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.