The Path to Become Agile: Part III

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The Path to Become Agile: Part II: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/SamyDib/20151116/259473/The_Path_to_Become_Agile_Part_II.php

Sprint Problems

            This was a very tough week in regards to coming up with the time to complete the sprint. Now this isn’t because the sprint was overloaded with features but because life intervened. When it comes to creating sprints in game development, there will be times that life moves in and can cause a sort of delay. We see an example of this in the reading where a California wild fire caused everyone to be out of work for a few days and created a rift in the sprint (Keith, 2010). In my case, there wasn’t a fire but I do have a daytime job outside of game development.

            My job sent me out of state for the week and unfortunately I didn’t have any downtime to focus on this week’s sprint. This means I fell behind and was in no position to complete my assigned features. So what do we do? Well not to panic, luckily I am on an indie team and there aren’t any hard set deadlines just yet. Taking note from the reading, some of the features I have shifted over to next week’s sprint to allow me more time to complete them. This is one of the ways that you can overcome a situation like this.

            There are other ways to overcome unforeseen time sucks but they may not be recommended. These would be to stay up late and work extra hours or even working on the weekend if you’re on a Monday to Friday schedule. These types of workarounds can lead to less efficient work production or even damage team morale. Since I didn’t have any hard set milestones to meet it was easy for me to shift some of my work over to the next sprint.

Work completed

            Now just because I wasn’t able to complete my set of features for this sprint doesn’t mean that nothing was accomplished. Our programmer finished polishing up the bounty system and has begun work on a new dungeon set called “The Dark.” This new dungeon is separate from the main story and is aimed towards hardened veterans of the game. As the name implies the dungeon will be very dark and there will be no end to it. Once you enter, you can adventure as far down as your hit points allow you to.

            Each level will be randomly chosen from a pool of layouts but the stairs down will always be randomly placed. As you travel deeper into The Dark you will encounter increasingly stronger monsters but at the same time, find better loot. The stats for the loot you encounter will scale with each floor you reach. You will also find that many hidden traps also await you. These traps will cause sudden monster spawns, instant damage, or even inflict ailments on you. Monsters will also gain certain special abilities to combat you with such as: teleportation, blocking, spells, and others.

            To top this dungeon off, we are implementing a leaderboard system to keep track of how deep you have gone in The Dark. You can show off your depth among other players and challenge each other for bragging rights. I will post more on this feature as it continues being developed. We also have plans for an upcoming Beta test for anyone who is interested in playing and giving feedback. Stay tuned for that.

References

Keith, C. (2010). Agile game development with Scrum. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-

Wesley.