This weeks sprint planning for me included the enemy spawn mechanic change and the flare pick-up mechanics. The change of the spawn of the enemies was bound to happen as my older static and preplaced spawn system was criticized by the project manager and the lead programmer to being too predictable, thus making me change the old spawner this week into a random spawner which makes the game less predictable. As one of the most important aesthetic goals of the game is “Mysterious and Exciting”, a random spawning mechanic of the enemies were needed to make them close their distance to player from different angles, thus making the player unable to feel that he can predict the enemy movement and to be on more of an edge. The process of making the random spawner started with figuring out how it would be implemented. The project Manager had the idea of having a circle around the player where the enemies would spawn, while the lead programmers suggested a system where the players x, y, z axis were randomized and the tip of the axis were used to spawn the enemies. I went to route closer to what the Project Manager suggested but instead of circle, I used four rectangles to around the player. Then I calculated the how the enemies would spawn within the rectangle. After I implemented the enemy prefab to the code of the spawner, I seemed it was working fine in the way that it spawned the enemies randomly in places within the rectangle. But soon I realized the enemies were just spawning at the right side of the rectangles I created. While I was trying to understand the reason behind why this was happening I found out that during my calculations I misspelled an y with a x, thus solving the problem. In the future more additions of the such as a despawn would need to be added to the game as the enemies that aren’t able to catch up or swarm the player needs to be dealt with. The idea for the despawning system was brought up by the project manager in a way where the enemies despawn after they are at a specific distance away from the player.
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Hello Edin! I will critique your blog post this week.
You quite clearly express which artifact you’ve chosen to reflect upon (which I understand is the enemy spawn mechanic), however in the introduction of the post you mention the flare pick up mechanics. Since you don’t mention them again throughout the text I assume you only brought them up since they were part of your weekly sprint plan. I’d suggest only bringing up the specific artifact you want to reflect on in the post.
The production process is clearly communicated, and was explained in a way that made sense, even to people that aren’t programmers (like myself).
Your motivations behind your choices are also clear, with references to player experience, aesthetic goal and of listening the the groups feedback.
Now to some general feedback:
There was some information which I found to be irrelevant to the artifact, such as what I previously mentioned in the introduction and also the ending where you bring up enemy despawning.
There were also some grammar and spelling mistakes, however none that made the text unreadable or affected my understanding of it in any way.
Personally I would add some more spacing to the text to make it slightly easier to read.
Another small criticism is that I’d reconsider referring to the player as “he”, perhaps use “he/she” or “they” as it is more inclusive.
I hope this was valuable to you, I’d like to reiterate that I’m not a programmer and thus it might be the case that my understanding of the artifact was lacking in some aspects.
Great job on this reflection and good luck on future work!
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