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Hi Mikey

Everything on your team sounds super positive. Happy to see the project's coming together. Sounds like a safe bet to use sounds from other games as stand ins. Excited to see the final result!

Matthew, my beloved

The work you've done looks exceptional. It's important to acknowledge where a project actually is and be realistic about what  the final outcome is gonna be, and I think your comment on the quality of the project not exactly matching what you thought reflects that. 

Hi Brando!

Aiming for a shorter but higher quality level, especially given how much time we've got left in the course, is definitely a good call. Glad to see your team is still making progress.

I'm sorry about the external stressors that are affecting your progress. We could've tried to figure out a system earlier on for accountability so you don't have as much of a burden placed on you as the only programmer. I think we'll catch up come reading week. 

There's a good quote from a designer at Bethesda, Ellys Tan, who says it's best to "over-communicate, and always assume the best intentions through text" when regarding working with a team. I think it's a good piece of advice, considering the struggles we had with clarifying our ideas. 

Hey Launa!

I think I'll be making a real effort next semester to get us meeting on a more consistent basis, so hopefully that will pay dividends in the future. If you ever need help getting tasks related to the project sorted, please let me know!

Hi Rui!

It's awesome to see this level of confidence from a classmate. I think striving for comprehensive documentation is a safe bet for success, especially when working with a team. I hope you and your team have a lot of success working on your project in the upcoming semester!

Hi Lucy!

Envious of the progress your teams made with your proof of concept. Taking advantage of resources online, like a player controller, is something we've been doing with ours, and it's been working great. 

I'm very curious to see how this VTuber reaction system. Maybe it sounds more complex than it actually is, but I'd love to see some sort of adaptive mechanism for expressing player performance, kind of like the Doomguy's face in Doom

Best of luck to you and your team!

Hi Matthew!

I should be using a kanban board! Ever since Ms. Bradshaw's class, I've been trying to push myself to get some sort of visual progress tracker. I'm still trying to find an appropriate app or widget on my phone that would make accessing and updating the board easy. Any suggestion would be appreciated!

Hi Lucy!

You seem to have a good balance when managing time between small projects and big projects. I've also started breaking tasks down based on scale, though I'm now struggling with making assumptions about how long something will actually take. It's a difficult bit of mental gymnastics we have to contend with, trying to predict every problem we might face and figure out how long it'll take us to solve those problems. 

Hi Launa!

I don't think I could ever go back to pen and paper for writing down anything. I've been using Miro sticky notes to track stuff, and just a desktop notepad app for reminders (more specifically for how to do different things in the different engines we use). 

Beyond that, I also try to frame my goals as big or small depending on their importance, and I definitely feel more accomplished completing tasks that way, as opposed to having 7 large, month spanning projects to finish. 

Hi Kim!

When you said that it was difficult to find gameplay that ties nicely to your chosen research topic, I feel you. It's pretty difficult finding core gameplay mechanics while also conveying the gravity and importance of your chosen theme. You don't want to undermine the topic your basing the whole experience around... but you also want to make an engaging experience with a strong loop. Hope your team can come up with some strong gameplay for SteelFire Garden!

Hi Mikey!

I like the idea of framing a game around FOMO and social media. Getting a game like that made and then popular enough online to be streamed would be a hilarious situation (not viable at all, but the irony of that is amusing to me lol.)

I hope Artificial Nightmare is a fun project to work on. Your teams got a stacked set of narrative designers (based on the spreadsheets we went over in class) so I'm excited to see how the story aspects of the game turn out once you all start working on it!

Hi Berger!

Solid job adapting to the presentation constraints. I had to cut a portion of my presentation myself to save time. Smart decision devoting time to the core pillars of the project, despite the fact you had to pivot to a general, high-concept pitch to get your idea across. Best of luck working on SteelFire Garden!

Hi Brandon!

I remember seeing a critique once that "Hacking minigames are bad, even if they're good" from Harris Brewis on YouTube, and I agree with his sentiment somewhat. The point he was making was, even if the activity is well-designed, a lot of games have the player do their respective minigame hundreds of times in a given play through, which can make it quickly turn stale. Terminals in Fallout or that pipe minigame in Bio-Shock were the examples he cited, and I'm well aware of how the former of those examples can get repetitive.

Just something to think about if you pursue this idea over the semester and want to make a hacking minigame yourself.

Hi Berger!

This is a fascinating topic to look into, especially given your unique parental connection with Brazil. I've seen Favela's in photos before, and the construction (at least of what I'm seeing on Google right now, typing this) is really a marvel to look at. Thank you for sharing context into why these buildings are so closely packed. Beyond that, I think framing a setting for a potential game around Favela's would be interesting to explore aesthetically, so if this project does work out, I'd be very excited to see how the architecture translates into a game.