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Month 9 Individual Postmortem

               As an individual, this month (month 9) went considerably better for me then it did in month 7. I did a lot of UI, and model work this month, and it really showed because everything was able to be put into the game by the developers. During every milestone, I was able to get my work done this time, and have it implemented within the milestone after. I was much more comfortable with my team, after having known them a few months now (as in the month 7 class, I didn’t know them since they were new faces after I took a month off).

If I had to reflect on this project in terms of cons, I would say, individually, I did not experience many cons. The only con I did receive was having to rely on some unreliable teammates (Gary and Jabari) to implement some of my stuff. Gary did implement my pause menu art finally, which I was glad about. Other then that, it was a lot easier to get the main developer to implement my things. I believe overall, there was more pros. As a team, we did have some miscommunication and were missing some documentation, but overall, we did pretty good getting our stuff together in the end.

As an individual, I had an easier time this class getting all my work done, as I didn’t have any blocking in the way. My tasks were easy and straightforward, and I managed to get a lot done in this short 4 week period.

[knaik531]

Month 9 Team Postmortem

Bumpergrounds Post Mortem

 TLDR; Things were kind of rocky, and Gary and Jabari didn’t pull their weight.

Bumpergrounds is a couch cooperative game that has two main modes: battle royale and bumper league. The battle royale mode takes place on a floating arena where players fight and ram each other to be the last man standing on the top of the arena. The bumper league version involves much of the same mechanics and the battle royale but the players are separated into two-man teams and tasked with trying to ram the enemy into their own goal to score points.

The Battle Royale mode is a simple 4-player, every man for himself style of game that focuses on ramming players off of the platform and into the abyss below. Players had control of their own vehicle and had several different ways to push someone off the edge. Players could ram other players without any modification, use a dash to ram a player extremely hard or pick up a power-up to give them an edge. The game ends when there is only one member remaining, and then the mode restarts.

The Bumper League mode puts the players into an arena where they must work together with their teammate to ram the enemy team into a goal. Many of the same mechanics are there, with the dash and power-ups. However, many of the power-ups have been reworked to fit the new style of gameplay that was introduced. The players are able to use these power-ups to their advantage, but also have the ability to use them to their disadvantage. We wanted to make sure that players weren’t just unscorable machines if they had power-ups, so we made sure to take some power away from the player in this regard.

           There are pros and cons to every project and team that decides to start on a project together. The biggest thing about quick projects is turning any of your cons into pros as fast as possible. When we first started the project, our communication as a team was severely lacking. After completion of our first milestone, the project that we had to show looked as if Doctor Frankenstein was the lead designer on it; it was completely in pieces. Coupled with our inability to communicate was a lack of attention to detail. Many of the documents we needed to keep up with went unfinished, or worse, unstarted. Another major con that the team suffered from was the constant inability to stay on schedule. We were typically about 10 hours into the hole starting each new milestone after the first one; this led to some members being over capacity leading into each new milestone.

           However, our team was able to modify many of these cons and turn them into pros. For the lack of communication, we started having team meetings every morning at 8am and used that time to catch up with everyone on what work needed to be done and work as a group until about 10am. This greatly improved our communication and productivity. Using these team meetings, we were able to push ourselves for more quality work and even increase how much work we were able to do which helped us start slimming down the amount of leftover work after each milestone. Another pro that came out of early meetings were accountability. For the first milestone, we went in with blind faith that all members were completing the work they were supposed to. After we started meeting in the mornings, we were able to track everyone’s work more frequently and keep up with what person is assigned to what task and what their progress is with it so far.

           Another con was that we did not start with a clear idea of what features we needed. This led to our schedule not always reflecting the work that needed to be done, particularly early on, and it also made it incredibly difficult to create work for all of the milestones from the beginning of development. This isn’t really something that we were able to fix. We never had a clear idea of where we wanted to take the project.

The team members of this project are: Rowan, Mitch, Janko, Gary, Karan, Jabari. The jobs of each person are as follows: Rowan took the role of Lead Developer/Designer and Producer, Mitch took the role of Artist/Producer, Janko took the role of Artist/Producer, Gary took the role of doing nothing all month, Karan took the role of Artist, and Jabari took the role of Dev-lite.

