Riley Stewart PPJ 8 Post-mortem

Right?

1. Good variety of games

With variety of mini games being used, there was alot of creative freedom for each individual developer do test their idea. having a a basic framework for development to work off of, the developers had complete creative freedom over the game they developed. this helps prevent development from growing stale, and if for some reason the game cannot go forward, it's less of a loss to the developers.

2.Wide variety of drexel ride movement potential

With the variety of minigames available, it allows the developers to use the rides capabilities in unique ways. the movement of the ride can vary greatly between games. One game, you move as a mech walker, the switching to an interdenominational spaceship. Possibilities are endless, and there is full freedom for developers to find and test  these possibilities.

3. basic framework for development

After we hammered out the bugs of the system, a basic framework for development was created. This streamlines and makes development simple, allowing developers to simply drop and apply this framework onto the games making implementation incredibly easy.

Wrong?

1. Work schedule

This is a personal issue. My schedule for this term was fairly strict, with other heavy production classes this term and working 30-40 hours a week. This prevented me from efficiently being able to produce work on time, as the only easily workable days were late Tuesday and late Wednesday. being so, alot of my work was implemented the week after it was intended.

2. Communication

Communication was difficult, as it took a while to setup slack. even so, alot of people were very unresponsive, leading to alot of confusion with development and assembling assets. This was a bit more efficient and worked out later on, but not fully fixed.

3. changing game concepts.

During development, alot of the minigames were changed alot from their initial concepts. this led to alot of the assets having to be changed as soon as they were made, or even scrapped completely. this was very frustrating and confusing during development. For my personal work, alot of the assets I created were scrapped, such as the initial stello says, cardboard cutouts, and the ufo model.

Resolving for future projects

Now the major hurdles are understood and worked on, development as a whole is far more streamlined. with alot of communication going on between the team members, any issues one developer has, such as art, programming, and design can be communicated with all other members of the team.

Lessons for future projects?

• There's always a way to solve a problem in development
• t's a challenge developing these games, even with the small scope and a basic framework, it's still a full game that needs to be developed
• COMMUNICATE
• get the ideas down early to speed up development and prevent wasted time and work

Xavier Smith, Week 3 Journal PPJ, Blog post 1

Xavier Smith, Week 3 Journal PPJ, Blog post 1

Project Lead, Tech Demo, Game Design

Content With Hours

This week, I organized a group meeting where we discussed game design, game mechanics, breakdown of work, and group methodology. (1 hr)

Spoke with some members individually about their work and tasks they were assigned. (1 hr)

I complied my, Cory, and Angela's game into a single project and refined my and Cory's game and began working on a consistent UI and a menu system. (6 hrs)

       

                                         Stello says Screenshot                                                                                        Interdimensional Screenshot

Content With Examples 

In our group meeting, we discussed many facets of the game. Firstly, we discussed the breakdown of work and everyone was assigned their individual tasks and a regular

meeting time was arranged. We then delved into the story of the game, how we planned to connect all the mini-games, and various other nuances of the game such as boss battles and one-player vs multiplayer modes. Finally, we discussed how the group should communicate and our methods of doing work.

I spoke with some of the members regarding their tasks for the week, such as asking Cory for a simple intro screen, 

I spent most of my time making the team tech demo using assets given to me by Cory and Angela. I also looked for some placeholder UI elements. I added a few features to my game, as well as implementing shooting, adding a crosshair and targets, and refining the UI in Cory's game. Finally, I spent a lot of time trying to resolve UI issues such as improper scaling and trying to maintain some sort of consistency between games.

Mech Game Screenshot 

Positive (Hours duplicated from above)

- Meeting was productive and everyone was assigned/volunteered for work. Game story and Mechanics were fleshed out and meeting times established (1 hr)

-Everything was done by all members in a timely fashion and Cory finished website without needing any of my help

-Tech Demo came together well and can now leave mini-games, exit application, and scale with screen sizes without problem for the most part. (6 hr)

Negative

- CrossPlatformInput package in other projects gave me some trouble

- UI kept anchoring and scaling incorrectly (6 hr)

- One member did not show up to meetings and we have yet to hear anything from them 

Total Hours for the week: 8 hrs