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generalherasyndulla · 1 year

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nothing bad ever happens au kuranushi household movie night

(so for context for literally everyone else besides uh me and Red. "nothing bad ever happens au" is an aitsf/aini au made by me and Red through discord that's basically a world where well nothing bad happens. I'm not going to get into ALL the changes here but the relevant one is Uru never got kidnapped and grew up in Aioen. He and Bibi end up being close and have a sibling dynamic so Boss adopted both of them because they are a set do not seperate)

��Alright,” Bibi said as she carried a bowl of popcorn into the living room. “Popcorn’s ready! So what movie are we watching tonight?”

“Well, I was thinking-“ Uru started before being quickly interrupted.

“If you suggest another goddamn Phantom of the Opera adaptation, I am disowning you and kicking you out of the house. Forever.” Shizue said.

“Technically, Phantom of the Paradise is more of an interpretation than an adaptation so –“

“No.”

Uru slumped down onto the couch with a sigh. Bibi gave her a brother a sympathetic pat on the shoulder as she sat down next to him. “So, what would you like to watch then mother dearest.”

Shizue grimaced. “How many times have I told you to stop calling me that.”

“At least as many times as you’ve threatened to disown and kick me out. You know that threat’s not really all the effective on adults, right?”

Shizue held up her to her chest in mock-astonishment. “The absolute disrespect. Bibi, you’re my new favourite.”

Bibi snorted, earning her a glare from Uru.

“Traitor.” Bibi moved the bowl of popcorn on her lap towards her brother as a peace offering. He sighed and took a handful, indicating all was forgiven.

“Seriously though, what are we going to watch?” Bibi asked shoveling a handful of popcorn into her own mouth.

“Well-“ Shizue started.

“None of your weird adult movies that’s about shirtless guys or whatever. I’m pretty sure they’re R 18+ and I’m only 14. And even if I wasn’t, ew.” Bibi said.

“Ugh, Uru, you’re my new favourite.”

He rolled his eyes, but Bibi noticed the small smirk on his face. Bibi swiftly gave her brother a poke in the side erasing that stupid smug look on his face. Now who’s the traitor, hypocrite.

“I’ve got nothing, since my own child is oppressing me.”

"You'll get over it." Bibi then gave her suggestion. “How about that one movie about magicians committing robbery? That one seems cool.”

“Another heist movie? Should I be concerned as your legal guardian?”

“Don’t worry it’s nothing anyone can prove.” Bibi smiled what she hoped was her most innocent and youthful smile.

Shizue shrugged, completely unphased. “Works for me.”

Uru side-eyed his foster mother. “Are you sure you’re a police officer?”

“Not when I’m off the clock.” Shizue grabbed the remote and began to type in the movie’s title on Netplix. “So, the magician heist movie then?”

“Yes!” Bibi fist-pumped the air.

“Sure,” Uru agreed, smiling fondly at his younger sister’s excitement. “But next week we are watching Phantom of the Paradise.”

“Bibi, you’re the favourite again.”

#aitsf au #aini au #shizue kuranushi #bibi aitsf #uru somezuki #I've decided that Uru despite not being experimented on to have half of his face is someone still a big poto fan #Also I decided that Bibi actually goes by that name for everyone rather than it being just being a nickname #my fic #Thanks for the prompt friend! :)

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shimzus-a · 4 years

Text

HEADCANON : PRESSURE POINTS.

i think one common misconception that people have about kiyoko is that because she’s blunt she must have a bad attitude. she can be portrayed as someone who’s very unforgiving & cold ( considering that for most, if not all, of ennoshita’s movies she’s taken on the villainess role ) because of the way that she speaks to others, even though her conversational style is more based on thoughtfulness & restraint. still, most characters who run into her consider her a cool, somewhat severe type of person, & considering the way that she treats tanaka & nishinoya with a no-nonsense mindset, others might assume her to be easily irritated.

but as i mentioned before, she’s misunderstood because her communication style is thoughtful & restrained, not because she’s easily frustrated. in fact, most of her “pressure points” ( dislikes ) are common. she may express them a bit differently, choosing to not mince words when she points them out, but her motivations for responding to them are more often because she 1) has expectations for proper behavior & assumes that most decent people understand traditional values like her, & 2) because she’s stubborn & she’d rather point those expectations out *for people she knows than tiptoe around them. these aren’t really unreasonable expectations in her mind, & although she might be stern when she points them out to someone like tanaka or nishinoya, she doesn’t necessarily expect any change to come out of her comments. in that way, she’s also reasonable about her pressure points. she knows that if there is someone with a personality she dislikes, she can’t change everything about them, but she may be able to satiate their behavior in a certain circumstance so that they’re more tolerable ( i.e. if her team would quiet down when they’re being too loud indoors ).

