The fifth week of the project turned into a continuation of last week — I’ve run into a technical problem that’s completely blocking me. Instead of starting a new sprint I took the last week to complete the stories from the last week that didn’t get complete as well as started researching ways past the block.
I’m also having health issues that are slowing me down.
The Tech Problem
As I was poking at how the combat between hero and minion will work I realized the two never get quite close enough to actually hit. The movement code is based on the underlying tiles so the characters move from the center of one to the center of the next. My first attempt at fixing the problem was to increase the size of the characters so they’d overlap the tiles and could “reach” each other. That was promising, but it also caused the characters to overlap the the boundary (wall) tiles in a way that looked bad.
For my my next try I’m going to rewrite the movement code so the characters move freely and aren’t tied to the underlying tile grid. I’ve thought through how this will work and don’t foresee any problems. but it’s possible that by leaving the grid for movement some other problem could arise.
My next sprint has one user story: I need to figure out a way they characters can move in the dungeon that looks and feels right and also allows them to get close enough to fight.
One task I completed was to find a digital version of story cards — after checking out a couple I ended up with AgileZen.com which has a free (1 project) version. I’ve copied all of the current user stories into the system as well as added more.
Thinking Ahead Questions
- If my next try for character movement doesn’t give me the results I want, I probably need to find someone who’s done this kind of thing as ask for some tips.
- If the health problems I’m experiencing don’t get better soon, what can I do to salvage things?
- Why was I able to create my last game so quickly, but this one feels like it’s bogged down so much? What can I do to change that?
Time Spent This Week
Total time working on user stories and tasks (including trying to make the movement work correctly) was 12 hours. There was also another 3 hours of research into agile software and pouring user stories into the online tool, for a total of about 15 hours spent on the project this week.
Total: 15 hours.