Gotta go fast, But not too fast!

PROBLEM: Time? Never heard of her.

There are pros and cons to the sprint workflow we have adopted and due to the time frame that our dev team is working with we these pros and cons have an even greater impact on our timing. Despite this approach to development being extremely well structured, I think that we are spread a little thin in terms of us utilizing too many resources. There are many great tools at our disposal individually but when there are so many of these intertwined it makes it quite hard to use any of them to any great effect, not to mention having to deal with any continuity issues. 

I have been doing a ton of planning and just thinking to the point that my head hurts. Most of the design of the game is solidified in terms of the bones of the project we are starting with as well as the concept we are targeting, yet the details are many and the need to take the appropriate amount of time on each of them is great. While fleshing out the Design document for our game we began approaching many of these topics, and while we have become more focused on them, we still have a great deal of technical limits to see. This though goes hand in hand with our development approach

Part 2: The Benefits of Proper Planning

There are so many little details that we as a team still need to make decisions on but this elongated planning will definitely be worth it in the long run. In what short time that we have had we have really come up with some great things, and have begun to think through all of the benefits, changes and ways that they can impact each other. In a game centered around strategy I think that this is really key and will be of great benefit to us in the long run.

I have already come across about 3 aspects of our game within the first build that have indicated the need for increased planning and testing. It would have been devastatingly difficult to rebound and pivot later down the road if we had not taken this long stretch of time to prepare. Even now in my own programming tasks of preparing the Grid System I have come across things that have forced me to reconsider some of my design choices and approach to overcoming some of these challenges. 

Even just taking the time to create a detailed flow of thing like the gameplay loop have helped me to better see how all the moving pieces are connected.

Part C: Outcomes

Despite the fact that a lot of this planning is scattered and fits on all different levels of the intended gameplay experience, it has brought a since of identity to the project that I truly don't believe that it might have had any other way. Just by taking the time to plan efficiently I was able to get the basis of the entire building system coded in 35 mins!

 I will forever remember the tools that we have used here for future projects sprints and plannings, even if I don't take advantage of every single one directly, there are aspects of each that I can take with me when i plan for projects in the future.