*i bring up this point about being blunt “with people she knows” because in the instance where terushima kept pressing her for her phone number, she was polite & tried to excuse herself rather than coldly telling him that he was annoying. however, with tanaka & nishinoya, whom she knows well, she will say “you’re being annoying. stop that.” i think she’s more comfortable expressing her judgments on people she knows better, because she knows that it’s not considered “rude” if it comes from a place of friendship / acquaintanceship. after all, most friends try to be considerate & accept their other friends’

some of her “pressure points” i describe below. these are more like topics of frustration, but ultimately i do bring up some personality traits that she strongly dislikes in other people.

the first pressure point is a lack of consideration for others, which is pretty broad. at its simplest definition, this relates to the way that people are mindful of their surroundings, if they share those surroundings with others. thus, volume level, cleanliness, & manners are usually the first sorts of things that kiyoko takes notice of. if her team is being disruptive, if they don’t pick up the club room, & if they try to start fights, it will probably irritate her. however, i don’t think that this necessarily bothers her enough to scold them EVERY TIME for it. in terms of the cleanliness & volume, she may rely on someone with more influence like sawamura to bring it up. if tanaka & nishinoya are about to start a fight to protect her ( like they often do prematurely at events ), she will make them stop, though mostly because it also makes her look bad. if they’re trying to stir up competition & intimidate other teams, where she’s not included as part of the topic, she would then instead expect sawamura to step in.

she also dislikes discord in friendships. she despises drama & arguments among friends, which is why most of the time in her homeroom class when her female peers start to talk about the bad things their friends did, she tunes them out. because kiyoko wasn’t able to make friends until hitoka-chan, she strongly values those types of relationships & feels that friends should be cherished rather than combatted against. despite kiyoko’s unfamiliarity with having close friends, she thinks that if she were ever to have a friend that she would fight with, she’d rather stop being friends to save them both the pain of conflicting with one another. however, admittedly that is somewhat of an immature thought that she has in high school & one which she needs to learn to grow out of as an adult. i think ultimately she does learn that fighting is a natural part of any relationship, including familial & romantic, but it’s not one that she likes to prolong. it can be hard because she’s stubborn by nature, but she definitely wants to avoid fighting when it’s with friends like hitoka-chan who have shown her a kindness that she’s unused to with peers / acquaintances who never became meaningful friends to her.

next, she dislikes egoism. this is extremely unattractive to her because of her more traditional values. being humble, for some reason, is incredibly attractive because it denotes some form of wisdom. when people are able to recognize their weaknesses & strengths without OVERDOING their strengths, it speaks to a level of emotional maturity that kiyoko appreciates. furthermore, though confidence & humility may overlap, she prefers humility more often because it inherently suggests that someone could be aware that there’s always more to learn about their strengths. thus, even if someone were confident in their receiving ability, being humble & recognizing that they can continue to improve is more impactful for her. she thinks that egoism is blinding for certain individuals, & makes people into highly competitive / condescending peers that nobody wants to be around. not only does egoism contribute to highly inflated self-views, but it also starts to foster a thought process where people begin to look down on others. that could contribute to 1) high expectations that can’t be met & therefore punished by the egoist, 2) unhealthy competition & the need to push people away to feel differentiated & “better,” & 3) a nasty tendency to self-isolate, especially when that person might need to depend on others for help. she probably avoids the types of people who she considers egotistical, simply because she knows that this is a major flaw she doesn’t want to be around. while the “pressure points” mentioned above are more forgivable, this one is something she’s steadfast on disliking.

finally, the one thing that she’s learned to “hate” the most is probably unsportsmanlike conduct. i believe i wrote a headcanon at one point, that since then has been deleted, where i explained that kiyoko probably disliked oikawa, kageyama, & tsukishima at some time. this was mostly based on what she had seen of their playing styles or heard of them. oikawa, although not on her team & thus not a person she’s privy to knowing very well, also seemed somewhat egotistical to her, so that contributed more to his rating; but kageyama & tsukishima were players she could watch closely. kageyama, firstly, had a sort of unsportsmanlike conduct because he didn’t seem to respect his team & felt that he could do things on his own. again, this plays somewhat into egoism ( which i mentioned above ), but he was also stepping out of line as a new club member. he should have had more manners as a first year towards everyone else, even his peers. tsukishima, conversely, was able to cooperate with the team in-games, but was offensive when talking to the other first years, & kiyoko always seemed to interpret him as feeling genuinely distasteful towards them.

