Sprint 1: And They Don't Stop Coming And They Don't Stop Coming

 This is my first time as a team leader, and I'm constantly anxious. I'm now currently dealing with people who have spent a lot of time in leadership roles, and who have worked on larger projects than I ever have. Frequently, they're more talented than me in different aspects. There's a lot of reasons for me to be anxious about my new position, but I signed on because I knew this role would be more work, not less, and that I was dead certain I could benefit from taking a leadership role.

The only issue is that right now, I have to work on being less of the Michael Scott I was born to be. I am doing my best to provide good bones for everyone to work on, and give people the space they need in order to do everything they need to do.

The backlog only really started coming together when I made an asset list that helped me break down, in detail, what parts of the game needed to be built in sequence, and what features I could re-use from one asset to another.

This first sprint started rough; I had no backlog built up, really, and I was desperate to get work assigned based on everyone's skillsets. So, I gave my modeling and texturing specialists models and textures. There was an obvious issue with this; that I didn't have much of a game in order to model for, and I knew in my gut that it just didn't make sense to document and flesh out an idea that hasn't been prototyped and proven to be fun. I got caught on that pretty quick, and I made an effort to learn from it and promise to give people more scripting and UX work, until we have a prototype we can playtest and know is fun.

Kyle Mays' texture, per my exact specifications. Great work, hopelessly misallocated work ethic. It was a genuine challenge to get people all on scripting/UX, but worth it. 

There was more issues with the backlog, but nothing I can't deal with in time. I realized that even though I spent a large amount of time filling out the backlog, I only had enough points for three sprints, let alone the seven we're supposed to have. This is both a really good thing, and a really bad thing, because it means my team has been working insanely hard and meeting goals for points even in difficult, uncertain, sprints. However, it also means I need to work hard to extend the backlog and really consider every last thing this game needs to be successful. I have been rigorously playtesting games similar to this and thinking about all the things needed to make the experience convenient and easy for me. If it's a feature that would make my game better, I find out what I need to do to add it in, and make it a card.

My work for this sprint was spent on the backlog, creating an asset list with features and timelines, and building the math of the game with careful consideration of how our game is primarily going to e played. When it comes to our grades, the playtests are the most significant feedback we get, and I worked the idle game math on it being more instantly gratified compared to equivalent games. I used basic graphs that model exponential and polynomial growth, allowing for multipliers, and making key decisions on how each equation used to determine the income and cost of each generator changes over time.

Thumbnail designs used to show the ideal UI, which will inform our inventory and main menu UI later on in development.

For my next sprint, I will dive into the project proper, and wrap up the last of my clerical duties. This next sprint, everyone's hands are on deck to create a working prototype, so we can go ahead and figure out if this is a fun game worth elaborating on, or if we need to go back to the drawing board. We have a definite date we need a testable prototype out on, and I'm dead set on delivering something worthwhile.

Made an ease-of-use function to calculate the sum total of generators, and used that to update the display as shown here.