#-without having to redo a ton of assets because I found out that I needed to approach things a different way.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dungeon Meshi: Delicious in RPG!

(Sprites + bonus art here!)

[wjmartinfsstudent-blog]

Asset Management Mastery Journal

lnvidual Post Modem

    This project was a very strong learning experience into how assets management would work within the game industry. I learned quite few lessons through this class, I am also very glad that this class was in the course of this learning year in the game design master’s degree. The first lesson that I learned would be about the idea of time management. The way that this lesson was learned was when the estimates were given for the work that was to be done I believed that the best course of action at first would have been to give myself more time to do the characters that were assignment to me. I estimated that it may have taken longer than what it would due to making sure that I was covered for anytime that I may go over while creating the characters that were assigned to me in the game. I realized at the end of that week that I should have not done that, when I found out upon delivery of the information, it was recommended that I would be time boxed, which would mean that I had to then set my estimates to less time to get them complete. I was a little worried at first and the reason why is because I knew that my parents were coming down that weekend as well as on the day that I was told this I was given a big project in capstone. I was worried about the time management that would come into play. That weekend I also had a personal emergency that weighed heavier on my mind. This was tough to deal with along with everything else that was going on. I unfortunately prioritized the capstone work over my project work that weekend. I also did not get to the specific project work until late night of the deadline, I ended up being late and had to ask for more time from the art lead Alex, Which I do regret that I had to do that because I had to then rushed through the characters that I had to get done for the project. I did get the deliverable in however they were not at the standard that was expected for the game. 

    Through milestones 1 and 2, The main lesson that I learned would have been about prioritizing my time. I learned this lesson and I am also grateful for the experience because it allowed me to get some real-world experience to how a project could be with real life distractions, dealing with the personal emergency as well as my parents visit and the capstone work. I learned this lesson and I can take this to real word with this experience and apply it. Milestone 3 was a lot different because I now knew what had to be done and I learned from the experience with the feedback that I received and I made sure that the first priority after I had gotten out of capstone was this class project. As soon as the capstone work was completed then I would begin working on my project work continued work on the characters for the project every day. I also did get a chance because of capacity to see about redoing two models that I had trouble with the last Milestone. I tried a different approach when looking into the new models I decided to do everything that I could to make it look like what it was supposed to be, for an example when creating a wizard, I wanted to make sure that it looked like a wizard including what you would expect like a beard and a robe, Which seemed great at first until it was pointed out to me by the team that the redone wizard did not match the concept art. Because the concept art did not have a beard it was more of a Mario wizard without the beard. I also learned a lesson here. I learned that as an artist it is more important to match the concept art for what the art lead believes that the character should be. This was another lesson that I learned, I will continue to bring into the real-world experience that I am glad that I had also learned in this class project experience. 

   The final task that was given to me for that milestone was to set up some testing for the game. I did go ahead and do the testing, however when I did the testing I added my name to the notes that were already on the document, however there was a separate row specifically for my testing note information. When this was pointed out to me I did go ahead and copied the rows from the document on the excel file to file in that information, I did not realize that the excel file was formatted is a specific way so the copy and paste information would not be the correct rows. Which again would be another lesson for the continuation of the project and real life. When going into final milestone it was decided that the two artists would switch roles. That would mean that I would do props and Matias would do the characters for the game the reason for that would be because I was running very close to the amount of capacity that I had allowed for the project. I continued to work and I decided to try to get everything in as early as I could and did there was an issue with one of the props. I had a great art lead to help with a PDF that was sent to me with better explanations of how the props should work along with explanations of edge flow and the ways that things moving within the 3D space when modeling, which was very helpful with looking into and learning different aspects of 3D modeling. I truly appreciate the work that my Art lead put into the creation of this document. I will continue to learn and get better as an artist and a worker in the gaming industry. The final week for the Milestones I am going to continue to go through my previous characters or props that I have created and make any kind of improvements that I am be able to rather it be remodeling or little changes.  This class was definitely a good way of giving a good look at what an actual project in the game industry would be like and the way that time management and asset management can play in the game industry.

Group Postmortem            

Before we had stepped into Asset Management, the group was dealt with a challenge. Our capacity had two less people than Prototyping and Content Creation. This became an opportunity for the group as multiple people got more fluid roles in the project. We had a producer cover audio, an art lead also cover design, and two artists who got to try their hands at both character art and prop art. Immediately the group became more well-rounded thus.Learning from our mistakes two months ago, we immediately knew we needed an art lead. This allowed us to agree to a certain design that would not confuse the art team as we did when we made Little Cupid. The art lead provided references for all art which, unfortunately, was not followed. Some on the art team had their own vision and did not consider the art lead’s thought process as to why he chose the references he did. This caused frustration among the team as the lead kept sending assets back  As the project went on the producer had to sit down with those artists not following the references to explain why the assets were getting rejected and an understanding was reached. The art lead had those references picked out to not only assist the artists but to fit the theme of the game.

The group decided to take an asset pack from the Unity store and re-skin it. The reason this strategy was chosen was because there was no developer on the team. One student took on the role with little experience and experimented with adding another tool to his toolbelt. His role involved a high amount of art asset integration as we were just replacing objects already in the asset pack. This became problematic as we had a missed milestone by one of the artists. Time management and outside distractions became an issue causing low quality models to be pushed out which in turn got rejected. That artist learned from his mistakes and managed his time between classwork and capstone very well for the remainder of the project. Even allowing for models to be redone from the original missed milestone. Models that were turned in after the milestones were greatly improved thanks to a detailed presentation the art lead made up for the artists.As the project moved along we began to get into a rhythm thanks to the group defining the game right from the start – an infinite shooter that was very content rich. Members of the group began to see the end project and enjoyed playing the game in their spare time. 

The group had a bit of an issue with the quality assurance testing. The testing plan was not specific enough and multiple iterations needed to be made as the project moved along. Builds did not get out on time before presentation day which caused incomplete testing results to be present in front of the investor. Sloppy testing was also present as the quality test plan was sometimes filled out in a copy paste fashion instead of typing out the results one-by-one. The group remedied the situation by creating a log in which people could sign out the test plan and sign it back in when they were done. Multiple copies of the plan were made so that information would not be overwritten.The final challenge we faced involved most the group padding their estimates causing the producer to have to time box the estimates. Our original estimate was over double the actual capacity for the project! The time boxing became time intensive but it became clear that even with time boxing the assets were being completed with a negative delta. This caused an issue where we did not have enough planned for the game on the UI side. The group had to scramble to get work for her to do as her hour count was very low. She helped by redesigning a couple of stage environments, as well as contributing in quality assurance testing for the group.All in all, the project had some rocky moments but flowed a lot better than it did two months ago. The issues we dealt with were mostly minor which had easy fixes. The group felt as if they gained a ton of knowledge from the experience and can use that information in the future.

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