the reason why i think unsportsmanlike conduct became so important to kiyoko is simply because she grew to appreciate volleyball & the work that went into “making a team.” because she also felt like part of that team & wanted to contribute to making it the best it could be ( atmosphere included ), anything that disrupted their relationship was something she couldn’t easily find forgiveness in. at the beginning of her third year she may have been a bit immature in thinking this way, because i think it had just dawned on her that she would be leaving in march & she wanted to find “belonging” in a positive place ... but she eventually grew to understand that kageyama & tsukishima were immature, too. i don’t think she ever excused their behavior, & she still probably dislikes the way they acted early on, but she’s come to accept it more. if she hadn’t it definitely would have disrupted their team’s dynamic, & she didn’t want to hold any grudges, because she thought “if i was able to grow to love this sport & find my place here, maybe they can learn to grow, too.”

#character study tag tba.#long post /#whew ok now i will dye my hair then i will write the kisses headcanon >:3c

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jranderson1mastery-blog · 7 years

Text

Group Post Mort em for M.E.G.A. project

Postmortem: Make Earth Great Again

Team members include:

James Anderson, David Ashbourne, Javier Chico, Teryn Cochran, Christine Dietz, Chris Dinkel, Tomas Gonzalez, Alexander Hudson, Hampton King, Andrew Lambert, William Longmate

Introduction

Make Earth Great Again started as a class project designed to teach the fundamentals of documentation and team management. Given our team composition, which was writer / designer heavy and light on developers, we decided to make a visual novel. From the beginning, we set a few clear goals we wished to achieve:

● A compelling, dynamic story that draws players in, set in an interesting world.

● Expressive character art for both human and alien characters.

● Exotic background locations to set the story in.

By the end of the project, we felt that we had achieved our first goal of a dynamic story and an interesting world, but due to scope issues, communication breakdowns, and task dependencies, we fell a bit short on our other goals.

What Went Right

1. Brainstorming Session

The first step of our brainstorming process was to toss out the prototype we had from a previous project and move on to something new. Given our new team composition, we decided to make use of our writers and create a visual novel with a complex story. We felt that we had enough artists to populate exotic environments and feature interesting characters and that the coding side of a visual novel would not be so strenuous as to overwork our single developer.

Once settling on a visual novel, we began discussing possible themes or settings we’d like to explore. After bouncing a bit between sci-fi and fantasy stories, an idea was brought up by one of the writers that immediately struck a chord with the team—the main character should be evil. Not an antihero or a lovable bad guy, but a genuinely evil person. The team loved the idea, and we latched onto it immediately. Next up was a discussion of narrative complexity. We played with the idea of allowing many branching storylines with separate endings, or even the same story simply told by different characters, before deciding to go with the simplest, cleanest approach.

By the end of our brainstorming session, we’d settled on a basic plot premise, a rough idea of our setting, and concepts for a few characters. The entire session functioned smoothly and the team worked well with each other throughout. The energy we had from that first meeting carried over into the work we all did during our first milestone.

(An early concept for the HUD, based on the brainstorming session.)

2. Story, Themes, and Setting

The narrative work didn’t stop after the brainstorming session. We’d decided on a sci-fi story in a dystopian universe featuring a human terrorist as the main character, but that was all we had. The next few days were all about the writers. They got together to flesh out the narrative beats, laying out a world in which humans are oppressed by the equalitarian alien government that had taken up residence on Earth.

The story’s defining themes were nostalgia and the innate human desire to compete for success. Missy, the game’s protagonist, longs for the days when humans competed in a capitalist society to prove who was best. This felt like a fresh perspective to the team, who had grown tired of modern stories touting the same themes of equality and peace over and over. We wanted to work with a new idea and explore the truths and fallacies associated with Missy’s unpopular opinions. All of this, combined with our concepts for a unique human-alien world, kept the team excited throughout the production process, and was one of the highlights of our completed work.

(The Resistance HQ, where Missy plans to take out the alien government.)

3. UI Artwork

Another highlight of our development cycle was the UI artwork that we received. Given that a visual novel is, at its core, a series of interfaces that allows the player to make limited choices, we felt that we needed impressive UI artwork to keep the player interested and to make the game screen more interesting.

