1. Followed a waterfall flow to produce a game project.
It was a new experience for me as a team member to produce a game project followed the water flow. We divided into many small groups and focused on our own assigned game which is a good way to make mini-games collection like this.
2. Experienced the process of game making for motion platform.
Motion base platform was the platform I used to play on at Disneyland or Universal Studios. But the process of making a game for that is kind of interesting to me. As a developer, the main difference is to focus on motion instead of gameplay. The gameplay can be simple, but motion can't. So this project is not like my other game projects have complex gameplay, AI, or requires more challenge programming skill. It's kind of new to me, but fun.
3. Learned how to balance gameplay.
This term, I mainly focus on the mini-game called Space Aim, which needs more player balance than what I did before. So thankfully, we have the survey for players who experienced this game, I got many valid feedbacks for the game, and tried to balance the game weekly by changing moving speed for both wall and ship, changing the layout of the wall, the background. It's a precious experience.
What Went Wrong
1. The larger team, the larger problems.
Since this term, as a project team, we have 7 people, which is the huge amount of people as a student project team. In this case, people have to follow a direction, a guide. For example, artists must follow the art concept, but maybe that is not what they want it be. But that is how real world production works, so I guess maybe that's not a bad thing.
2. Weekly build deadline.
As the syllabus says, we have to have a build each week. That's a challenge for our entire team, programmers and artists have to do their work in the early day of the week, and we need to test the changes, add-ons to see if it works. The deadline really pushed people, we were too busy working on the current stuff with no time to come up with new ideas.
3. Communication between team members.
This issue happened a lot in every team project, so I think this is not an issue, it should be called normal. For example, when a team member did not finish his part in time, it causes a problem for the entire team. And sometimes, that team member cannot be got in touch with for some reasons, therefore, other members have to take more tasks than expect. I think it is a lesson, always check emails or any instant message software is the key to avoiding bad communication happened, and it is the key to being succeed for a team project.
Moving forward and how do we fix these issues for future projects?
The syllabus should be changed from submitting one build each week to submitting one build every 2 weeks. Team members should check their email or instant message more often. I think that's enough for being succeed on a college project.
Programming for motion base following a specific work flow.
Balance gameplay by the given feedbacks.
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