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

Angela Buchanan, Week 5 PPJ - Blog Post 2

Angela Buchanan, Week 5 Journal PPJ, Blog post 2

Art template, Concept art, Website design

This was a hectic week for me, but I managed to complete or mostly complete the goals I set for myself this week. I wasn't able to finish the concept art until the night before class, so it didn't give my team mates any time to look it over. 

Positive Content

-I got a lot of concept art done for the aliens, the ships, and the environment. So now our game is starting to develop a solid image for itself.

-Because I already had sketches, I knew the direction I wanted to go in ahead of time. IT also made it easier to discuss art direction during the group meeting because I already had examples to show.

- The concept art was able to be used to flesh out the art template. I also used the concept art to make the website look more personalized to our team. 

Negative Content

-Once again, I wish I could have gotten the concept art completed earlier in the week so that it have been easier to put together the sell pitch 

-As of right now, the concept art isn't working too well with he website background. Even though I modified it, it still doesn't fit the way I want it to.

- I also would've liked to play around more with the website's design.

Work and hours

• Concept Art - 8 hrs
• Most of my time this week was spent on designing and making concept art for the game. I feel like the concept art does a good good job representing the game, so hopefully it helps lead the artist for the upcoming week,

Art Template - 1 hr

I compiled all the images together and added brief text descriptions.

• Website - 30 min
• Most time was spent modifying the concept art in an attempt to make it fit better.

Total weekly hours: 9.5 hrs