Mike Moore | Week 9: In Retrospect

WEEKLY NARRATIVE

The final development push. Wanted to get all the remaining levels in game so we can focus on aesthetic and juice next week. Weight painting will be the death of me. One day I will master it. 

CONTENT WITH HOURS

• Game meeting and prep (2 hours)
• Task Org (1 hours)
• Rem Model/Weight Paint/Texture (7 hours)
• Sell Press (2 hours)

POSITIVE OUTCOMES

• Got Rem textured and weight painted
• New Mocap is coming along
• Three new levels in game.

NEGATIVE OUTCOMES

• Had to re-weight paint a million times
• A little behind schedule in terms of juice and art

NEXT TASKS

Art
Juice
Populating level with environmental art
Work on lighting
bugs
shaders

TOTAL HOURS LOGGED THIS WEEK: 12 hours

POST MORTEM

Overview

As the overall producer it was my job to ensure we were on time in terms of the development schedule and that each department in the team had work every week. We did fall behind in the development cycle, however, it was not because of lack of execution. I made an early decision that put us two weeks behind. I choose to bring the overall theme/art style/ design of the game back to the development stage. I did this so every member of our team (at the time the new people that found out that day their game was not chosen) would feel like they had input in the game. My time in special forces allowed me to develop a leadership style that is malleable in that it changes depending on the team and the individuals. I thought that allowing every member of the team to participate in the creative process would give them an internal motivation to make their decision a realistic part of the game. I hoped they would go above and beyond in terms of development to get this game to where it could be. Doing this did set us back because it was two weeks of creative decisions and not hands on development. The down side to that avenue of approach is that being behind has made some of our builds not up to par, thus affecting our grades. I wish that I was able to get more into the weeds of development, however, managing each departments workflow so that it creates jobs for other departments seemed to take a lot of my time. I was able to get some modeling and texturing done, however, not as much as I would have liked to.

I plan on taking the following away from this term: putting people in the right leadership positions will really help workflow and allow the team to better achieve deadlines. We had some issues with personnel in certain positions that resulted in mismanaged work or people being overloaded. I have used an agile development cycle for both of the past two game design classes and it's hard to be extremely flexible during development when you are following a hard weekly curriculum. I have always been focused on what the next step of development should be in terms of the state of the project, however, it seems to have hurt the team because of the deadlines. Some of the deadlines require us to step away from core mechanical tasks and shift to get the item due ready. I might have to change the development process to account for 10 weeks and strict due dates. I am ready to work on a project that is not low poly. We have a powerful engine and software and students always choose robots or low poly because its simple to pump out assets. I would like to really get into a better more complex game in terms of models/textures/lighting. I want to build on the skills that I have and push it to the limit. 

The Good:

     Corrected the issues with the previous game ( cramped spaces, to many powers to quickly, confusing, lag/frame-rate drop.)

     Levels are more fleshed out and have specific challenges. 

     The team leads and other key individuals really stepped up and put a lot of extra work into this game. 

The Bad:

     Taking a step back at the beginning has pulled grades down a little bit and put us about two weeks behind in the development process.

     We were a little out of scope during our initial estimates. 

     When you have a team that you do not select some departments are extremely full and others only have a couple people which can create bottlenecks in development. 

    It is hard to have a game development group of 19 when no one has true power. Democracy is good but when a decision cannot be made in a timely manner and no one has the authority to drop the hammer, development can hurt. This is dangerous in a 10 week development cycle. 

    When leading a team of 19 (while working and taking 5 other classes) one doesn't have the time to micro manage or ensure that individuals who are not motivated have meaningful work. Some people slid through the cracks and were not motivated or involved during most of the development cycle.