Luckily, this is what we got. After defining the game’s themes and characters, our artists synthesized the narrative team’s core concepts with their own ideas of how an alien civilization might impact humanity’s art style. They incorporated a sense of mystery and eeriness into the menus and HUD to better allow the player to empathize with Missy’s plight.

This showcases one of the things that the team consistently got right throughout the dev cycle—namely, combining the various talents and artistic styles of our artists and writers to create a unique, interesting world with coherent motifs and an overarching sense of unity.

What Went Wrong

1. Visual Effects

While our art team got it right, for the most part, regarding the style and delivery of our characters and settings, one thing that we missed the mark on was our use of visual effects. Early in the development cycle, we planned on incorporating particle effects into our backgrounds to give them more life-like motion, as well as to add to the ambiance. Unfortunately, we soon found that to be impossible based on how our developers were building the game (we were taking screenshots of 3D environments to use as backgrounds, so moving particles couldn’t have worked).

To substitute for our missing particle effects, the team tried to incorporate some visual HUD effects in terms of screen flashes and shakes. Unfortunately, due to the rather static nature of the rest of the artwork, and the inherently slow pace associated with a visual novel, these effects often came across as jarring and out of place. Because of the late stage at which we decided to incorporate these type of effects, the screen flashes did not have an accompanying sound effect, and thus felt incomplete. Similarly, the screen shakes only shook the HUD and none of the background art. As these were supposed to represent explosions in the game world, this created a disconnect that did not serve the purposes of our story.

2. Time-Gated Decisions

Another design-related element that didn’t go perfectly to plan were the time-gated decisions we implemented. These were originally designed to create a sense of urgency and responsibility for the player. However, for a number of reasons, this attempt failed.

For one, we implemented the time-gated decisions on dialogue options that really weren’t all that urgent (for instance, choosing whether or not to come downstairs for pancakes). This made the moments where things were urgent feel less so. Secondly, some of the time-gated decisions were set to choose a random option if the player didn’t answer in time. This resulted in an undesirable loss of player agency. Finally, other decisions like this were set to loop continuously after the time ran out, essentially negating the time mechanic and any urgency that might have come with it.

Whether we should or should not have used time-gated decisions at all is a discussion for another time, but it is clear that the way in which we used them was ineffective. These decisions ended up being more of a distraction than a tool by which we fostered immersion and player investment.

3. Communication and Transparency

Perhaps the most important of the things that didn’t go right for us was the communication and transparency of the team as a whole. Given that this entire project was an exercise in documentation, tracking, and communication, this failure stings.

The first area we noticed this problem was with our scope document, where each member of the team was supposed to report the hours they worked on each task. After a few mishaps with team members entering numbers in the wrong columns, the producers decided to close the document for edits and have team members post their hours in comments instead. This seemed to create problems for team members who didn’t know how to comment on a Google Sheets document.

However, the problems with the scope document were only indicative of problems elsewhere. There was a disconnect with some members of the team and the producers, where certain tasks would be completed but no worked hours were reported. This resulted in the documentation that didn’t accurately represent the work that the team had put in. Similarly, there were instances in which people were confused about the tasks they were supposed to complete, or where they worked on the wrong tasks at the wrong time.

If we were to start this project over, the first thing we would do is implement a new system of reporting hours. Clearly, the last system was not optimal. We would want a system whereby there is no confusion about who has to work on which task, and where reporting hours is convenient, intuitive, and does not make any extra work for the people completing each task. Perhaps the best way to do this would be to use production software such as Jiro or HacknPlan instead of relying solely on Excel. We would also try to open more clear channels of communication than simply relying on Discord and text messages.

4. Capacity usage and task completion

Finally, our use of our capacity was sub- optimal. At the end of the project, we ended up being 79.3 hours behind in reported capacity. Some of this was due to non-reporting, as previously mentioned, some were due to dependency issues, and some was missing work. Without factoring in any missed QA tasks, we were missing 54.3 hours of tasks in our scope document. our overall completion testing showed an 89% pass rate on tasks.

Conclusion

Though communication was a major issue and there were many times at which our documentation felt incomplete, the team is happy with the product we created. We were able to implement an idea we all liked into the world we’d created, and despite the multiple hiccups we experienced, we eventually produced a game that satisfied, at least in part, the goals we had set out to accomplish.

#game development #game design #games #fullsail #narrative design

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dietzaudio-blog · 7 years

Text

Postmortem M.E.G.A.

