Kinect Gardening Conclusion...or is it?

This week capped off the second prototype for the class and a great four week run. To get things started, here's the gameplay video for Kinect Gardening:

The prototype turned out great, and we barely had to cut any features (really just calibrating, somewhat unnecessary for the prototype). In fact, we even had time to add an additional feature, the gopher, at the end. All in all, things went smoothly throughout. The one minor set back towards the end was having to create a trailer and a presentation without the final art. Unfortunately, it just got done a little late. It made it into the final prototype, but not the presentation. As an artist, I'm sure Alice really wanted people to see all of her work, and I feel pretty bad about the entire thing. Definitely something to keep in mind in the future. Working on something and not having it shown to people can be pretty rough.

On the other hand, I think the project went incredibly smoothly and everyone was pretty happy with the end results, the client included. It was difficult to come up with negative things for the postmortem, but there are always things that don't quite work out. Here is the postmortem timeline:

Fairly sparse on the bottom, but we had some good discussion. I once again championed pair programming and the use of scrum. As a producer, these two tools were immensely helpful. We'll see about that in future projects.

I also changed up the one-sheet format a little bit, and I'm pretty happy with the results. Check it out:

Overall, it's somewhat of a mishmash of the first one sheet I used, based off of some resources I found online, and the template that another producer, Brianne, came up with. I like that it still has a decent amount of information, but also has a nice design to it as well. We'll see Monday how everyone else liked it.

On an incredibly positive note, Stacy seemed very excited about the prototype, and immediately asked if we would be interested in continuing our work should funding be secured. Every time we make a prototype we're hoping to get some work with it, and this seems very promising. Stacy is going to show the physical therapist she works with the demo, and try to secure some funding from there. If we could swing some research assistantships out of the deal, that would be great. Of course, a simple pay-for-work deal would also be great. Hopefully we hear some more soon from her. I plan on staying in touch and keeping my finger on the pulse of this.

Now all that's left is next week's prototype...and then the next prototype..and then a thesis project...and then an internship, etc. Piece of cake right? I'm looking forward to next week.