6/07/11
We are finished with our Spring Release! You can find a video of one of our new levels Here. We are nearing the completion of our final release and our team has been working harder than ever. We have also submitted our game to IndieCade! Things we have accomplished this quarter:
- Multiple levels that include both space and planetary combat.
- Accessible bio's of all the characters, in game, with descriptions of how to use each ability.
- Multiple different boss battles and unique boss AI's.
- Tons of new sounds, including music and effects.
- Over 300 lines of scripted, recorded, and animated dialogue.
- Optimized loading code that allows instantaneous retrying of missions.
- Improved character abilities, with different effects depending on the environment.
- We have also play-tested a great amount and made sure that our game is balanced, to create a fun and challenging playing experience.
We are working very hard on making our game accessible and fun for casual and hardcore gamers, without compromising either end. Our community is growing everyday, so check us out on facebook to support us! Thank you everyone that has contributed to making this game so successful. Look out for a new game play/teaser trailer coming soon, as well as Syz E.G. on the app store, coming July 2011!
3/11/11 We are finished with our Winter Release! Here's a video showing just a sample of what will be available come June. Video We were able to implement every single feature that we planned for this quarter, thanks mostly to keeping our Scrum Board up to date and closely following Scrum practices. These features include the following:
- UML completed with game structure implemented. - The player is able to move the ship around the screen in multiple perspectives and use all of the crew members abilities against other ships in space.
- Multiple types of ships for the player to fight against that are easily spawnable in a sandbox.
- Have code that is playable with art assets implemented, to the extent that the team can gain substantial feedback through playtesting.
- Preliminary scripting work completed (set up for scripting completed, with a few scripted sequences to show proof of concept).
- Continuous integration with code tested using a unit skeleton and code under the control of a continuous integration tool.
Game contains code that automatically records gameplay metrics.
We plan to polish up the player experience next quarter while also implementing a scripted story to immerse the player in the world of Syz E.G.
3/7/11 Team Krinoid has started working on story mode and we are now able to script events. Story mode will be used initially to give a tutorial of how to use all of the abilities. Eventually, it will be comprised of all the levels we implement.
3/3/11 We have implemented a debug menu so we are able to better test our game. This will allow us to change different variables on the fly so we do not have to re compile every time we want to test balancing issues.
2/26/11 We have begun running our first play tests and they have been going very well. We are getting some really great feedback from our community, and are figuring out different areas that need to be re-worked or fixed. These play tests have also showed us that the game is going in the right direction and people have been enjoying seeing the game in its early stages.
2/21/11 Team Krinoid has started looking into taking full advantage of both game play metrics, including a visual representation of these metrics, and continuous integration. We are using Hudsen/Jenkins for continuous integration server.
2/18/11 Team Krinoid has successfully completed our second sprint! We have implemented all of our character abilities, implemented perspective changes, and are working towards having a polished free play at the end of our first alpha release, tentatively March 18th.
1/14/11 Team Krinoid has been working mostly on creating our UML and base coding structure for our game. We are using www.cacoo.com to generate our UML concurrently online. Thank you cacoo.com!
1/11/11 Team Krinoid started our first sprint, this will be the first of a series of three sprints that will all be contributing to our first release plan scheduled for January 26, 2011. This idea of sprints and a release plan are part of a system called Scrum. Lakota, Lucas and Lindsey are our Scrum Masters for this sprint, John is our Product Owner and everyone is already hard at work!