Sprint 005: reflection

What did we accomplish?

• We improved a section of the prototype scene, based on feedback from the community. Major changes:
  • Scene starts earlier, to give the sex more context and setup.
  • Added a reflection passage (new feature) at the start, letting you manually set the agent’s attitude to the scene ahead.
  • General restructure and streamlining of decision points: cut some, added others to improve pacing
  • Experimented with inline notifications in the passage body, to cut popup spam
• Released dev version of new content to Operators+
• Added “In This Year” to the game
• Partially implemented Status Icons
• Published test of the proposed Hero Headers
• Finished a sprint on the target date, for the first time ever

Did we meet the sprint objectives?

There were four objectives, codenamed T1-T4.

[T1] Improve the Sex Engine prototype based on user feedback
I aimed to complete the whole scene, but was only able to complete part of it. Early feedback from Operators is positive:

"What is there seems to be really working well."

"You may feel frustrated with the speed of your progress but from where I stand this is already a *vast* improvement over what was previously released."

"Massive improvement. Flowed so much better."

Assessment: progress made, not finished.

[T2] Add the ‘In This Year’ content to the game
A test of getting content into the game without much involvement from me. We deliberately picked something minor to start with, but in the future this could lead to community-submitted side quests, encounters, kink vignettes, etc.

Hyneman created a form that allowed the community to add world events to a master spreadsheet he’d designed.  Hyneman and community members Mano2, Q794, The Lost Engineer, Pit-o-Rats, type and vcdm added content. Hyneman edited the content and added it into the game – tasking complete, impact on Crush’s workload was zero.

Assessment: completed.

[T3] Add Status Effect icons to the game
These will show you which Status Effects are affecting your agent.

Art assets were created and uploaded to the server, and the code is partially implemented and will be testable soon.

Assessment: progress made, not finished.

[T4] Add Hero Headers to the game
Lara created some test code of the proposed passage headers.

We weren’t able to implement them into the game, but we did publish a test version with working Hero Headers and experiments with cinematic photo filters.

Assessment: progress made, not finished.

Story points
At the start of the sprint, I estimated we’d complete 79 story points of work.  Actual output: 39.

What worked really well this sprint?

• Sticking to the two-week sprint deadline and releasing what I had – instead of just extending the sprint until I had something that I felt was good enough to release – is a big change. I feel like it will have profound implications on the game’s development.
  
• I always work hard for you guys, but having an alpha release deadline was horrifyingly motivational (because you can't push back an alpha on the grounds that it's not finished, which is my normal trick).  Without the deadline I think I'd have been further behind on the writing.
  
• The scrum structure – especially the scheduled slots to think about the overall project (like the weekly backlog review, and this reflection) – helped improve my sense of perspective. (The World Famous Game Designer told me I spend too much time reäcting and not enough time directing – this discipline feels like a step in the right direction.)
  
• I found the change very challenging and stressful. I’m listing this as something that worked really well because I believe that’s an indicator that this change is big and worthwhile.
  
• Releasing the dev version to Operators at an earlier stage than I felt comfortable with. means that I get user insights of work while it’s in progress, instead of in retrospective
  
• I experimented with a new writing workflow during this sprint. The Dec 24 prototype was scoped out in great detail before I sat down to write anything; it looked great on paper, but writing it felt slow and disjointed. It seemed to take me a long time even to write tiny things, and I finally realised that sticking to a predetermined plan wasn’t allowing me to build up any momentum. I also realised I was railroading the characters to act and behave in a way that kept to the script, instead of allowing them to surprise me.
  
  In the final few days of the sprint, I tried a new approach. I looked at the scene design as a guide rather than a blueprint, and I started writing in a different way: instead of just writing in the code editor and testing it in the game engine from time to time, I tested in the game engine constantly. This helped me build momentum and get a better feel for the pacing; it felt like a real breakthrough.
  
• Scheduled R&R. Building in some time for rest and personal admin felt necessary and sensible.  Like several of you guys have told me: I'm no use to you dead.
  
• I got (mostly) back on top of my comms and messages. That was great because I hate feeling like this:

What could have gone better?

• I consider myself pretty good at avoiding perfectionism (you should see my pained facial expression every time I read an existing scene in the game; almost everything is desperately embarrassing to me).   That said, perfectionism has been making inroads into my psyche recently.  
  
  Perfectionism is a symptom of low confidence. Lately I’ve been beset by high levels of stress and doubt (probably a side effect of finally leaving my “real job” and committing 100% to Female Agent).  I think the 2-week sprint discipline will help me get back on top of my psychology in this area.
  
• My most productive work days are the ones where I start early, and I wasn’t consistent with that during this sprint. The cause was having a dentist’s appointment on a sprint day – I started and finished work late on that day, and this had a knock-on effect on the following days (if I work late, I tend to start late the following morning).
  
  In future I’ll diarise more carefully, so that things like dental appointments only happen on R&R days.