The first milestone took a lot of the core functionality from the first game that was made, Bumpergrounds: Battle Royale. New car models and textures were slated to be completed by Karan. Janko was tasked with getting the arena model done. Rowan created new functionality for the vehicle’s being flipped and their starting areas. Mitch worked on vehicle power-ups that could be picked up in the arena and collision particles. Gary was tasked with the menu ui and functionality, though he didn’t actually do anything the first week. Jabari was tasked with implementing score and timer functionality and making the arena obstacles move on a timer. The total estimated hours was 66 for milestone 1 and the actual hours worked were only 47.25 leaving 7 hours remaining for work to be done. This overestimate made for milestone 1 led to less work being that could have been spent either polishing what was actually done or starting work on milestone 2.

Our communication was lacking and some of our members motivation to do any work was severely lacking, which fell on the rest of us to bite the bullet and receive harsh criticism from Roy, our instructor. It unfortunately required us to force meeting times upon everyone just to make sure that people were doing the work tasked to them. This consisted of early mornings or late evenings at the UX Lab or Library. Though it was inconvenient for all parties involved, it was a necessary action. The presentation for the first milestone was pretty rocky as well with members not knowing which slide to speak on or even knowing what tasks were already done or what has yet to be started. This milestone presented us with a harsh learning experience but this has also drilled time management into most individuals involved.

Milestone 2 was our largest milestone, which was needed to catch up on the work that wasn’t done for the first milestone. Jabari was tasked with continued work on implementing the obstacle movements into the arena and power up spawns. Janko was tasked with laying out the UV’s of the arena and texture it. Rowan was tasked with implementing the arena model into the game and further iterations on the power ups in the game. Karan was tasked with the pause menu art and the score/timer HUD and win screen art. Mitch was tasked with giving the cars dash trails, getting the cars in engine, and recreating the schedule per our feedback from Roy. Finally, Gary was tasked with pause menu functionality. Milestone 2 was estimated to take 75.5 hours but only had 65.2 actual hours on record and 5 remaining hours of work left to do.

Forcing members to meetup, or at least setting strict meeting times, helped the team mostly reach the work tasked to them, though only some members were present for every meeting. We were slightly back on task with our work for the project, though still slightly behind on our required hours. We also saw better performance with the presentation and management of our tasks and schedules. An entire new excel sheet was made to properly track milestones, tasks, and hours.

 Milestone 3 had slightly less hours and tasks then milestone 2 so that we wouldn’t overshoot our estimated hours. The estimated hours was 77 and the actual hours were 67.25 but leaving 11 hours remaining. Jabari was tasked with still connecting the obstacles to the arena, player indicator UI, and power up modifications. Janko was tasked with making a second pass at the arena textures. Mitch was tasked with implementing a fall area to the map, resizing player icons, and further data management of the schedule. Rowan was tasked with modifying the cars movement and picking up the slack of Jabari and Gary. Karan was tasked with modeling car variants and making a splash screen. Finally, Gary was tasked with still working on previous milestone tasks that he failed to do any work on.

Hours remaining were mainly Gary’s and putting hours that he worked but didn’t actually do anything. If we could go back to any of the previous milestones and review Gary’s submission, there is a small chance that he would still be part of the project, if given the ability to fire him. This lack of motivation and attendance at the meetings further proves that some members, no matter how often talked to about poor performance, cannot and will not do anything.

 Milestone 4...

  If we were to begin this process again, we would certainly take the time to work through a design that the team could focus on for the entirety of the project’s life. Rather than attempting to make milestones after our previous one was completed, it would give us the chance to plan the entire set of milestones up to the final delivery. We feel that the lack of defined roles in the team gave us an level of ambiguity of tasks that each member was able to complete. This lead to members being unable to complete items that they were tasked with. Assigning roles would give a clear expectation of what to expect from each member, what tasks they could work on, and what assistance they may possibly need to push the task to completion and implementation into the build. One of the most important issues that we had with our process is that we blindly followed our tasks and never really cared about if the game was fun. We didn’t take the chance to re-evaluate any of the tasks or the game itself to see if we should focus on making it more fun and enjoyable. That would be one of the things we improved; if the game isn’t fun, figure out why and change it to make sure that the experience is enjoyable to the audience playing it.

