Sprint 1:

Monday Wk 1 - 18/09/23 - Today is the first day of the new trimester and things are looking like they may be a little on the funky side as my group has decided to disband with some moving into other groups or just going solo. I’ll spend the next couple of days attempting to contact other groups and attempt to join them

Wednesday Wk 1 - 20/09/23 - After several failed attempts at joining up with a group I have decided to complete this final project solo. The current idea is to make a 3D First-Person Zombie Survival game inspired by games like “7 Days to Die”, “DayZ” and “Project Zomboid”. After some serious deliberation, I have decided to move the main focus of the game from an all-rounded game experience with well-made graphics and amazing gameplay to one that focuses more on my current strength being that of a programmer. As of now the current objective of the game is to focus on the mechanics and feel of the gameplay rather than the aesthetics. This will not only help me to show my programming abilities but also free up my limited time reserves by not having to learn difficult modeling programs under crunch time which would lead to a less-than-wanted level of overall gameplay.

Thursday Wk 1 - 21/09/23 - Coming off the back of yesterday I noticed another problem that may rear its ugly head… Time. More specifically, the amount of time that I have in a week to work on this game. This problem has an upside, downside and a clear-cut solution.

1. The Downside: The major downside of the fact that I’m only a solo programmer working on this project is that I can’t divide tasks between team members to lighten the workload. This means that I will have to brunt all of the workload and will most likely end up bogged down in work.
2. The Upside: The core upside of the fact that I’m working as a solo means I don’t have to wait for other group members to complete their tasks.
3. The Solution: The easiest way I see that would allow me to overcome this problem would simply be to reduce the amount of hours that I work at my two jobs. This would allow me to free up my weekly schedule and would allow me to devote more time to the project.

Friday Wk 1 - 22/09/23 - Continued to work on the H’n’P (short for Hack’n’Plan) as well as began to fill out the Project Diary.

Saturday Wk 1 - 23/09/23 - I mainly worked on the first assignment as well as researched how to make an organised inventory system for the game as I have never made one before.

I also intend to finish the first assignment by tonight as earlier in the week I was called into work at the Pub on Sunday night as we are short-staffed (will be starting work at 9:45 am at Goodgames and finishing up at the Pub at midnight. This means that I’d miss the submission time so I intend to submit before I head out for work in the morning).

Sunday Wk 1 - 24/09/23 - After missing all of my early morning alarms I had to take my laptop to work to finish off the Sunday entry. Another problem that has arisen is the fact that I have almost no artistic skills but there is a simple solution to this problem. By utilising the Unity asset store I can obtain debug art that I can use to gauge distances in the game as well as scale. I can also utilise the asset store to obtain some basic models for items as well as potential enemies (Reminder to future self: make a reference list in APA 6th ed of all the different things that I use from the asset store).

Wk 2: 25/09/23 - 01/10/23

Whilst going through the Diary entries I noticed that I may be easier if I were to write them as a weekly summey. This will inturn allow me to cut down on most of the fluff and focus on what was actually accomplished. Through out this past week I mainly worked on the fundamentals of the game. Namely the basic movement, camera movement and finally the inventory manager. I am fully expecting that the inventory manager will give me alot of trouble as I have never made one before.

Wk 3: 02/10/23 - 08/10/23

In week 3 I finished up the inventory manager. I also started and finished up the PlayerStats script/Player Bars which show the players current food, water, stamina and health stats. These will have future punnishments/benefiets for having close to full or empty metres. I also worked on the Item pickup mechanic. This is crucial as it allows for the player to be able to obtain items for survival.