Introduction

- A compelling, dynamic story that draws players in, set in an interesting world.

- Expressive character art for both human and alien characters.

- Exotic background locations to set the story in.

What Went Right

Brainstorming Session

The first step of our brainstorming process was to toss out the prototype we had from a previous project and move on to something new. Given our new team composition, we decided to make use of our writers and create a visual novel with a complex story. We felt that we had enough artists to populate exotic environments and feature interesting characters, and that the coding side of a visual novel would not be so strenuous as to overwork our single developer.

By the end of our brainstorming session, we’d settled on a basic plot premise, a rough idea of our setting, and concepts for a few characters. The entire session functioned smoothly and the team worked well with each other through out. The energy we had from that first meeting carried over into the work we all did during our first milestone.

Story, Themes, and Setting

The story’s defining themes were nostalgia and the innate human desire to compete for success. Missy, the game’s protagonist, longs for the days when humans competed in a capitalist society to prove who was best. This felt like a fresh perspective to the team, who had grown tired of modern stories touting the same themes of equality and peace over and over. We wanted to work with a new idea, and explore the truths and fallacies associated with Missy’s unpopular opinions. All of this, combined with our concepts for a unique human-alien world, kept the team excited throughout the production process, and was one of the highlights of our completed work.

UI Artwork

What Went Wrong

Visual Effects

While our art team got it right, for the most part, regarding the style and delivery of our characters and settings, one thing that we missed the mark on was our use of visual effect. Early in the development cycle, we planned on incorporating particle effects into our backgrounds to give them more life-like motion, as well as to add to the ambience. Unfortunately, we soon found that to be impossible based on how our developers were building the game (we were taking screenshots of 3D environments to use as backgrounds, so moving particles couldn’t have worked).

To substitute for our missing particle effects, the team tried to incorporate some visual HUD effects in terms of screen flashes and shakes. Unfortunately, due to the rather static nature of the rest of the artwork, and the inherently slow pace associated with a visual novel, these effects often came across as jarring and out of place. Because of the late stage at which we decided to incorporate these type of effects, the screen flashes did not have an accompanying sound effect, and thus felt incomplete. Similarly, the screen shakes only shook the HUD, and none of the background art. As these were supposed to represent explosions in the game world, this created a disconnect that did not serve the purposes of our story.

Time-Gated Decisions

Communication and Transparency

The first area we noticed this problem was with our scope document, where each member of the team was supposed to report the hours they worked on each task. After a few mishaps with team members entering numbers in the wrong columns, the producers decided to close the document for edits, and have team members post their hours in comments instead. This seemed to create problems for team members who didn’t know how to comment in a Google Sheets document.

However, the problems with the scope document were only indicative of problems elsewhere. There was a disconnect with some members of the team and the producers, where certain tasks would be completed but no worked hours were reported. This resulted in documentation that didn’t accurately represent the work that the team had put in. Similarly, there were instances in which people were confused about the tasks they were supposed to complete, or where they worked on the wrong tasks at the wrong time.

Capacity usage and task completion

Finally, our use of our capacity was sub- optimal. At the end of the project we ended up being 79.3 hours behind in reported capacity. Some of this was due to non reporting, as previously mentioned, some was due to dependency issues, and some was missing work. Without factoring in any missed QA tasks, we were missing 54.3 hours of tasks in our scope document. our overall completion testing showed a 89% pass rate on tasks.

Conclusion

Though communication was a major issue and there were many times at which our documentation felt incomplete, the team is happy about the product we created. We were able to implement an idea we all liked into a world we’d created, and despite the multiple hiccups we experienced, we eventually produced a game that satisfied, at least in part, the goals we had set out to accomplish.

0 notes

csdinkel-blog · 7 years

Text

Group Post-Mortem

Introduction

A compelling, dynamic story that draws players in, set in an interesting world.

Expressive character art for both human and alien characters.

Exotic background locations to set the story in.

What Went Right

Brainstorming Session

The first step of our brainstorming process was to toss out the prototype we had from a previous project and move on to something new. Given our new team composition, we decided to make use of our writers and create a visual novel with a complex story. We felt that we had enough artists to populate exotic environments and feature interesting characters, and that the coding side of a visual novel would not be so strenuous as to overwork our single developer.

By the end of our brainstorming session, we’d settled on a basic plot premise, a rough idea of our setting, and concepts for a few characters. The entire session functioned smoothly and the team worked well with each other through out. The energy we had from that first meeting carried over into the work we all did during our first milestone.

