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Production on Wild's Pyre has concluded. Given my original idea, it's remarkable to see how much has changed in it since beginning. The levels really came together in the last two weeks, and look spectacular. It was a learning experience, too: I've been able to identify several flaws within myself that I need to personally work on, and I do not think I would've come to understand them if I didn't have the team that I had. Overall, I'm satisfied with the end result.

Work proceeds apace on the game. My current understanding of the project is that, for my specific roles, Art assets are almost in a finished state. The team is currently suggesting some changes to fire animations to help the player understand when certain things are burning, but other than that, art on that front seems to have finished up. Given the lull in work, I proposed we start moving forward with attempting to implement a simple story. To that end, I've been collaborating with my fellow Art department member, Majed, on creating a very simple story for the game. Admittedly, it's proven more difficult than I anticipated. While Majed and I both get along well, I have noticed that the various differences in how we work and talk, that ended up having the both of us possess notably distinct mental models derived from the same concept, which has cost us valuable time to work on this. Our initial concept was scrapped as a result, as we missed focusing in on narrative features that displayed the differences between the levels. With a clear goal set, however, I have faith that this time around we'll get it right.

Production has been stable, insofar as I can tell. While we did have two new group members (Blake and Majed) join us, the process of integrating them into the team has been virtually seamless. Both of them have been diligent in their work, and have proven themselves great boons to the project. However, this devlog is not dedicated to the discussion of team dynamics, but rather the production workflow of the team. So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

For a breakdown of our production process, we first determine what we are going to do for the sprint with the relevant team members. This means that artists will meet up and discuss what to work on for that week, programmers will meet up and discuss what features to code that week, and so on. 

Once that has been determined, we then spend time wording those features as user stories, making sure that each one follows the "[user type] wants [distinct feature] for [specific reason]" format. Once all this has been done in the Tuesday meeting, and every part of the team has finished adding their user stories to the current sprint, we then begin the sprint. Another meeting is then held on Thursday. 

This Thursday meeting blocks out time in our schedules to get work done, ensuring that even if we don't get every task in the sprint done, at least we make progress towards our goals. During this meeting, team members make plans to meet with each other if they feel it necessary to complete certain sprint goals. These meetings tend to be arranged 

Aside from those individual meetings, the team then works independently until the next Tuesday, where we review the sprint, the progress we made, and evaluate our work process before beginning the process again.

Our team’s pre-production was done almost entirely before the winter break. In pre-production, we first isolated what game we wanted to make, and then having determined that, we began to make a document that outlined the design of the game, as well as the direction in which we wanted to take it. After that, we began fleshing out the idea some more, debating amongst ourselves about the various concepts and mechanics that should be involved in the game. Around the time of the final project, we began putting together a schedule of what should be done and when, which included the various stages of development (Alpha, Beta, and Gold Master) and the various tasks we had separated into different departments: art, programming, narrative, audio, systems, levels, and playtesting. With that done before the break, we left ready to enact our plan upon arriving back.

The curveball of needing user stories was unexpected, but admittedly after reflecting about what we had learned last year, it should have been a part of our process from the beginning. To add in the necessary user stories, we first took a look at our master schedule’s first week, seeing what we already had planned. Once that was done, we then took the tasks we had already assigned ourselves, and instead developed user stories from those. Once that was done, and each team member agreed, we then assigned each team member a specific user story to have ownership and final say over. Finally, we agreed to have a meeting later on in the week to begin working on the user stories together.

In that later meeting, we managed to make good strides towards our user stories, and we are currently confident that, at our current velocity, we can succeed in keeping up with our schedule despite having lost one team member.

I think my group is well-situated to proceed to the next semester. In terms of team dynamics, our group is orderly, and shows no issues with each other. Team members all show up for each meeting, and we have so far managed to keep our work on schedule and not have to crunch. In terms of documentation and how the general concept of our project is doing, it is proceeding apace. I feel confident in the work our group has been doing thus far, and wholly believe that come next semester, we will be poised and ready to begin development of our game proper.

As for how it has prepared us, the various exercises and assignments have helped us in outlining key features of our game while also teaching us how the industry works. The initial pitch assignment help solidify our concept, the proposal presentation motivated us to flesh out some more of the idea, and the current Project Plan combo assignment has had us firmly determine all the niche details and features of the game, all while ingraining the structure & expectations of proper game design pitching. All in all, I believe the course has prepared us well for both continuing the development of our project, and for going into the industry once we graduate.

Scheduling for our group was handled primarily by out project managers, with future meeting being planned either during or at the end of the current meeting. As our group has rather varied lives & needs, scheduling was flexible when it was needed. Meetings were commonly attended by all members, although some had to miss meetings due to the aforementioned varied lives & needs. The group has endeavoured to catch up teammates who have missed these meetings as best as we all can, and my current impression is that the group cohesion is rather stable.

As for developing the larger schedule assignment, we are working on this collaboratively as a group during our meetings, as it involving setting milestones for the entire team, which we agreed would be determined collectively. We have currently agreed to switch to doing shorter meetings several times a week, as opposed to longer ones once per week, in order to meet both rubric and out own expectations for the quality of the project.

Pitching a project... I found it to be hard. I tend to overplan as a counter to my catastrophism (meaning that I tend to assume the worst is going to happen), and so when making the various parts of the pitch, I felt rather overwhelmed. There felt like there were so many things that I had to considered, so many little parts that I couldn't get a clear view of what was minutiae, and what was essential. In the end, I felt like what I had made overall was insufficient. Here's hoping the next time goes better.

For the research paper, I chose to do wildfires. Initially, I had wanted to do Amortality, as I had been told that the term referred to Immortality minus the immunity to murder, or death by physical trauma. I thought the complexities of who would be allowed to become Amortal would be interesting to look at and explore, only to find out that Amortality did not mean "Immune to aging or disease", but rather (depending on which source you pick) "a lifestyle that defies conventional wisdom regarding aging" (obtained from  a New York Times article on it) or "an unbirthed existence outside the concept of Life and Death" (from the Superpower online wiki). Needless to say, both these ideas were not what i was expecting, and I could not think of a single research question that involved either of those two definitions. After ping-ponging around a bit more, I ended up choosing wildfires as an extension of the Global Warming topic.

Wildfires I already had a source for, as over the summer I had written another paper that touched on the topic. But more than that, wildfires fascinate me. I find it interesting that wildfires are, under normal conditions, both helpful and harmful, and it is only because of negligent human activity that they have started to wreak the level of destruction we've been seeing.  The wildfires over the summer, both here in Canada and down in the US, had revitalized my interest, as I could, for the first time, see the effect of the destruction in the environment.

As for game concept, I'm imagining a 2D sidescroller that has the player playing as the wildfire.  The goal would be to ignite the whole forest that composes the level, and the player would then see the effect that has on both the local animal & human populations.

Water.