Sprint 006 reflection

What did we accomplish in the last two weeks?

• Rewrote a big chunk of the prototype scene
• Designed a new way of structuring sex scenes that is (definitely) easier to produce and (hopefully) sexier
• Made notifications and dice rolls more elegant and consistent
• Experimented with a new writing process
• Released dev version of changes to Operators+
• Added Status Effect icons
• Tested a new type of Hero Header
• Released a prototype of Dark Mode UI to Operators+

Did we meet the sprint objectives?
There were three objectives, codenamed T1-T3.

[T1] Mk2 Sex Engine prototype
I aimed to finish the prototype, but in the end only completed another chunk of it.

Assessment: progress made, not finished.

[T2] Status Effect icons
These will show you which Status Effects are affecting your agent.

Hyneman made these work yesterday.

Assessment: completed.

[T3] Hero Headers
I asked Lara to test some new code for these.

Assessment: completed.

Story points

At the start of the sprint, I estimated we’d complete 39 story points of work.  Actual output: 15.  (This is mainly because I changed the way I was writing part-way through the sprint, so the way I worked diverged from the way I'd planned to work.)

What worked really well this sprint?

• The two-week sprint discipline feels like it’s forcing me to create and deliver prototypes at a tempo outside my comfort zone.
• The new sex scene structure, and the new way dice rolls and notifications work, feels like a big improvement. I think the writing is a lot sexier.
• Night Mode was produced with almost literally no input from me. That’s really exciting. :-)
• Tommygun's early experiments with taking over art production are looking good!  If it works, it will free up a lot of my time in the future.
• I tried a new writing technique, in which I follow a single “throughline” through the scene, instead of trying to build up every alternate branch as I go. This felt like a more fun and natural way to write. I think the output is better, but let’s wait for feedback.
• I’m getting the hang of Backlog Reviews. Spending an hour a week or so thinking “big picture” is helping me organise the Big Fucking List into something more usable (update on this to follow soon). I’m also finding these sessions energising and exciting.

What could have gone better?

• In the last sprint, Lara grabbed hold of the Hero Headers project and produced a working prototype that everybody praised, and is way better than what’s currently in the game. In this sprint, I asked her to try making some changes to the code based on a website I’d seen. It was only much later that I realised how incredibly fucking annoying that intervention must have been, and how the main result was to push the Hero Headers project back into a stalled state, waiting for me again. That’s destructive behaviour. I apologised to Lara, but I need to think more strategically about my approach in this kind of situation.
• My best days are the ones where I stick to a certain structure (get up early, start with a plan for the day, make time for exercise and cooking). In this sprint I started like that, but abandoned the discipline at a point when the writing wasn’t working well. I should try to stick to the discipline throughout.