[knaik531]

Individual Post Mortem

When we initially came up with the idea of BumperGrounds, I personally wasn’t that into it. As we progressed through meetings, it grew on me. I loved our final Physical prototype and I feel like it showed our game well. I will say that I do not know this group of classmates that well because I did not start with them as I was forced to take a month off when I was the last one in my previous class. At times I felt very uncomfortable with this group due to things that were said and comments that were made, and I felt there was a lack of communication and people not doing things unless they were forced to. It was a rough start for sure. As we progressed to the digital prototype, things started moving forward.There were many bugs which cut back on development, but we kept on trekking. By the end of the project, I made a logo and a car model, and some UI elements. The UI and logo unfortunately did not get put into the game. Overall the experience taught me that you won’t always have the most positive experience when working with a team, but the outcome goal is important and you must do your best to stay on task no matter what. I am pretty proud of our outcome.

[knaik531]

Team Post Mortem

Bumpergrounds 

After brainstorming we came up with the idea to capitalize on the popularity of the Battle Royale genre but with our own spin on it. Taking into consideration the scope available to us we decided on the concept of a bumper cars style game dubbed BUMPERGROUNDS.

We started off with a physical prototype to test out the initial concept and to explore any dynamics that could show up. One of such dynamics is that with our idea there would be a risk to players of falling out themselves whenever they attempted to knock someone else out the ring.

After our physical prototype we quickly moved into digital development. We agreed to create an arena with hexagonal tiles with the edges falling off after set intervals. This was to simulate the closing ring of other battle royale games One concern that immediately became apparent was the car controls. It took a lot of testing and fine tuning before we got it to a place that we were comfortable with. After that we moved on to figuring out how to spice up the gameplay. The 2 ideas we arrived at was power-ups and different patterns that the arena tiles would fall. These ideas helped us to make every match feel unique.

The development suffered from a few bugs. The physics of the cars were a challenge to get just right. Another issue was with the powerups. In the end only 2 powerup worked as intended. Another bug that occured was with the particle effects we use to for the background. It took a while before we got it to form the pattern we wanted.

Some feedback we received was on improving the feedback a player receives while playing. Some players thought that we needed something to improve the actual moment when 2 cars would impact each other since this was a key part of our game. We were also told that we needed to improve the feeling of winning the game since the game simply restarts once a winner is decided.

The project for Bumpergrounds was something that definitely had a rocky start. Communication was lacking overall for the entire month. Two members of the team were frequently missing, so other team members had to cover down to make sure that their work got finished. Due to team members being diverted from their main tasks, this led to us not being able to get every feature we want in the game, such as more power ups, different maps and different car models.

In conclusion, the team feels that they were able to create a fun experience. Despite the time constraints, setbacks and the features that had to be cut we are proud of the turnout of the product that we made.

[knaik531]

MEX Mastery Journal

In the MEX course, I learned a lot about the user experience, and game testing. We learned many methods of perception, as well as various game testing methods. I believe I can connect this to my topic of video game violence, because I can now understand better how game testing is done, as I had never been apart of a video game test until administering one during this class. Personally, I thought it was fun to go through this process and I now further understand what can go wrong during testing. There can be so many validity errors/problems, but testing can never be 100% perfect. In relation to my topic of video game violence, I will be using the things I learned to further examine test results and make sure I know what issues of validity I am looking at when researching different studies.This course has also taught me about many different forms of testing, and the types of things that can be analyzed when administering a test. From facial expressions to mouse tracking, to eye movement, so many different things can help us gather the data we need. I will definitely be utilizing the things I have learned in this course when furthering my research.

[knaik531]

PTM Mastery Journal

In this course, I didn’t think I would learn much, because project management is a pretty straightforward course. To my surprise Project & Team management, taught me several things. The course taught me about many different styles of resolving conflicts, and how you have to be aware of other’s personality types and their work style/ethics. Through this course I now know how to properly develop a Project Management plan step by step. I really struggled with Budgeting and task management before this class, but I have learned tons of new ways and methodologies to assist me in this process.

I will never forget “PLOM”, as it has been embedded in my brain at the beginning of every class. This class has also taught me that many different personality types may clash and it is good to try to research and understand your employees. When you better understand their personalities, it is easy for you to focus your energy on how to better approach and cater to their needs. Every employee will require different things in terms of recognition and job satisfaction. I think that before this class I was not confident enough to serve as a Project Manager, but after this class, I feel much more confident in being able to do so.

