As previously stated on my planning documentation, I will primarily be using the site HacknPlan to document my planning and production timeline, this site is a production schedule designer which is made specifically for games, this is immensely useful as it allows me to document what me and Salman will be doing and when, it also allows me to set deadlines, and describe said tasks in detail.
Their are several different menus i can open which will help in the creation of my project timetable, create allows to me make new timetables on a whim, which is how I made my current production shecdule, dashboards allows me to create separate boards and timetables if necessary, this could be useful if I need a specially made timetable, boards, backlog and design model are useful as they allow me to properly check and adjust anything easily, metrics allows me to check %’s on what’s been done and when, administration allows me to check whenever I or Salman have changed anything.
The image above shows our current planned activities, certain ones have time limits and turn in rates, this is useful as it helps me and Salman see what we need to do and when it should be handed in, helping us better coordinate the production of our game and assisting us in further creating it, this menu helps us plan out the future efficiently.
The image shows the current In Progress activities, which help us understand what we are currently developing, the planned activities move into this menu once we are able to develop them, this is usually the menu where the deadline is decided, it allows us to show anyone who may be interested what and when we are developing certain parts of our game.
The game test menu allows me to document anything we are currently testing, the current activity being the game test which is actively being worked on and tested, we will test this game test until we deem it necessary to begin working on the full game, which in turn will also enter the testing phase.
An updated version of my schedule, reaching completion;
Ontop of creating the HacknPlan which helped both me and Salman stay on track, i created a personal written down checklist for each day I was at college, i wrote down atleast 3 objectives I had for the day, and checked them off when i had completed them, this helped me stay on track and helped me get ahead of schedule, assisting me to feel like I’ve been productive.
The following checklists are in no particular order:
Both of these scheduling methods helped me and Salman both, particularly the daily checklists, as they helped me understand what my overall goal for the day was, in the future I would create a schedule for both me and my partner, one that is easily viewable like a whiteboard or a timetable on some paper, this would help clear up any discrepancies, and would make it physically there to view, instead of making us go out of our way to view it, this would boost production as we would always know what needs to be done.
After visiting my selected university (University of Huddersfield) I was shown around and on my visit I saw something particularly interesting which relates to scheduling, specifically games scheduling, they often use large whiteboards with a series of checklists, such as things like bugs, mechanics, characters, design, production ect, each separated into a separate segment with a person dedicated to each task, this improved efficiency and is often used in games design, I will attempt to emulate this wherever possible in the future.
I was then messaged by Casey on Teams and she informed me and the rest of the class that a Sound Plot would be helpful for me to emphasize how sounds were produced and to what purpose they were made, I initially wanted to put this into Production Documentation but after thinking about it I decided the sheet was more of a schedule than documentation.
The sound plot schedule was helpful as it helped me document both planned sounds and sounds that have already been made, I have planned many different sounds ontop of these ones and have thought about how I record them, these sounds are to be used in-game or to be used in experimentation, I did several sounds in experimentation and these also helped me decide which sounds should be implemented.
Salman recorded the majority of sounds whilst I decided