Martin Vilches

  During the Sprint Kickoff, some bugs accumulated in my bug board that were crucial to fix to gather good playtest data. So, fixing those was the first priority before developing new features to add to the game. The objective of the Sprint was to solidify the core game loop into a playable and loopable state and tackle the game's UI. So, one of the major problems with bugs was the inconsistency that the slap mechanic had; sometimes, it would work, and other times, it would execute differently than intended. To fix this, I had to understand how to use a SphereCast, which detects all Colliders within a sphere radius that is not a game object in Unity. This allowed us to detect all the players within the sphere radius and push them if they were in the radius. After implementing this, the slap became consistent, and players could push each other with no problem. Another bug was a prototyped mechanic that was not meant to be in the game; when the player dived, it would cancel the reset...

  During Sprint Kickoff, some significant changes were made to the game core loop, including a change in how it was going to be handled. The game would now be handled by points, and it would be divided into modules. The modules can be of two types: last man standing and race. This meant I would have to change the main backend of how the system was being handled. The backed rework for the new game structure was the highest priority for this sprint, so I tackled it first. Thankfully, everything was broken down from the previous rework, and now it was easier to change the system and the order of events needed to happen for the game to start. I started by removing the order of events and dependencies and reorganizing them on a UML diagram to understand what needed to be done.  For this new re-work, I decided to make the systems even more modular and have some required soft dependencies. The game needs the dependencies necessary to start, and then the soft dependencies that are not...

During Sprint 4 of Stumblebumps, I wanted to accomplish various tasks, including fixing some of the bugs found in previous sprints and reworking some backend systems. During Sprint Kickoff, I was assigned to work on more systems and fix bugs. One of the main concerns or focus for this sprint was making better developer tools that the designer and the level designers needed to test the levels more efficiently. Right after the Sprint kickoff, I first tackled Player Animations. Since both of our animators were being shared among all the teams, I knew the earlier we had that animation feedback, the better for them. This was my first big approach to handling character animations in Unity, and I wanted to make them look good so they fit our character controller and display the animations themselves. Because I wanted the animation handling to be outside of the main third-person movement, I had to implement a wrapper that would extract some values from the main third-person controller and send...

  Starting Sprint #3 for Stumble, there were various things that I wanted to get done; personally, I wanted to implement the core game loop and get started on the arena for the game. During the sprint kickoff, there were various priorities that the designer and producer wanted me to get done at the beginning of the sprint, which were modifying the player controller further and changing some keys; these changes were based on the playtests conducted at the end of the previous sprint. It was mentioned to me that during this sprint, we were going to have an animator & rigger for the team, so I wanted to get animations in the game. So, the first thing I started working on was the priorities and adjusting the player controller. I started working on a delay for the diving mechanic. The biggest problem during the playtest was that players were unable to cancel the dive and dive midair again; if you were quick enough, you would get boosted forward just by tapping space quickly. I adde...

Starting Sprint 2 for Stumble, I wanted to do many things this sprint, including getting the bumpers that will push the player and getting the transferring of the Connected Players from the Lobby to the Game scene working. During the sprint kickoff, I negotiated this with my designer and producer, and they agreed that it should be the focus of this sprint. They also added some fixes that they wanted in the player controller to give a smoother gameplay experience. More in detail, some changes on inputs for the player and also timers that will prevent the Player from performing actions quickly. The first thing I started working on was the bumpers, and using the GDD, I had a general idea of how they needed to interact with the player. After researching how to achieve this, I needed the bounce direction to be perpendicular to the bounce surface. Finally, I came to a function inherited from Raycasts, in which you can get the direction normal from the surface the Raycast hit. Knowing this, I...

For CAGD 495 (Advanced Production), I was assigned to work on a group working on the game Stumble. Stumble is a competitive Obstacle Course game in which you race up to 4 players to reach the finish line. This concept stood out to me, and once I was assigned to my group, we quickly started the project. Fortunately, I was assigned to do the programming for this project, which was my first pick role. My first task was to set up a GitHub for the project and invite every team member to it. I started by creating the repository and adding a Unity Project to it. Next, I added everyone to the repository. This was easy since the designer and producer had a spreadsheet where everyone put their contact information. They also managed to ask everyone for their GitHub-connected email, which facilitated my work. After the first programming meeting with the designer and producer for Stumble, it was clear that Sprint #1's target was getting the player movement working and implementing some of the b...