CAGD 373: Sprint 1

ePortfolio

Sprint 1: Finally, some freedom.

Publication - 11/5/25

The Goal

            By the end of the semester, my team will present to our peers a full game scene recreated from a game of our choosing. This will test ourselves on pacing and working as a team to create a coherent experience for the player.

The Role

            While on this team, I am appointed as the lead, which also serves as the producer in this class. This means I currently, I am currently balancing a lead designer role within two classes at once, this and 370. This will truly be a test of my time management to ensure both classes are taken care of equally. The experience that I have gained from 370 so far has helped me adjust to this combined role within 373. With assistance from my team, I was able to create a coherent Trello board along with an ALR sheet to provide clarity on what was being done and by whom.

The Scene

The Comet Observatory

            The scene we selected to recreate from the ground up is the Comet Observatory from Super Mario Galaxy. The Comet Observatory serves a vital role in the game, serving as its main hub for levels. The atmosphere of this place is very mesmerizing, as during the course of the game, the music and environment in this area change. There are also many interactbles for Mario to explore, most of which reward Mario with a 1-UP. The scene itself is more compact than others; however, the amount of detail is unmatched. Using a smaller scene gives us more time for small details versus fewer details, but a larger scene.

The Process

The Comet Observatory but blocked out.

            As a team, to increase productivity, we assigned one person to be a dedicated programmer, two for props, and one for the environment. This ensured that each section of the project was always worked on. Environment creation was directed towards me. During this sprint, I wanted to ensure we had a solid block out of the entire scene, which needed to be size accurate. This was easier said than done. I spent quite a few hours creating a primitive scene for us to utilize going forward. The most difficult aspect was ensuring that the area was sized accurately for the game. In Super Mario Galaxy, Mario is very small, this led to the scene to be giant compared to the character model, but to the camera it did not.