - 8.5 hrs

Cory Zicolella, Week 8 PPJ, Blog Post 5

Creating Mech Game Environment - 1.5 hrs
Creating Mech Game Models - 7 hrs

The majority of my work this week was distributed to bringing Mechanized Warfare up to snuff with what our design team had in mind for it.  It is supposed to take place on a beach that is populated with cardboard cutouts of various things you would find on a beach.

One set of these things would be beach garbage, such as chip bags, cigarette boxes, and old tires.  The other set of things would be 'sexy' things, such as muscle men, lifeguard chairs, umbrellas, and drinks.  The Mech has to shoot the things that are garbage and they will turn into the sexy things.  The Mech ideally is supposed to look actually scary and menacing to the player, but then they find themselves within this nice quiet beach setting, shooting ballistic weapons as harmless cardboard cutouts that turn into even less menacing things.

The major problem that was involved with this task was during the first day of modeling, I was making the models as if they were cardboard cutouts.  The second day, however, I forgot entirely (for whatever reason) that they weren't supposed to be actual full 3D models but rather cardboard cutouts of the things.  I didn't realize this until I was done though, and so this presumably is going to set it back a bit; I'm sure there is a fix though.

I also did a small update to the Sell and Playtest Survey, although the time spent on those was small.

Content Positive
- The Mech Environement has been made (1.5 hrs)
- The Mech Models have been made for the most part (7 hrs)

Content Negative
- The models that I made weren't all cutouts, which is going to take time to fix.

Total Time Spent - 8.5 Hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 7 PPJ, Blog Post 3

Creating Qualtrics Survey v1.1 - 3 hrs
Lego Grill Model - 2 hours
Sell v3 - 1 hour

This week I went hands on with the Qualtrics survey, improving it from its previous 8 question version to a 30 question version complete with branching and question validation.  This will be the basis for the next iterations of the survey (which I have plans for), hopefully including some heat map picture info and other things.  The survey combines both experiences with and without the use of the motion base using logic pathing, so I don't have to make two different surveys to accomplish slightly different things.  Instead, I included all of the relevant questions and organized them accordingly.

I also tackled the 'Lego Grill' model idea we had for Space Aim- in our meeting this week we realized we need to capture our wacky essence that we had pitched for so long, and we can't do that without some wacky game concepts or models.  So for Space Aim, our direction we decided to go in was perhaps make the ship a big foot trying to navigate its way through the holes in the lego walls, that also seemingly are covered with hot grill grates (ouch!).  This would have taken half the time, had I not finished the model the first time then realized it was far too high poly for Unity.

 I then remade it with roughly half the polys it used to have, and that still may be too much, but it's certainly better than it was (and I have an idea of a way to drastically reduce it more if I have to).

I also made some minor updates to the Sell pitch including coloring text and changing the font to reflect our art direction.  Alot of my time here was spent trying to get some good pictures of the games from the Unity scenes to include, but I didn't have a controller I could connect to my PC which made it sort of a wasted effort, because I couldn't navigate.

Content Positive
-The Qualtrics Survey is 30 questions, and has full branching and validation (3 hrs)
- I have a v1 of a Lego Grill model for the Space Aim environment (2 hrs)
- The Sell Pitch v3 has been updated to reflect art direction (1 hrs)

Content Negative
- I had to remake the Lego Grill model as soon as I finished it; but it was my fault
- Midterms this week impeded the schedule I had originally planned
Total Hours Spent - 6 Hours

Cory Zicolella, Week 6 PPJ - Blog Post 3

Modeling Mech Legs v2 - 2 hrs
Sell Update - 1 hrs

Admittingly, I didn't do much this week due mainly to problems I ran into with the University itself, taking much of my time.  That being said, I got the mech legs reasonably more done (adding actual feet to the model) and updated the sell pitch so it has much less filler, and is less wordy/more to the point overall.
At some point soon I'll be updating our team logo ideas, doing some color sampling--I also realized I made a really silly spelling error on all drafts of the word for whatever reason, so that is going to be fixed too.

