Konner Rooney

10/2025

2258-CAGD-370-01-4196

11/2025

Blog Post 3

Unique Circumstances of This Sprint

    Throughout my time working from Sprint 1, to Sprint 2, to Sprint 3, I've gradually been shifting my focus away from playtesting our Paper Prototype to Annotated Maps. I also learned that I spent more time on the Paper Prototype than what was ideal. This led to me...

• Having a suboptimal amount of points by the end of Sprint 2, and potentially Sprint 3, to a lesser extent.
• Preparing to address the most recent feedback from the Paper Prototype in our Digital Prototype, in any way applicable, and put the Paper Prototype to rest.

The latter of those two was difficult for me, as it was what I spent my entire working towards in Sprint 1 (plus half of Sprint 2 and approximately a third of Sprint 3). However, the feedback we've received from both prototypes adequately addressed the pros and cons of our game, as well as how to address them in the Digital Prototype going forward.

Problems and Solutions

    Fortunately, there were no significant issues that occurred during this sprint. The closest thing to a problem I can think of is that one of the 3D models of the annotated maps was created in a separate Maya file, meaning it was generated without the pre-established blocks we had made. This was during a time when I was on autopilot after completing a large chunk of work, and our precedence of creating Annotated Maps within the assigned Maya file didn't cross my mind. As a result, I ended up creating the model from scratch. 

While this did make the level more visually distinct from the others, it led to the level's creation taking longer than the others. The lack of block-esc shapes for some platforms also made it harder to add collision boxes around the models when imported into Unity.

Thankfully, the solution to this problem is quite obvious: Don't just think about WHAT you need to do. WHEN you're doing it. Consider how something needs to be done before, during, and preferably after to ensure everything is done efficiently. 

Sprint Kickoff

    For this sprint, I was assigned to create three Annotated Maps, model them for import into Unity, and implement some ziplines into the levels that did not require specific colors for travel. With this, players can better understand that parts of the level are designed to provide a challenge to reach, while also preventing them from feeling too trapped or claustrophobic within the current level. Additionally, a golden flag symbol was added to the "End Areas" of the map to indicate an object that the player needs to touch to fully complete the level, similar to the stars in Super Mario 64 or the Mini Zapfish in Splatoon.

The themes of each level were...

• A dangerous level that puts the player's skill in combat and taking advantage of the environment to the test in small PvE areas.
• A level where the player soars from platform to platform and gets higher as they go.
• A level where the player traverses over various bottomless pits.

Work Completed

    I managed to complete all of my work this Sprint, which is a feat I am quite proud of! This totaled up to 7 points, which is over double the amount of points I got done in Sprint 2! 

Incomplete Work

In terms of the tasks on the Trello board, there was no imcomplete work in this Sprint. However, I do wish that the 3D Annotated Maps were made with a more consistennt scale in mind, as well as being more proactive in the Unity sphere of our proeject. So far, one of the two other members of my team would import the Annotated Map into Unity, and resize it to be more consisent with the other imported models. I believe that importing the objects into Unity myself, and scale them accordingly either in Maya or Unity, as well as other tasks such as box colliders, I can take some weiight off of my team's sholders without adding too much weight onto mine!

Work in Progress

The tasks I am currently working on are...

• Creating the Annotated Map for the Arena Level, which would resemble a colisseum and battle arenas.
• Creating the Annotated Map for the Compacted Boss Level, where the player has a limited enviornment to fight a powerful enemy that needs to be defeated to progress in the game.
• Creating the Annotated Map for the Colored Zipline mechanic, as an early-game level to help players get the hang of the color gauntlet and color mixing mechanics.
• Become more comfortable with using Unity to import and/or create enviornments and props for levels, and tweaking them in Unity to be functional within the engine for playtesting.