Week 3 Work Log

1. 14/3/12: 2 hours pre-tut presentation preparation with power point slides
2. 14/3/12: 2 hours attended tut to re-present our idea with more detail into the theme, art concept style, and demo sensor technology; plus show some of our mini game ideas, all in an effort to get new team members
3. 14/3/12: 4 hours After tut meeting where we integrated our two new members (Michael and Nguyen) found in tut, into our team; and worked hard on Part A, and Part B.
4. 15/3/12: 0.5 hour Requesting UDID’s of current devices from team
5. 16/3/12: 1 hour Blogging
6. 16/3/12: 2 hours implementing a  new task/issue system
7. 17/3/12: 3 hours doing Unity Tutorials
8. 18/3/12: 2 hours doing Unity Tutorials
9. 18/3/12: 4 hours developing gyroscope demo
10. 18/2/12: 1 hour setting up website domain and company emails
11. 19/3/12: 6 hours developing gyroscope demo 
12. 20/3/12: 1 hours developing gyroscope demo
13. 21/3/12: 1 hour Blogging

Reflection:


The above video is a quick demonstration of my efforts last week. I basically wanted to prove to myself and the class that it was easy to attach the sensor technology mechanisms to these apps and that it could all be done in unity. I am quite proud of my progress.


The presentation went well, and I think the highlight were that laughs of approval I got when describing the bully game, and the windy dress game. Laz's comment (of course being the most important) was simply that it was a good game but we need to make sure that there's enough micro-games in there to make it worth people's while, especially for devices that can't some of the sensor technology (e.g. iPhone 3GS can't use the gyroscope). 

Of course the main reason for presenting a second time was in fact to get more members, and it worked. Michael and Nguyen approached us as we were going to Laz to request to present again in the next lecture. We took them on board. Nguyen knows C# and is a programmer; which means he can help out heaps with programming for unity. Michael has almost the same skills as Lall, but he does know a bit of animation and art development, and is willing to learn sound; so he could proved to be quite useful, though I think he will have to fill a lot of the animation/art void that we will have (i.e.: I think we will have to push him further and further into an area he may not be comfortable with).


After the tut we went to a secret place to sit around a massive monitor and pulled up the Part A and B Document. We spent the following 4 hours essentially filling out this document. Most of the time was spent weeding out issues with our development plan; including and excluding features; and generally getting pretty excited and happy about our idea. I'm please with the positivity of the group. I did notice though that ever since Nguyen and Michael joined the group Yu-Chen has become a little more shy than usual became less involved in the conversation. It wasn't such a bad thing because she did do work in the background; but from my experience when working in team, it is iterative that everyone participate in giving ideas and producing some part of the project initially, so that everyone feels like this program is THEIR baby. When this happens everyone works together towards the same goal. 


I feel that Nguyen, Lall, and Myself are all pretty clear as to the part we play and the ownership with have on this app; but I'm a little worried about Yu-Chen because she needs to own that head animator position over herself and Michael, and I'm even more worried about Michael because has a very support type role that falls almost exactly between Lall's and Yu-Chen's. Michael will be helping Lall with game ideas, the doc, and even with sound; and then he's meant to help Yu-Chen with developing some art, and possibly helping with 2D and 3D animation in Flash, and then implementing it in unity. As random as Michael's job sounds, he actually has the most to learn, and a lot of responsibility to help lower the risk of team failure.


In terms of my role in all of this; I feel I've almost taken a project manager role. I'm trying to implement a heap of organisational tools so that at any one time everyone know exactly which task they should be doing next. I've also taken a sort of head programmer role, but really Nguyen and I will both be working together on each project and getting things done efficiently and well.

This week I aim to make another test mechanic app. This time I want to test the following mechanics:

• Gyroscope
• Swipe
• Pinch

Which will be harder than usual because I do need a iPhone 4 to test the gyro, but I do believe my flatmate has one.

I spent quite a bit of time reworking the task system to include 2 things:

1. A main task sheet shared in google docs that shows each milestone, which shows each section within the milestone, which each have a series of issues (mini tasks) that need to be completed, who the issue is assigned to, and how complete it is. Essentially this spreadsheet will help the team see how much they have done towards completing the next milestone, and what exactly is still outstanding.
2. We created a shared dropbox folder for everyone, and I created an issues folder within it. Each issue in the spreadsheet above will have a unique issue number which is linked to a word doc within this dropbox folder. Using a template, the issue will have a title, detailed description (instructions) for the task, and progress updates from each contributing member. This helps a) document our actions in the project, and b) lets members assigned the issue easy see what needs to be done and what has been done after another member had previously worked on it. This helps reduce risk if say a member becomes ill, gets swamped down with other assignments, or needs collaborative help with said issue.

I implemented this system because it's a successful system used at my work; especially when we are working towards a deadline.

This weekend I did a heap of unity tutorials since Lall gave us them on a hard disk last Wednesday. I also bought the domain for the team:

www.tikitokitoymachine.com

I've set it up so that any demos we need people to test during production will be uploaded to the link on the site. People with the relevant devices (i.e.: those that have their UDID's on the provisioning profile) can click the link and have the newest version of the app download to their phone for trail, testing, and criticism. Lall has set up the facebook, twitter, and youtube accounts for marketing purposes. We will gather a list of family, friends, and strangers with ios and android devices to test our app at key points during production.

I also made an email address for each member of the team and a company email:

email@tikitokitoymachine.com

I managed to finish my gyroscope demo. It's still got a couple of glitches, but I'll spend some more time fixing them over the next few weeks. It's essentially the mechanic needed for our "find the moon" mini game idea. At the moment you can hold the phone up and look around a 3D world. It currently glitches up when you go past 90 degrees in any direction. I had difficulty programming this because I had to borrow devices with an inbuilt gyroscope (mine is an iPhone 3GS).


I feel I made a lot of progress this week. I aim to have the mechanics, and hopefully (dependant on assets) the whole menu system set up and running. I think we will really kick into gear when this happens because it will be like we created a platform for us to put our games in. Now all we have to do is fill it with games! Both Lall and I are really excited about this project and are looking further than the subject towards marketing and sales. For instance we both agree that since the second and third largest purchasers of apps in the world are China and South Korea respectively, that we will make sure that the translation feature is to implemented into the app from the get go. We will do the translations into Chinese and Korean two weeks before the official release. I plan to do up the website during the mid year break.