Conclusion (Reflections)

What was your overall assessment of the process, and the outcomes?

Overall, I've truly enjoyed this process. I've done a lot of work, learnt a lot more about project management (which is extremely valuable to me), and I've had a hand in creating a game that I'm really proud of, and even in its current form would make a solid professional portfolio piece.

Our team works really well together- I've made some incredibly valuable contacts and I'm absolutely looking forward to working with them on Heroes of Yggdrasil next semester!

What role did you play/tasks assigned that was least satisfying to you?

Sound effects! Creating so many low-bitrate SFX was very taxing, took a long time and wasn't very rewarding.

On the other hand programming the sound management system (audio channels, pitch shifting, etc.) was quite rewarding.

In the future, I'll recognise how much work of that type is too much for me to handle on my own. Dividing the task into a sub-team of sound designers would have made the task much more manageable.
An alternative strategy, when it comes to a task of that size, would be to attempt to spread it out across a number of weeks.

What were the tasks undertaken that most used your skills and abilities?

Team management. Since starting uni, I've come a long way in terms of leadership. I like to think that there's no such thing as a team that cannot work well together. This might be wishful thinking - however - the principle behind my thinking is that given the right environment, communication frameworks and guidance, any team can excel. The main issue is that a lot of teams lack the motivation to improve teamwork pipelines.

As I'm hoping go into postgrad study, project management is an important skill for me. Plus, I enjoy it!

What were the lessons learnt with regard to time management, task planning and team processes?

One of the most interesting and important lessons I've learned this semester has been how different individuals will perform best in different environments. For example, one of our artists works best in his own space, at the time he chooses, free from distraction. On the other hand, on of our programmers needs a social/team environment with the expertise and opinions of other people to draw from.

Learning how to manage seven individuals like this (including myself!) has been extremely worthwhile.

The key to task planning, I believe, is establishing common expectations among all group members. If the group as a whole knows where we're headed, how quickly, and for what reason, the team members will work well together. When expectations are mismanaged, serious problems begin to arise. (See our viability presentation for that!)

What plans do you and your team have for the next phase of development of your project?

We have big plans! I'm quite excited to continue work on the project.

• We'll be expanding the playable character roster with unlockable heroes that have unique abilities
• Combined with our existing implementation, this will deepen our iterative gameplay and make each run a different experience.
•  Jotunheim, the world of the Giants. An icy realm with mountains, caves, and constant snowstorms
• New level generation and environmental challenges will give this world a much different feel to our existing world, Midguard. Having multiple realms will give our game a deeper sense of progression.
•  Level bosses and minibosses. These combat challenges will be a true test of skill for players of our game.
• Expandsion of the enemy roster with new enemy types such as flying or shapeshifting enemies.
• This will vary gameplay from level to level and widen the application of our party-switch mechanic.

If you couldn't tell, I can't wait to increase the fun and testability of our game. We have a very solid proof of concept, but it could be so much more! I'll certainly be working on this project over the holiday break.

Week 13: Presentation Skills

Since the Moot Pitch, I've been thinking about my personal presentation skills. It's an interesting case.
Naturally, I'm not particularly gifted when it comes to public speaking (which isn't uncommon in my line of study). Consequently, I've put a lot of effort into improving my presentation skills - which, for the most part, has paid off. I'm familiar with my own strengths and limitations, I hold a lot of extra-curricular positions that involve presentation, and I'm employed as a tutor for IFB103 where public speaking is my job for multiple hours a week.
At this point, I consider myself a very competent speaker. There is, however, an exception: I only maintain my confidence when there's a power imbalance in my favour. That is, when I'm in some position of power over my audience, I'm able to control the atmosphere of the presentation and keep myself in a comfortable state of mind.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of industry-style presentations, the power imbalance is always against me. This seems to consistently catch me off guard, and my presentation skills regress to a level of confidence I thought I surpassed years ago. As you can imagine, this is very frustrating for me!
I know I'm capable of more. I just need to figure out how to channel it!

EDIT:
Further thoughts -
My "power imbalance" theory is somewhat affirmed by my presentation in week 3 - when I was addressing the class (trying to gather teammates), rather than Laz and Alex, my presentation was much more confident and effective.
How I can use this -
Changing the angle at which I view the presentation could benefit my presentation. If I view it as "convincing industry professionals to invest in my game" rather than "presenting my game to be judged," chances are I'll do much better.

