Final Post

6 August

Last day of work!

Everyone did their final piece of work and we got ourselves a meeting with our Product Owner. Because the Product Owner could not attend the Post-Mortem tomorrow, he wanted us to show him how we are going to present the game tomorrow and use it as a rehearsal. After the internal presentation, the Product Owner shwoed as what we could have done better but somehow the team disagrees and showed concerns of time constraints, design issues etc. But no matter, the team felt that we did a good job making such a well polished game in these 2 months.

Hurray team RUNDOWN!

The ALL-STARS poster is out! It looks really nice, but it will only be shown when we are back!

5 August

All 6 Teams are Gold! We are ready to ship our games at the end of this summer! The artists from all teams gathered to discuss on a secret mission and are working to make the ALL-STARS poster for this Summer 2009 bunch of games. Stay Tuned!

4 August

More testing and certifying! Today was as busy as yesterday and we got 4 out of 6 games Gold today so that leaves 2 more to go!

Sound bug, Menu bug, Loading Speed, Network problems?!

3 August

Code is frozen and nothing should be implemented and ready for all Release Candidates for all teams to be certified as Gold. This is probably the busiest week for the QA Leads to play through every single detail in the respective QA Checklist to certify the Release Candidate and feedback to the team whether they need to be certified with the QA Mentor or have to remake the Release Candidate because of bugs and other issues such as technical problems. The QA Leads have tested 3 out of 6 games so far and all of them were Gold today. However, 2 of the 3 teams want to Release another improved version to test so we are back to 5 games to test. Being a QA Lead is not easy at this stage as you have to refresh yourself to know what is going on and what to expect as you cannot assume that everytime the team submits a Candidate it is the same one and must try to repoduce the steps for the bug which were previously recorded. Testing out conditions and ways to reproduce a bug that you never expect would seem like finding a lost piece of puzzle before the puzzle is complete.

Final UPDATES?

Day 46 – 23th July Thursday
Well today we successfully get our Achievements feature in, well the day before I still thinking if it was a good decision to make for the team to try out this new feature just a day before feature freeze. But as there was no downside in making this decision, I therefore pushed my programmers hard on the last day to get this feature in. And I believed this decision caused the game to have more replay ability value. I am glad to make this good decision promptly if not this feature will not be in at all. After feature freeze is our weekly testing session, most games have changed quite a lot from the previous milestones. All our games are getting shaped up and ready for bug fixing and polishing.

Day 47 – 24th July Friday
As usual, I started the morning with our daily stand up and presented in the weekly team presentation. After that, I let the team rest for a few hours as they did a good job in this milestone. I then had sprint planning meeting for bugs fixing and polishing week. Also our product owners came and praised us for the great job!

Day 50 – 27th July Monday
Well today, I monitor my programmers in bug fixing and also if there are new bugs found, I will then prioritize them in order of our current bug list. Also the art team is polishing their assets for better deliverable assets. The day passed quickly. And Bruce from Singapore Game Lab is here for this week and Chor Guan will be arriving tomorrow.

Day 51 – 28th July Tuesday
Chor Guan arrived! Everyone was so ‘concern’ about her arrival, but not sure of the exact reasons too. I went for my producer meeting in the noon, then spent the rest of the day QA the game.

Day 52 – 29th July Wednesday
Well today I was basically making everyone on their toes as open house and RC0 milestone due are tomorrow, thus I pushing my team harder than usual. As the day went by, the bugs list are dropping faster, I then felt kind of relived when the bug lists are left with minor fixing or those that are not worth the time to fix. End the day with only a few bugs left and finished all art tasks. Yippy.

Day 53 – 30th July Thursday
OPEN HOUSE TODAY! The whole Gambit is excited about evening open house. My programmers finish fixing all known bugs at 4pm and just now the catered lunch came. My teams had dinner together and chat till 5.30pm. We then prepared our room for the open house. 6pm knocked, we had people from game industry, their family members, strangers etc for testing. My team including me had a great deal of laughter watching people playing our game. In the end, quite a lot of them liked our game and one even asked us for poster to remember our game. Well after 8pm, I shoved the team back to rest as we had a tired day.

