Project 1 - Post Mortem

Project 1 Post Mortem

Topic:

Iterating core ideas too often

What happened?

Unfortunately from the moment i started Project 1, i was unhappy with my game ideas. After getting feedback from my original pitch i was already trying to come up with new ideas and ended up with two new ones. I chose the one i thought would be most interesting and ended up creating a second pitch video. After having the idea accepted by my tutors i went to work breaking down everything i wanted to add into the game. This wasn’t a problem, it seemed as though the game would be simple and would mainly focus on the player's experience. The major problem i ran into was overthinking and overcomplicating the idea, when you look back at how simple missile command it seems like a terrible idea to add new mechanics. As time went by i decided that the game was too simplistic and ended up turning it into a semi-rhythm game. This would have been fine had i actually accomplished the previous goal of making the player experience rich and full of player feedback. Objectively it was coming up with these new ideas during development that would steer my project further and further off course until i produced something i wholly wasn’t happy with.

Why did it happen?

I find myself lucky as a creative person and have no shortage of new ideas, but this is eventually what destroyed my project. I struggled to put limitations on my ideas and on the project itself to get it to a complete state. I didn’t realise until it was too late that i was overcrowding and over complicating my idea to a point where it would never get finished in the time frame. I believe however the root of this problem stemmed from never actually being completely happy with the game idea itself. Coming up with multiple iterations of ideas and having to pitch twice while still being unhappy with the idea pushed me behind on time and instilled almost a sense of disdain for the game i was creating. Up until this point in my degree i have only made games that i liked which gave me both passion and motivation to get them polished whereas with this project i had no faith in either the idea or myself to make it happen.

How to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

Upon graduating my degree and trying to break into the Game Development industry in positions at already booming companies i do understand that i may have to work on projects that i don’t immediately like the idea of. Being able to wholeheartedly work on these projects is something i am going to have to get better at in the long run and i think the best way to do so is continue to make games with very strict briefs and deadlines. In my spare time i will get people to generate strict briefs for me and just start coming up with ideas which meet that particular brief. I will also strive to stick to an idea by upon completing Feature and Tech specifications i will turn the documents into un-editable PDFs which i will work from meaning nothing else in the game can change or be added.

Topic:

Better Utilisation of Hack n Plan

What happened?

After only really using Hack n Plan for the first time during my last trimester, and not to a standard i would have liked, i set myself out to utilise the full potential of the tool. Throughout my Wassily Kandinsky Missile Command project i strove to keep up to date tasks and try and improve my skills at estimating how long things would take to complete. I found that creating weekly milestones extremely beneficial as i didn’t get overwhelmed with all of the tasks in one go but instead could break them down and complete them thematically over the three weeks.

Why did it happen?

After my previous failure to successfully utilise Hack n Plan in my post mortem for that project i aimed to improve my skills with the tool. I achieved this through completing some side projects throughout the trimester break using Hack n Plan to thoroughly break down every aspect. I also used Hack n Plan to create a task management model for an upcoming business venture i am undertaking and it was enormously helpful. This practice with the tool along with the motivation to use the tool well (as a similar system is industry standard) i was able to greatly improve my skills with not only Hack n Plan but my time management in general.

How to make sure it does happen again?

I want to both continue successfully using Hack n Plan but also continue using it to improve my overall time management. I plan on further utilising this for my business venture which is continuing this month and also start a side project creating a game with two like minded classmates.

Topic:

Asset Creation and Manipulation

What happened?

For the first time in a short time frame project in my degree, i created or in some way manipulated every visual and auditory asset in my game. I improved upon my earlier use of 3DS Max and recreated 3D models of musical notes to act as the missiles in my game. Along with that i created the play area itself and tweaked with Unity's Trail Renderer to add to the project. When it came to Audio i had large ambitions which ended up unfulfilled but i did manage to do a large amount of Audio editing and tweaking. I downloaded a MIDI file of Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries and used the program MIDI Editor to break the file down to each separate instrument as a track. I then recorded those tracks separately using OBS as you unfortunately couldn’t export the separate tracks. Once i had converted the MP4s to OGGs i moved them into Audacity where i implemented changes to their noise reduction and Equalisation. This was a far larger task than i had anticipated and became a time sink. For something that took a lot of man hours to complete i was incredibly disheartening for its intended purpose to not be fulfilled. This was in part due to not realising how long it would take and everything else (the actual game creation) getting pushed further and further back.

Why did it happen?

By giving myself a decent allotted amount of time to complete assets and building upon my previous knowledge base i was able to create all of the assets necessary for my game to function. Practicing my 3DS Max skills through small projects over the trimester break as well as delegating time to follow in depth tutorials made the modelling process go much smoother than in previous attempts. A major aspect that i had previously not utilised was asking for help from my lecturer, once i had done so it made things much clearer and saved me a great deal of time which otherwise would have been wasted.

How to make sure it does happen again?

After successfully creating assets both visual and audio for my Wassily Kandinsky Missile Command game, i have found a great interest in improving these skills and hopefully becoming skillful enough to create some of the more detailed ideas i have planned out for future projects which i thought i would have to get outside help for. I plan to continue using my spare time to research tutorials and skills which will help me in asset creation and also continue to ask for help and guidance from my peers to assist me in my goal.