Content Positive
- Now the legs at least will cast a suitable shadow; depending on if they are seen or not they could still be textured and modeled, but for now this will definitely work. (2 hrs)
- The sell update went rather well and I am much happier with the shorter length (1 hrs)
- I also provided feedback to other artists' work this week (such as Riley's UFO model) in order to improve clarity

Content Negative 
- I didn't get around to doing much this particular week due to circumstances out of my contol
- Meeting was hard for our team to accomplish this week, and when we did it felt rather rushed
- I really wish I was able to contribute more this week as I didn't do much
-Perforce is creating many problems for our entire team and slowing progress

Cory Zicolella, Week 5 PPJ, Blog Post 2

Team Logo Concepts/Creation - (1.5 hrs)
Target Model - (2 hrs)
Sale Pitch - (1.5 hrs)
Perforce Functionality (1.5 hrs)

This week I decided that I'd handle some of the more miscellaneous things, making one of what will be many target models for the Mech Game and Creating a handful of ideas for our team logo.  I also tackled the Sell Pitch based off of our GDD and created a skeleton file that no doubt will go through several revisions before project completion.

The first matter of business for me was getting the Sale Pitch out of the way, so I tried to make the GDD as straight forward and exciting as I could with the current art we have and direction for the game.  There isn't much else to be said here.

Undoubtedly the most fun this week I've had was with designing some team logos:

I believe at this point, we've decided to go with the bottom-most design to represent our team, although whether it will be colored or not, or what those colors will be are not yet decided.  Of course, all designs are not final.

The model was the source of most of my frustration and because of it, I may not be able to get to another one I was planning on doing (at the time of writing).  For whatever reason Maya continuously crashed and dumped all my progress for quite awhile. I eventually worked around it but it really hindered my progress; it took far longer than it should have.

Content Positive:

• I really enjoyed making the logos and the ideas that came out of it gave us a good selection (1.5 hrs)
• The Sale Pitch was created relatively smoothly, mostly due to how nicely the GDD was completed (1.5 hrs)
• The Target model is completed so the Mech game doesn't have to have floating circles now (2 hrs)
• We made a team Slack and that makes communication even more easy.

Content Negative:

• Perforce confused me so much, first because I couldn't find the right one to download, and then secondly because the UI was new to me.  Alas, I know how to do basic file management now. (1.5 hrs)
• The Target Model repeatedly crashed on me and really ate into my team, especially during midterm week.

Total Hours for the week: 6.5

Edit:  I worked on a rough version of the Mech Legs for about another hour and a half.  It was against crashing, I may have to troubleshoot Maya. This brings the new total hours to 8 this week.

Cory Zicolella, Week 3 PPJ - Getting Started

Website Creation/TroubleShooting - 4.5 hrs / 2 hrs

Website Content - 1 hrs

Rough Menu Art - 1 hrs

This week our group had a meeting where, together as a team, we discussed the general story behind our game and the driving force for doing what we want to do.  We each brainstormed for a bit, and had fun tossing around some ideas for some theoretically really concrete and fun mini games to add.  A few of us are including our prototypes from the last class meeting in the game and will restructure them to fit the current environment they need to be in.

After that, I volunteered responsibility for creating our team's website and essentially our project development's 'home base' -- Sadly, I don't want to put a screenshot of the website you're reading into the post, but I assure you this post's existence is proof that I (somewhat) did my job.  It definitely needs to look pretty still, and have more content, but that will all come at one point or another once we actually get our feet off the ground and have things to put in here.  For now, this site will do for my own sanity's sake.

I also volunteered to help Xavier with the very small job of creating prototype art for a concept menu.  It was nothing major, but I did have to revise it once.  The scrapped version is below:

The new version simply replaces what would be the buttons with the names of the games, and they are all separate images instead of one jpg.

Content Positive

• The website, I think, came together quite nicely. Right now it's simple but I have further plans. (4.5 hrs)
• I made a small push this week to get Riley to help me put some content on the webpage so it wasn't mostly empty, and it looks great so far (1 hrs)
• 'Hand-scrawled' art has been prototyped for a menu.  It does its job (1 hrs)
• My prototype from the last class meeting will be integrated into the game, which means I will be able to develop it further 
• Team Communication so far has been fantastic and it makes everything so much easier.

Content Negative

• Troubleshooting a handful of minor problems with the site getting setup was annoying and took time away from doing other, arguably, more useful things (2 hrs)
• Despite how glad I am our website isn't barren, I wanted to get more up there. Ah, well.

Total Hours for the week: 8.5 hrs