Creature Animation Review

The creatures will have six limbs, not including the tail. The two closest to its head will operate primarily like arms and be used for attacking while the hind four will be used to scurry around the station. It will be able to raise its head to approximately 8’, or keep it low to the ground. This variety should add tension as the creatures is able to raise its head to spot the player, or remain low and out of sight as it searches.  It was modeled in Modo with an emphasis on modelling for animation. Edge-flow allowed for proper deformation in all six extremities as well as the two torsos. Revisions had to be made to shorten the back section of the monster in order to work with the pathfinding programming. This ended up helping to reduce polycount which was another issue that arose during development.

For future work, creating character sets to allow for all animation to be brought into a single file will be considered from the start. I was unaware of this technique until the issue of having multiple animation files arose at the. There are other ways around it but they were not compatible with the programming structure in place.

Ethan: Post Mortem

The Goods

Talented Technicians- Our comp sci. team was quite a talented bunch and managed to implement a variety of features and consistently make them work. Dylan Yates and Ryan both did an impressive job. I'm not positive of Cory was a coder as my work rarely coincided with his but if so no doubt he did an admirable job as well.

Solid Art Style- Between Don's research into modular level design, solid hallways and rooms, Jon's awesome monster, Miguel's well textured light emitting device and my rooms and assets we had a really good style and atmosphere that I think was one of our strongest suits when combined with the powerhouse programming and game design.

Good Management- Cory Dylan and Even were fantastic managers and did a great job maintaining a steady stream of communication in terms of what needed to get done when.

The Bad

Timing- This term took place in the middle of coop season for many of the students within the class and I believe that contributed to at least for parts of the term some people being less dedicated than others. Interviews also slowed down our progress over the last few weeks of the term

Level Design- We didn't have a clear lead level designer because no one stepped up to the mantel for whatever reason. I hope to be able to work on this if we continue to move the project forward. Dylan Yates gets mention for doing a damn fine job anyway despite that he was doing so much programming.

Audio- We also lacked a solid committed audio designer. We made due still, but missed out on a lot of atmosphere and tension that could have been utilized.

Evan: Postmortem

Things are coming to a close this week and it's time to do a brief personal postmortem. We decided each person should individually write a mini version, and we'd bring together our ideas for a longer one.

The Good

• Not being overly ambitious: Early on, we took a pragmatic approach with what we could and couldn't do in ten weeks. This paid off big time. We didn't over-promise too much, and we defined an idea that we could - and did- build.
• Regardless of short term setbacks, we improved: Each week, we had a new build that was noticeably improved than the previous. Regardless of assets being late or not turned in at all, our weekly build improved.
• Dylan Yates: He did an unproportional amount of work, and without him the project wouldn't be what it was. Dylan, if our project moves forward, I promise this will be fixed!

The Bad

• Management: This is more of a disappointment in myself rather than the rest of the team. There were times where I didn't micromanage enough and it ended up hurting the quality of the project at times.
• Not having a (used) master asset list: This would have been helpful to have for obvious reasons. I created a master list late in the project, and it was unfinished and unused. We should have created and maintained a list earlier in development. This is necessary should our project move forward.
• Deadlines being missed: This was stressful for a few reasons. When things are late, I had to go find out  the reason why and when they'd be in. When it became a problem, I had to be Mr. Manager and give serious talks. That wasn't fun.

Don: The Unseen Termly Post Mortem

We have pretty good turn out over last 11 weeks. We started from a vague idea of making a horror game to fully developed vertical slide. There were definitely things worked well and things to improve. Personally, I'm glad that I can deliver an art style that is not what I would usually do and still appropriate to the concept of the game.

The Good:

1) We have steady progress on our game each week. Each week we have more about our game to show and each week the game gets better. It's definitely the result of good team work and good time management on individual level. It also give us confidence as the project moves forward.

2) We spend enough time making the actual in-game assets, which also result in a better developed visual. It relates to the point above. I researched on modular environment design and decided it would be the best solution to deliver a large and explorable environment with less work on making the actual 3d models. We spent 4 weeks on making the 3d geometries and 4 weeks on texturing and 1 week or so on lighting. It's a pretty good scheduling.

The Bad:

1) Name conventions. Most of the people ignored the naming conventions that we agree on. It didn't show the downside now, because we don't have too many assets. It would become more and more of a problem as the project goes on.

2) Game design. We don't have a dedicated game designer on the team, which result in the final game is really dry. With that said, maybe we have some resources inefficiency issues, too. Since some teammates only committed no more than 3 hours of their time some of the weekly. 

Jon: Post Mortem

The Good:

Casual Communication - through facebook and after class.

We were able to begin iteration early which helped compensate for a lack of predetermined gameplay design.

Dylan Yates

The Bad:

There were issues with getting things turned in with enough time to pump out a build, then playtest and create presentations based on the playtest results.

We didn't have anyone to design the game.

Git

Dylan: Postmortem

The Good...

• We had enough people to give each person a specialized role.  This allowed everyone to contribute their best skills to project instead of people having to take time to learn new skills.  In a fast paced project like this we didn't have the luxury of spending a week or two to learn new skills.
• Our team actually did a pretty good job working together and getting stuff done.  That wasn't true all of the time but things could have been much worse, especially when you look at some of the other groups.  For the most part we met all of our deadlines and provided high quality work, and I'm proud that our team was able to do that.

 The Bad...

• Communication was one of our biggest problems early on.  It wasn't clear what people were supposed to be working on and when it was due so we ran into a few situations where work didn't get done.  Eventually we figured out that all of our communications needed to be posted publicly so everyone knew what needed to get done.
• Not everyone put in the same amount of effort into this project.  Some members of the team were very passionate about the project and went above and beyond to make the game better.  Others only did the bare minimum of what they were assigned to do or submitted substandard work.  It would have been nice to see each member of the team put in a comparable amount of effort into this.
• We had our fair share of technical difficulties with Git and Unity.  Doing pretty much anything with Git would involve the Git repository getting messed up and being forced to reclone it.  Also we weren't able to use the main purpose of Git since we cannot merge Unity binary files.  Every time someone wanted to work on the Unity project they had to notify everyone else to make sure no one else was working on it. 

Week 10/11 Feedback

Mostly minor things. General feed back was that the game looks really good.

Sell Presentation:

• Elaborate more on audience
• Why should someone play our game vs other games?
• Possibly go from demo to more detail about the game
• Talk about future plans
• Address replayability and game time
• Talked about LEG before it was introduced. Stop that.
• And stop saying gun.
• Add to intro slides "All you have is a flashlight"
• Address why the player isn't shooting the Alien in the demo. Say this in presentation.
• Almost too easy to power Reactor, add more of a challenge.
• More creature noises. We don't want them sneaking up from behind.

Scrum:

• Sound is weak, improve both effects and as a mechanic (not for next week, but term)
• GDD isn't just what you've done, but where you're taking the game. What enhancements are coming?
• Address player feedback in the presentation. Give summaries of feedback, and tell us where the game is going.

Note: Maybe we could make it so that the Creature hates light and wants to destroy it/put it out? This would explain why he follows light orbs. We could eventually have an animation of a creature ripping a power station out of the wall. That would be cool.