With the addition of our new project manager, we've adopted a few new practices that have enabled us to start to develop again, primarily among them the Sprint methodology.

Every Monday we (digitally) sit down and have a meeting discussing the sprint; a small slice of the large pie to focus on for the week such as designing and implementing a new font, team-coloring all the GUI assets, or setting up an asset sharing platform for all the team members. 

Once we iron out the week's goals each morning we perform a stand-up meeting focusing on the big three questions:

1. What did I accomplish yesterday?
2. What will I do today?
3. What obstacles are impeding my progress?

This has proved invaluable to our productivity. It's almost become an in-joke to shout "My status is blocked!" Knowing what you've done, what you are going to do, and letting the team know if there is something you need them to do to progress something you are working on has greased the development wheels immensely.

Communication is key though; proper communication. Posting bug reports or screenshots to Skype logs is fast and easy in the moment but ends up lost in minutes as soon as something else is said. Trello is our acting bug tracker, backlog, and sprint manager, as you've seen posted before. It's very useful for sorting and tagging members to specific cards. We use labels for User Stories, Programming cards, Bugs, Graphics work, and general Tasks, all of which can be filtered by.

So what is in store for our next sprint? You'll have to check back to see the minutes Monday.

State Of The Game 2016

Hello everyone, it's been a long time.

Where have we been? For a while, the game went on hiatus, but we are back now. We've brought a project manager on board and expanded the role of game designer. As of roughly three months ago, the game has resumed active development. A new programmer was brought in and with his help we have started to set up sprints and meet daily goals.

Trello, our team's management platform showcasing the active cards.

What has been done? Extensive bug fixing to make multiplayer stable and implemented tons of missing features to make game play closer to the vision, the map format has been overhauled to support a more user friendly format. The terrain atlas has been restructured and expanded from 512x512 to 1024x1024. The HUD was tossed out in favor of a new style. Collision maps have been added for the multitude of terrain types. We expanded and clarified the roles of game designer and project manager; who developed a more disciplined development methodology based on sprint and agile techniques.

Where are we going? The current goals are:

• Internal Alpha - Internally we've been working hard to make sure the game runs smoothly and patching anything that prevents this such as multiplayer desynchonization issues.

• Closed Alpha - Once the game runs cleanly internally, testing with a broader audience will begin initially only open to close friends to gather feedback.

• Open Alpha - With the changes brought on by external feedback in place, we plan to release a demo version that, while far from feature complete, should have all existing systems fully functional including online matchmaking. 

Most recent screenshot of the game running, featuring an entirely new UI.