Week 13: Moot Pitch Reflection

I've just come out of my Week 13 Moot Presentation. Overall I think it went soundly. A few of my own key reflections on the presentation:

• Unfortunately, my presentation skills could definitely have been better. I'm disappointed with how I presented.
• I lacked confidence
• Nerves caused me to skip through a lot of content
• Our trailer was very satisfactory
• Particularly the teaser image of Fenrir (which I was excited about) :P
• The sell sheet was up to scratch
• Our slides were visually appealing and showcased game art

How I might improve for Monday's final presentation, in terms of speaking skills:

• I'm considering using a script on Monday. Not to read from- just to remove the possibility of skipping important information.
• I'll need more rest before Monday. Week 13 is an exceptionally busy time, but being rested for the final presentation is a priority.
• Change my outlook - I think approaching the presentation in a different mindset (converting nervous energy to excitement, for example) will help me to come back into my strong suit in terms of presentation.

Following the presentation, the PartyQuest team met up briefly (as per custom) to discuss our individual reflections on how it went and what could be improved. As always, notes have been compiled and posted to Slack and Google Drive.

Week 12: Coding tools to make design easier

This week I've made a few alterations to the inner workings of our character movement script, with the intention of smoothing out the workflow for designers.
Essentially, designers need to be able to tweak the movement values for each of our characters quickly and easily for the purpose of testing.


The old system:

• Input: Jump force
• Input Gravity
• Output: Character jumps, although you won't know how high until you test it.
  

The new system:

• Input: Required jump height
• Input: Gravity
• Output: Character jumps using the required force, as calculated according to inputs.

An aside: I had to use derivitives to calculate this- I haven't done this stuff since Grade 12! It was quite difficult.


This new system is much more accomodating to designers. In future, I'll definitely be considering "designer-friendliness" when designing scripts and script relationships.



As a side note- I've also done a fair amount of work on the camera movement this week. We now have fluid and intuitive camera movement, both horizontally and vertically. This will allow for vertically scrolling levels in the future.

Week 11: Bug or Feature?

A quick update this time:

As part of my work this week, I've been helping Dan Troy program character knockback. As a matter of convenience, we've been using the characters' maximum horizontal speed and ther jump height for this. We were intending on changing these values, but...

As it turns out, it's quite a cool feature. It means slower characters are affected less by knockback, while speedier/lighter characters get knocked further! This is a feature that aligns with our party mechanic, but it's not something that we'd thought of on our own.

Week 10: Teaching Group Members New Skills

A team management problem we've had this week:

In order to implement enemy AI in the system they'd designed, our programmers needed Finite State Machines (FSMs) to describe enemy behaviour. Unfortunately, our team's designer, Shea, hadn't ever heard of an FSM.

This is what he was able to supply us at first:

I organised a meeting, so that Shea could describe his vision of enemy behaviour to the programmers in-depth. However when it came to implementing the behaviour, we found that we still didn't have enough information.
Rather than making behaviours and conditions up myself, I figured it would be worth it to teach him the ins and outs of FSMs so that we could continue to work through that pipeline in the future.

Shea's first attempt:

Definitely not what we're after. Following some feedback, here's Shea's second attempt:

Closer, but still not enough information. After working with him alongside an in-depth conversation and referring him to some online resources, here's the third attempt at an FSM for the behaviour of a wolf enemy:

Much better. Now we have something useful for programming, plus an infinite supply of more FSMs for future enemies. Reminds me of the quote: "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime." And, in this example, he'll feed his other group members too.

Week 9: Development Documentation

 So far, our documentation practices on this project have been really great. We've set a high standard when it comes to keeping a paper trail of everything that happens.

Here's how:

• Consistent meeting minutes
• Slack
• Version control (SourceSree)
• Multiple sets of feedback notes at each desk critique
• MediaWiki
• Weekly summaries

Having such comprehensive documentation makes it easier to do many things. We can track past changes, use the info to write/update blog posts (haha) and keep an accurate portfolio. It's also useful to be able to refer to previous documentation in meetings..