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ONE BONE: Game Making Process

Winston Heraldo I am very pleased to have worked with such a talented group of individuals. I’m pretty sure we can agreed that all of us enjoyed creating a game based around a theme we all were excited about. Had we have been given more time, I feel as if our game could have implemented more of our original ideas. Overall it was a positive experience.

WHAT WENT WELL · Ideas: Brainstorming and encouragement of all ideas and thoughts we wanted to implement were carefully made to fit the theme of game. · Design: Planning and fleshing out each level as well each character to have their own unique personalities and functions. This allowed our game to challenge the player to decide how they approach a certain level or enemy. The different functions also adds balance and spontaneity. · Communication: Responding to each other in timely and respectable manners with no issues. · Responsibility: Performing and splitting the tasks evenly as we decided together. · Team work: Helping a team member out if they needed assistance. · Feedback: Interviewing and watching our fellow classmates play our game helped us to reinvigorate One Bone to make it more satisfying. · The points system: Though not game related, was a good a reward system for our team to stay on track. This provided us with motivation for free food - I mean high marks and great game play - by finishing the majority of our work before most of the deadlines.

WHAT WENT WRONG · Loss of time, specifically a week (and technically a half), due to the college strike. · Confusion of whether or not the semester would continue, due to the college strike. · Project deadlines clashing with other course deadlines and tests. · Trying to commit changes when others have committed just before you and having to fix or merge it, then redoing it again. · Removing some of our original ideas, due to time constraints - such as story dialogue, npcs, powerups, etc. · Reformatting some parts in different levels because of the difficulty feedback from the play testing session in class.

Kristian Campbell

WHAT WENT WELL I believe what went well was the dedication and the concentration of the game. I think I can speak for everyone that if we had it our way, ALL of our time would be on this game. I like how the graphics and the controls we've created and on how it fits. I like each character within their personality through their movements and actions. I still wish to continue this project to iron out anything and make it what it could be. Also, I think that the strike, was a golden opportunity for me as the artist since it gave me more time to create multiple sprites. It felt complete, though I wish it could of been used, I believe we'll find a way if we have the time.

WHAT WENT WRONG  Time management is a big issue as we had to cut current ideas like weapon powerups, and the travel actions. I wish to see those in action. Second is technical difficulties. Another big one for me personally, as I had end up with over 4 different versions of the project that uses different Unity versions. That was a pain to keep track, but the known issue is I couldn't commit any changes anymore. There was a glitch that one of our members commit a change, I didn't know till last minute, the project didn't update, it collided with the previous thus creating a hybrid which wouldn't open at all. Another is one of our group members didn't contribute at all. He left I believe 2nd week and he hasn't contacted us since.

Sargis Nahapetyan I am overall happy with how the project ended up. Though it is not how we perfectly wanted it, it is very close. All our group members performed their jobs very well and in the end our game is both stable and playable. Personally I think if not for the strike, we would have made an even better product, as the strike cut our development time a bit and forced us to work around it.

WHAT WENT WELL · Group was well organized and communication was never a problem · Group members performed their duties on time · Group members knew what they needed to do and did not have to be told what to do · All group members were polite and friendly · Some group members worked beyond their required expectations · Game development want quite smoothly, we never needed to backtrack · We are happy with our finished product in the end

WHAT WENT WRONG · Collage Strike complicated game development · Not all mechanics could be implemented due to time constraints · Game development would often conflict with other courses · Some group members were put under a lot of pressure · Our end product is not how we perfectly wanted it

Alessio Iannella The concept of the game immediately excited every member and we kept this passion and excitement throughout the development of the game. I am in the end really happy on how our game looks and l ve been enthusiastic to work on it and with my team. I am a little disappointed since the team had to delete a couple of ideas from the game, but this is the overall feeling of every member. If I had to choose again to work on a game, I would definitely choose my team again. Working with new people is always a hazard, but everything went smoothly.

WHAT WENT WELL · Tasks were organized fairly: we tried to assign work to do in a fair way based on the level of knowledge and experience and we succeeded on it. · Communication between members has always been clear. Every member tried to communicate with each other within few hours when they were busy and this kept the organization clear · Scheduled meetings were respected by everybody · Every member completed tasks on time · Roles in our project were divided carefully to meet the different levels of experience and knowledge of every member. This role organization let the development process to reach a high level. · The fair divisions of role left time for some members like me, an entry level game programmer, to learn as much as possible from others since other member let me participate in the development. · Every member asked sometimes for help: they did not try to solve problems wasting hours of work but whenever they felt blocked on a task, they asked help or delegated task to others whenever possible. I appreciated this approach since it let us save time. · Some members overworked doing more than enough, showing a great passion on what we were doing: this inspired other members to do better.

WHAT WENT WRONG The strike has caused many problems during the game development. That has been the main reason of the following list about what went wrong: · Because of the strike, no member had any idea on what to do during the “break”. We felt to keep working on the project but we did not since there was the probability of losing the semester. Every student was scared about the future of the semester that we paused the project · When the semester started again, although we organized again our tasks and time in the fairest way possible, some members felt a lot under pressure to complete tasks. · Communication was paused during Christmas break. Every member went offline on Slack during the break. In a normal situation, it was completely acceptable since everybody was on vacation. But again, because of the strike, the break last only one week and then the team had to come back to the college and work again a lot on the project. It would have been better to be more time online on Slack to keep everyone updated with the project status. Fortunately, this leak of communication for 1 week did not impact the final development steps and everything was done in time · Because of the previous considerations, some ideas that were born at the beginning of the project could not be included in the final version. Although everyone including me like the game, l feel that the game misses those mechanics left apart.

Shivam Sood As everyone was pitching in ideas at the early start of the game this was like a dream of everyone as we all worked hard onto this project to make it a success and I am very happy with the amount of dedication everyone showed that includes completing of every stage of project on time and learning from the mistakes we made as this is the first game I developed with group and it gave me the idea of how to work with a team and have everyone’s back.

WHAT WENT WELL · Project was completed on time · Continuous communication saved time · Task became easy when everyone pitched in all knowledge and ideas they have. · Team member were friendly and helped as much as they could

WHAT WENT WRONG · Strike is the main issue that caused mess · Communication was shut off during that period · Took some time to be back on track and see what’s going on · Mainly because of this some ideas needed to be dropped that could have made the game even more better.

Aldrin Fernandez Everyone worked hard to make this project a success as we hit few roadblocks on our way but we still managed to finish it on time with a fairly good built. Solid effort from team was a key component that led to the success of this project as I believe when I say this that I enjoyed this team and this project and would like to paired up with them if I ever get a chance.

WHAT WENT RIGHT · Main thing was the time management as we have other courses and everyone did a good job keeping up with all the deliverable before final submission · Everyone pitched in as much as they could to make the game even better · Continuous updating of documentation helped everyone in their part. · Our leader did a great job in bring the team together and communication was smooth. 

WHAT WENT WRONG · Strike was the major roadblock as that lead to couple of problems. · Communication cut off and everyone was side tracked from the objective because of inactivity. · Few days were wasted to get everything back on track.