Image Source: Falmouth University Canvass
We have to come up with a team name this week & what better than to keep it simple and smart. Whether you have a fully formed, partial or non-existent team, it is never too early to be thinking of names for your team. Team names are a great way to begin team building, express common interests and flex the creative power of collaboration (Oakley et al, 2014). Like any other agile process, finding a team name is an iterative process.
For our team name we have come up with the following. The team we have in place is called Team A.M.P.M.B
This is the first initial of all of our names combined. It's nothing complicated or wordy but I think it's a great way to have everyone involved have a part of the title.
Aaron
Miranda
Pedro
Michael
Bartosz
Nice and easy to remember also.
This week marks the beginning of the rapid ideation stage for this module. Your team has agency over the ideation process and must all agree the terms of engagement. However, this decision should not be made lightly. There is a proliferation of academic literature in the field of design thinking on topics such as ideation, jams and hackathons.
The approach your team takes must be supported by research. There might be a particular ideation technique that has undergone rigorous testing and been proven to be effective. You might choose to review approaches to jamming from the 2020 Global Game Jam (GGJ) survey and adopt the most popular techniques (Stålberg et al, 2020). Whatever, approach your team decides to take, it is important to acknowledge that rapid-ideation can be more challenging in distributed teams.
To counteract this, we have come up with the following Rapid Ideation Plan.
Forming The Team is comprised of the following individuals: -Aaron Wise -Miranda -Michael Heard -Bartosz -Pedro Silva
Storming - We have been using Miro for content creation ideas and also google docs for added narrative designs and character dialogue. We are also using gitlab for all of our online patching and updating of the UE4 project when people have new stuff to add.
Norming - We are using the scrum methodology during development along with a specific style guide that we are all sticking to. We have a colour grid that we choose colours from and use a single texture to colour all of our models.
With this in mind the team & I have discussed various roles and have developed a schedule that works for us all. We have our own personal meetings at 8pm on a Wednesday followed by our supervisor meetings on a Thursday at 9:30pm with Matty. Team Composition
Content Creation (Modelling, Texturing, Animation):
Michael, Aaron
Level Design:
Miranda, Pedro
Concept Art:
Miranda
Technical Art (Rigging, VFX, Shaders):
Bart, Aaron, Pedro
Gameplay Programming:
Aaron, Pedro, Bart
Writing (Narrative, Character Dialogue):
Michael, Miranda, Bart
This is not a definitive list, we would like it to be organised so that if anyone has an area they are interested in then they can learn and contribute.
File storage / Version Control
As it works with the Unreal Engine and Pedro knows how to use Gitlab/Github we plan to use this for our source control.
Communication Strategy
Currently we are using Discord to post in writing, and using the call function to talk together. We have a Miro for idea creation and references as well as the Teams App from Microsoft.
Individual Schedules
Aaron: Weekdays 9am - 8pm
Bart: Weekends 5pm - 9pm
Micheal: Weekdays up till 3pm
Miranda: Weekdays 12pm -12am
Pedro: Weekdays 1pm -8pm
Group Schedule
Every Wednesday 8PM, with extra meetings as required
Tools and techniques
Engine - Unreal Engine 4
Modelling - Blender
Texture/Artwork - Photoshop, Clip studio paint, Substance Designer
Communication - Discord
Planning, ideas - Miro, Google Docs
Version Control - Gitlab
Particular emphasis should be placed on effective communication. In the GGJ survey mentioned previously, the majority of teams committed to regular communication as the main approach to align expectations and monitor that development progress. Your team needs to lock in the approach to communication very early into the rapid ideation process to ensure the individual expectations align.
The team focus should be directed at initiating rapid ideation. This in and of itself will require a lot of energy. There are a lot of details to iron out, tools to initialise and tasks to be allocated.
Image Source - Falmouth Online University Canvass The Team Name: The team we have in place is called Team A.M.P.M.B
This is the first initial of all of our names combined. It's nothing complicated or wordy but I think it's a great way to have everyone involved have a part of the title.
Aaron
Miranda
Pedro
Michael
Bartosz
Nice and easy to remember also. AUGMENTED REALITY: Also this week we had a couple of optional areas to research such as AR (Augmented Reality) and the Physical Web. The option I chose to explore was Augmented Reality. For this I used the programme Unite AR where you can designate a target image that the programme uses to identify as the Augmentation Area. For this I just used a basic image of my kids when we were at Legoland.
I then uploaded one of my 3D models and had the model appear with it's animations over the image. Here is the end result.
There are two different ways in which this now works with a completed project. Option one is by scanning the target image with your phone on PC and it spawning in the 3D model and have it play animations. Option 2 is to print the picture with a QR code attached and have it scan the page you print and then play it back that way, anywhere you like. The fact that this requires no coding, is free and has a lot of practical implementations makes this a very exciting time for people interested in AR development. Compared to the competitors OpenCV, Vuforia & AR Foundation, I have found that this particular AR application works best and is very user friendly. The only limitation of this app compared to the competitors is that this can really only be used for commercial applications and trying to implement this for games would be very difficult. REFLECTION FOR THIS WEEK: This week has been a good week. We are on track with starting a prototype already, we have a solid team and a good idea of what we want o make. We have started using Miro for brainstorming visually, something that we can revert to as we move forwards throughout the module.
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