[knaik531]

Mastery Journal Tumblr Blog

In the Research and Team Dynamics course, I learned many things that contributed to my mastery plan. With the class, ​I learned how to better manage a team. We learned many tips and tricks on team motivation and how to get a team's performance higher. When looking at our team project, we had many communication issues, and issues with a certain individual not pulling their weight. It was definitely a challenge to get around these issues. I also learned that sometimes you can't rely on others and the team will suffer the consequences as a whole. When evaluating our team issues, we found that we needed to meet more in person, and encourage each other as well as provide the team with updates on progress. I learned that after we established better rules and set aside time for better communication, we were able to come together as a team and make a lot of progress.  I think I will use these skills and learnt tips and tricks in my journey as I will have to work on many teams in the future. This class has really shown me the importance of being on a team and has prepared me for working on a team in the industry in some aspects.

[knaik531]

My inspirational post this week is a song called “Good Old Days” by Macklemore (Macklemore, 2017). I chose this song because I related it back to returning to your origins as learned in this class. This song makes me reminisce about the past as well as realize, that the past is ever changing as we make new memories everyday. I believe that this means, someday we’ll be reminiscing about today as we do about our past memories. We have to move forward and not dwell on the past.

MACKLEMORE FEAT KESHA - GOOD OLD DAYS (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) [Video file]. (2017, September 21). Retrieved December 17, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yYV9-KoSUM

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My Inspirational post this week is once again a Kesha song. In my opinion, her last album has been very inspirational to me. In her self-written article on the song, Kesha states  “I’m talking about people who feel like they don’t fit in, people who feel like they don’t have a hymn” (Sebert, 2017). In my opinion, this song is inspirational to me in that it reminds me that it’s okay to feel like an outcast, which is what I often feel like. It reminds me that I don’t need to fit in with any specific group of people as long as I love myself.   

Kesha - Hymn (Audio) [Video file]. (2017, August 03). Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttTkcU4a1c Sebert, K. (2017, August 03). Read Kesha's essay on her new single. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://mic.com/articles/183195/kesha-essay-new-single-hymn-for-people-who-feel-like-outcasts#.i47EYwZh2

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My inspirational post this week is Kesha’s song Rainbow. She wrote this song at one of the lowest points in her life, while she was in rehab for an eating disorder and used a keyboard that she had to beg the staff to allow her to use (Sebert, 2017). This song always lifts me up when I’m feeling low, and inspires me to “put those colors on” and “paint the world”, and find my own personal rainbow while overcoming my obstacles (Sebert, 2017).  Rainbow (Official Video) [Video file]. (2017, August 11). Retrieved December 3, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd5dcjXzuGk Sebert, K. (2017, August 11). Kesha: "What's Left Of My Heart Is Pure Gold & No One Can Touch That". Retrieved December 03, 2017, from http://www.refinery29.com/2017/08/167127/kesha-rainbow-lyrics-meaning-album-inspiration

[knaik531]

My Mastery Journey

Over the next 12 months at Full Sail University, I hope to develop and learn skills to help me become a master in my field. As of right now, I’ve immersed myself in various programs and experimented with different aspects of game design, so I plan to find my niche and figure out what I am both skilled at and enjoy doing the most within the game design field. A big part of my mastery journey will also be networking. Networking is a very important part of Mastery as you never know who you’ll end up seeing in the future when applying to a job. I am very shy and have severe social anxiety, so I will have to learn to overcome both of these things, and I have already noticed that I’ve had some progress in doing so during my first month here. I also would love to learn as many things as I can over the next year, both in class and on my own free time, to further expand my skill set and become a master in my field. Another big part of my mastery journey will definitely be to overcome my struggles. A lot of the time I get very disheartened or frustrated when I have trouble figuring something out. I need to learn to accept help as I can be very stubborn, as well as not give up when that occurs. Furthermore, I hope to use the skills I learn, and tools I am provided to practice on my own and build my portfolio. Portfolio work is very important in media based careers and I would love to expand my own. My goal after graduation is to work in a game studio working as a 3D modeler, animator, or character designer. I truly believe my journey at Full Sail will help guide me there.