Jake McKenna - PPJ 09 - Personal Postmortem

 The Good:

  1. Leadership
    • We had a solid leadership structure this term. I felt like I could really lean on the other leaders for support/help and likewise provide that support. It felt like there was a much stronger structure as we got past the first few weeks of the term. 
  2. Scope
    • Having the additional team members meant that we were really able to expand the scope of the game. After we figured out the number of levels and built a few out it started to feel like a real game. We still ran into issues, and there were still cuts, but the majority of those cuts were due to stalls, not scope shrinking. 
  3.  The Product
    • I genuinely like the game. There are issues, as with any project, but I would be happy to show this game 


The Bad:

  1. Communication
    • It was extremely difficult to maintain communication with people throughout the week. Outside of a few people that spent time in chat it was impossible to know the status of work being done. This often led to early morning submission of assets meant to be implement in the build due in a few hours.
  2. Participation 
    • There were many times when we really needed feedback and couldn't get it. I wish we had more participation in the design of the game. A week of silence often led to assets that were far off base for what the game called for or what was communicated in the meeting. Most of our cut features were due to this breakdown in communication and participation. 
  3. Uneven expectations
    • I have come to believe this is an unavoidable issue, but nonetheless it is a pain. It often felt like there was an undue amount of work dropped on a few people. The reasons for this varied, sometimes it was just easier to have one person do every aspect of a task because of the communication issues, and remote working. Other times there was just no option because nobody else knew how to do a task. Regardless of the reason it felt really unfair at times.


Personal Performance:

  1. Iteration
    • I really tried to hit the ground running and fix the mistakes I made in the previous term. I made levels as quickly as I could and tried to keep the pace up. I ended up making a total of 4 of the 5 levels and I really think it was that process of quick iteration that made it possible. I definitely felt like I stretched past the amount that I thought I could do as a designer. I've never really done level design, and I definitely have never executed a creative process of making a game on this scale. It was a new experience to have a team depending on the levels I was making, and have to so frequently push them out. I think they all could be a lot better, and I really wish I could deep dive one or two of them and make it everything I wanted it to be, but learning when was the responsible time to cut off development and move on was one of my biggest takeaways. Sometimes it's not finished, but its done. 
  2. Leadership Roles
    • I ended up stepping into the art co-lead role this term. To be honest I slightly dreaded it, but I think it worked out overall. I was able to direct the asset creation for most of the levels because I had the additional insight of being the designer. I think those roles went well together for this game. I think there were areas that I could have done more as leader. I wish I could have gotten ahead of some of the quality issues we had and really steered the art team to a place where we got everything we wanted in. 
  3. New Skills
    • I learned a bunch during the course of this project. I felt like one of the things I really got right was taking on new skills and learning on the fly. Performance in unity, modeling for games in Maya, a bit of texturing, a ton of particle systems, a little bit about post processing. Even just watching how the other team members set things up was a learning experience. I am really proud of the knowledge of game development I gained this term. 


The Result:

  1. A Game
    • It exists! A game, you can open it and play start to finish. That alone is a major achievement in my book. I don't think it's perfect, but it doesn't have to be. There are areas of this project that I am proud to show, and there are parts that I can point at to show growth over the term. In the end, it's done, and I personally feel better for it. 

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