Zoe's Week 8 Report

what were your concrete goals for the week?

My main goal was to add to the gameplay and experience for the user.

what goals were you able to accomplish?

I made solid progress toward this. I was involved in planning out the HUD, thinking through what information players need at a glance and how to present it clearly. On the implementation side, I built out draft versions of the health and fuel bars, iterating through a few different designs to start nailing down the look and behavior before the final image overlay is ready to import. Getting these drafts in early means we will be able to move quickly once the HUD asset is finalized.

if the week went differently than you had planned, what were the reasons? note that this happens regularly...I would prefer you to be aggressive in what you want to try accomplish rather than limit yourself to goals you know you'll easily achieve. so answering this question is more of a reflection on the development process and the surprises you encounter, it's not at all an evaluation.

The week was fairly close to what I expected, though a good chunk of time went toward smaller but meaningful improvements, like asteroid spawning and despawning behavior, rather than a single large feature. These kinds of changes are easy to underestimate but they add up and make the game feel noticeably more polished. Building out multiple draft iterations of the health and fuel bars also took more time than anticipated, but it was time well spent since it gave us a clearer direction for the final implementation.

what are your specific goals for the next week?

Once the HUD image is imported into the game, I want to wire up all of the dynamic elements, like the health and fuel bars, task list, and emergency warnings, so they are fully responsive to live gameplay. The groundwork is laid, so next week should be a satisfying push to get it all connected and functional.

what did you learn this week, if anything (and did you expect to learn it)?

Nothing entirely new technically, but this week reinforced how much value there is in doing early draft work on UI. Iterating on the health and fuel bar designs before the final asset was ready meant I was problem-solving early rather than waiting, and that will pay off next week.

what is your individual morale (which might be different from the overall group morale)?