More Agile Blogs

Here are a couple of high quality agile project planning blogs I've been frequenting. The authors are very knowledgeable, and present topics in a manner that is very easy to digest and start using.

all about agile by kelly waters
Succeeding with Agile

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Sprint 1: Classics

So, I decided to start simple and make a game I know I could finish but would allow me to focus on process to help me produce my future projects. So I decided on a pong clone. The difference is I wanted to all elements that I think would make it fun(ner).

My development techniques are all agile based (SCRUM). I am targeting two week iterations to produce valueable functionality. My plan is to produce working demos that demonstrate the current state of the game as it is in development.

With that out, my first iteration is complete. It started on 4/11 and was scheduled to end 4/25. Fortunately, I am a day ahead of schedule which is good and bad. Good because I accomplished the items I committed to. Bad because my estimates were off, but will provide nice feedback for upcoming iterations.

At the end of each iteration I will provide links to that iteration's deliverables to give you all a chance to see the progress. I encourage everyone to provide all feedback. Any feedback is beneficial to help me make the best product I can make.

I also would like to touch on some of the things I thought went well and think that will need to be improved on. This will give me a chance to review what happened during the last iteration and also get insight from you guys on things that have happened in your projects.

Things that went well

Selected strong indie tools

• Torque Game Builder: a fully featured 2D game engine that makes rapid development of games easy and fun. You can purchase an indie license for $100. Best price on the market for the power and efficiency you get.


• Torsion: a Torquescript editor with a nice arsenal of debugging tools. It is a must for any type of Torque Game Engine develoment. It goes for $39.95.


• RallyDev: an online agile project management application. It tracks product backlogs, iteration status, and provide agile metrics to know how far along you are in your project. Best of all there is a free version.

Created a testing process
I came up with a way to test new functionality and organize it in a way that would clutter or interfere with the application. This helped verify new functionality didn't break existing functionality. Taking the time to do that helped speed up my development time.

Things that didn't go so well

Stories too detailed: Initially I created stories that were too detailed. This pigeon-holed me into thinking of only one way to approach a requirement. This present an opportunity for me to refactor my existing stories in the product backlog.

Didn't setup source control: I should be slapped for this. I started the project without having any source control. There was a point where I felt the brunt of this when I performed a large refactoring that I almost had to roll back. Luckily I found my flaw and was able to proceed with the refactoring. Otherwise I would have been is a really bad situation.

Opportunities for the next iteration

• Setup Source Control


• Refactor User Stories so they are not implementation specific

Iteration Deliverables
Inside the PowerPong root directory are too important files at this point: readMe.txt and console.log.

readMe.txt - Describes the controls because the in game input text was left generic because controls will be customizeable.

console.log - Log of what is happening in the game. Send this along with any defects to me at charles_gibson_jr@hotmail.com


UPDATE: The issues regarding the Mac distribution has been identified. In the process of updating and redistributing a Mac version. Thanks for your patience.

• PowerPong - Win32


• PowerPong - Mac

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Another joyous addition

She's here! Her name is Simone Marie Gibson. She was delivered into this world at 1:27am on April 16, 2008. She weighed 5 lbs 11 oz and was 19.5 inches long.

It all started at around 9pm on April 15th. Katie, my wife, started having contractions. They were sporadic and didn't last very long. We decided not to worry too much about them but to start tracking and timing them.

Then at around 10pm, they started to happen a bit more frequent with increased intensity. These contractions were averaging around 7 mins. We called the hospital to get their advice on whether we should come in or not. They left it up to us. Since during our previous pregnancy Katie was in labor for 8 hours after her water broke we assumed we had time. So we decided to rest.

At around 12:30am, Katie woke me indicating it was time to go. Still in control, we begin what we practiced. She starts getting dressed and I start taking the bags downstairs to put in the car. Once downstairs, I hear her call for me. I race upstairs to see that her water has broke. Slight panic, but still in control. I mean with our first born, we still had 8 hours so surely we had time to make it to the hospital.

So I call my mother to let her know we are going to drop off our oldest daughter and go into the hospital. My wife motions she needs to go to the bathroom, and I follow suit. As I am handling my business, I hear her scream. I race back into the room to see her on all fours. There is slight spotting on the floor. She begins telling me the baby is coming.

Now I'm in freak-mode. I try to get it together. I tell her to get dressed. I frantically call my mother to tell her we aren't coming. Then call my sister who lives closer to come over immediately and to let herself in because we needed to race to the hospital.

While I was calling Katie has started downstairs to get into the car. Still on the phone with my sister, I hear another scream. I immediately hang up, and jump downstairs to see my wife on the floor by the door that leads to our garage. She is really emphasizing how the baby is coming any moment now. She asks if we should call 911.

In that brief second I decided against it because I think we could make it to the hospital in time, rather than having to wait for an ambulance to get to our house risking giving birth before they get there. So she quickly gets into the car, with me right behind her.

I race down the street, at points reaching 90 mph. While the entire time my beautiful wife is trying her hardest to fight the urge to push even though her body ignores her efforts.

We pull up to the Emergency Room entrance. I dart out of the cart screaming "We need assistance, my wife is pregnant!!" There were no doctors in sight. Only two night security guards. One lazily asks, "Do you need a wheelchair?" I wanted to strangle him, so I harshly reply "YES!".

I run back to my wife to help her into the hospital. As I get to her I see her legs are weakened from her trying to fight the pushing. I catch her before she falls. She then tells me "You need to carry me."

"What? I don't think I can do that..."

Comically she replies, "No, you need to carry me...". Thinking to herself, you have been working out you better get to carrying! :)

There was no time to continue this conversation so I scooped her up and started racing down the halls screaming at the security guards for directions to the birth center.

As we round the corner toward the birth center, I never felt so alone. The hallway grew endless and pitch black. It was as if the hospital was abandoned. My wife starts to scream in fear the baby was going to come out and fall to the floor.

We reached the double doors that lead to the birth center. My wife tells me to put her down on the floor because the baby was coming now.

As I laid her down, a doctor appeared along with two nurses, one pushing a wheelchair. My wife tells him the baby is coming, but in disbelief he replies, "No, the baby isn't coming. Let's get you to a room."

Out of frustration my wife starts pulling her pants down to prove it. While she was pulling we lifted her and put her in the wheelchair and raced to the staging room. Once there, the nurse grabbed Katie's right side and I grabbed her left. We hoisted her out of the wheelchair. At that very moment Simone's head appeared. In mid lift the nurse grabbed Simone's head to catch her as we lifted Katie to the bed. Once on the bed, it only took my lovely wife three pushes and our baby girl was here.

At that moment, a new life began for all of us. She's our special jellybean! Our Simone.

Agile Project Management Tool

I came across a slick Agile Project Planning tool called Rally. I am using it for my current game project "PowerPong". The makers of Rally also have a nice library of videos explaining how to use their tool for agile development. I highly recommend it to anyone needing a project planning tool to streamline their product backlog and iteration releases.

OOH OOH EEH EEH