Developer Log 3 - Part I

From Version to Version

This past week the team switched over to the next version of the game, V5 to V6, so this felt like an opportune time to share a bit of our process. I can’t say it’s anything special, but it works for us so on some level that just means it works.

The first step is our roadmap. A while back we created a list of rough grain features that we thought were essential to our games completion. Using those features we project out about 2 months on our roadmap on Trello.

The rest of the roadmap is going to be kept private for internal use, but this gives you an idea of how we arrange things.

When we arrive on a new version we take the roadmap features and translate them into an outline document. This is where the features and the support features that they require get laid out so that we can have a sense of the scope and goal of the version. As an example:

High level description of V6

A True vertical slice of our game.

Game setup

• Choose between existing and new modes
  • 1v1 mode
  • Local sandbox
  • (3v3 as is)
• Reconnect

UI

• Ghoooooooooost
• UI for timers
• Action log

And then lastly we convert the outline into to do items on another Trello board.

It all ends up working fairly smoothly and there haven’t been any hiccups with the process itself. The versions feel concrete and chunky with a general goal of them being about a month worth of development. Entering V6 our hopes are that by V11 we’ll be ready for launch.