Day 54 – 31th July Friday
Well as everyone was so tired from yesterday and there was not a need for sprint meeting, basically I asked the team to QA the game to find ship-stopping bugs. Our product owners came with one of her student to get more information to continue working on the game. And they were very pleased with the final product and enjoyed playing themselves. The day ended earlier as everyone had a late night last night.

Day 57 – 2nd August Monday
Today we had our branding and marketing lectures in the morning. Also producer has to prepare all the necessary documents and finish the TLO forms. Also started on my marketing materials, I first start on website as I am more familiar with. The artists start on their posters while the rest QA the game.

Day 58 – 3rd August Tuesday
We had 2 of our posters up and most of our marketing materials ready, our first trailer mockup are done. Actually we are kind of ahead compared to other teams. Also my artist Ben did up other team posters for fun, which Chor Guan commented that we are ‘SO’ free.

Day 59 – 4th August Wednesday
Most of the marketing materials are done! Most of the people here are slacking and playing games in office already. And the artists are planning to do an ALLSTAR poster for this year program. All are looking forward to this poster.

Day 60 – 5th August Thursday
Last Day of official stay in the office, today most teams spend time clearing up the room and taking photos. Also GAMBIT ALLSTAR poster is up. IT IS SUPER SUPER NICE. Everyone liked the poster and we getting a super sized printed tomorrow. In the evening, I went back to pack my room and found out I need an extra bag! Now going around asking for spaces!

That's all for July!

31 July

Team presentations and a little bit of touch-ups, soon enough everyone headed home to get some rest for the intense of the past week.

30 July

The open house was pretty successful and we were about to decide whether to keep it in or not as players did not seem to be bothered by it so we implemented a switch for the feature to be on of off depending on the preference of the player. This idea had also made me realised that it is not whether to put it in or not, as long as it doesn't break the game, a feature could be switched on or off for the liking and not necessary be removing it out of the game completely. This should be a lesson learnt of not throwing away things that may seem harmful but useful sometime later. I hope.

29 July

The "conflict" carries on between the Product Owner and the team. Like both sides of the coin, both sides were reluctant to let go thus they asked for 2 versions of the game for the open house testing initially. But there was an additional testing session today which had included new players such as Bruce (Lead Programmer of Carneyvale Showtime) and Chor Guan (Executive Director of MDA). Bruce had a chance on the full game and as a new player, he did not find the new feature the product owner as a problem. Instead, he felt that that feature was pretty useful. I gave that feedback bac kto the team and convinced that it would be more efficient to leave the new feature in for the open house and then decide to take it out or not. Although I feel that this may "waste" our chance for a huge crowd of fresh players, but it is our only chance that we could get this feature in or not. so we shall just wait for tomorrow's results!

28 July

The QA Team did not like the new feature as well and there are the other stuff that we are afraid to implement because it would either introduce bugs in the game of make the game really not fun at all. Thus, we have to wait till tomorrow when we decided to use it or not for the open testing. As the QA Lead, although personally I feel the same way as the team, I am the only person who should take the neutral stand and not decide on what to go for and what not, everything has to be proven as theory may not match practice. We will just have to wait for more playtest even though the QA Team dislike the new feature but they are too experienced with the game to give sufficient feedback to change the decision and the design of the game.

27 July

Everyone in the team doesn't like the new feature the product owner wanted us to present and we could not do anything until the playtest tomorrow but to polish up all the other stuff which we initially intended to do, no more placeholder assets, it's all going for gold this time, no more fooling around.

24 July

Yet again, we passed the milestone! But the road ahead for the team is a rocky one for the pilishing and implementing what the product owner wants. Let's do this!

23 July

We just submitted the Milestone for Beta and will not know the result until tomorrow. Today was the meeting with our Product owner and there are new things that he wanted in the game which may cause the game to be not fun anymore but we have to implement it because he has the final say although. So we shall see...

22 July

Tomorrow will be the end of BEta and the team is still not up there yet and YES! we got our title and will be using it while the artist figure out how to change the game logo according to the new title. The QA checklist has increased again and there are new bugs that should be fixed. The list of features that are not implemented are still not in! The conssequence we may have to face is the failure of the milestone.

21 July

Today is the QA meeting again and there was something that the team wanted to test out again and it did went well so we decided to keep the feature! We still have our title to work on and the Artists and Programmers are really really at thier tip to make out these features for the milestone!