(An early concept for the HUD, based on the brainstorming session.)

Story, Themes, and Setting

The story’s defining themes were nostalgia and the innate human desire to compete for success. Missy, the game’s protagonist, longs for the days when humans competed in a capitalist society to prove who was best. This felt like a fresh perspective to the team, who had grown tired of modern stories touting the same themes of equality and peace over and over. We wanted to work with a new idea, and explore the truths and fallacies associated with Missy’s unpopular opinions. All of this, combined with our concepts for a unique human-alien world, kept the team excited throughout the production process, and was one of the highlights of our completed work.

(The Resistance HQ, where Missy plans to take out the alien government.)

UI Artwork

What Went Wrong

Visual Effects

To substitute for our missing particle effects, the team tried to incorporate some visual HUD effects in terms of screen flashes and shakes. Unfortunately, due to the rather static nature of the rest of the artwork, and the inherently slow pace associated with a visual novel, these effects often came across as jarring and out of place. Because of the late stage at which we decided to incorporate these type of effects, the screen flashes did not have an accompanying sound effect, and thus felt incomplete. Similarly, the screen shakes only shook the HUD, and none of the background art. As these were supposed to represent explosions in the game world, this created a disconnect that did not serve the purposes of our story.

Time-Gated Decisions

Communication and Transparency

The first area we noticed this problem was with our scope document, where each member of the team was supposed to report the hours they worked on each task. After a few mishaps with team members entering numbers in the wrong columns, the producers decided to close the document for edits, and have team members post their hours in comments instead. This seemed to create problems for team members who didn’t know how to comment in a Google Sheets document.

However, the problems with the scope document were only indicative of problems elsewhere. There was a disconnect with some members of the team and the producers, where certain tasks would be completed but no worked hours were reported. This resulted in documentation that didn’t accurately represent the work that the team had put in. Similarly, there were instances in which people were confused about the tasks they were supposed to complete, or where they worked on the wrong tasks at the wrong time.

4. Capacity usage and task completion

Conclusion

0 notes

davidashbourne-blog · 7 years

Text

Group Postmortem

Postmortem: Make Earth Great Again

James Anderson, David Ashbourne, Javier Chico, Teryn Cochran, Christine Dietz, Chris Dinkel, Tomas Gonzalez, Alexander Hudson, Hampton King, Andrew Lambert, William Longmate

GDM 625

Roy Papp

Full Sail University

4/27/2017

Postmortem: Make Earth Great Again

Introduction

A compelling, dynamic story that draws players in, set in an interesting world.

Expressive character art for both human and alien characters.

Exotic background locations to set the story in.

What Went Right

Brainstorming Session

The first step of our brainstorming process was to toss out the prototype we had from a previous project and move on to something new. Given our new team composition, we decided to make use of our writers and create a visual novel with a complex story. We felt that we had enough artists to populate exotic environments and feature interesting characters, and that the coding side of a visual novel would not be so strenuous as to overwork our single developer.

By the end of our brainstorming session, we’d settled on a basic plot premise, a rough idea of our setting, and concepts for a few characters. The entire session functioned smoothly and the team worked well with each other through out. The energy we had from that first meeting carried over into the work we all did during our first milestone.

(An early concept for the HUD, based on the brainstorming session.)

Story, Themes, and Setting

The story’s defining themes were nostalgia and the innate human desire to compete for success. Missy, the game’s protagonist, longs for the days when humans competed in a capitalist society to prove who was best. This felt like a fresh perspective to the team, who had grown tired of modern stories touting the same themes of equality and peace over and over. We wanted to work with a new idea, and explore the truths and fallacies associated with Missy’s unpopular opinions. All of this, combined with our concepts for a unique human-alien world, kept the team excited throughout the production process, and was one of the highlights of our completed work.

(The Resistance HQ, where Missy plans to take out the alien government.)

UI Artwork

What Went Wrong

Visual Effects

To substitute for our missing particle effects, the team tried to incorporate some visual HUD effects in terms of screen flashes and shakes. Unfortunately, due to the rather static nature of the rest of the artwork, and the inherently slow pace associated with a visual novel, these effects often came across as jarring and out of place. Because of the late stage at which we decided to incorporate these type of effects, the screen flashes did not have an accompanying sound effect, and thus felt incomplete. Similarly, the screen shakes only shook the HUD, and none of the background art. As these were supposed to represent explosions in the game world, this created a disconnect that did not serve the purposes of our story.

Time-Gated Decisions

Communication and Transparency

The first area we noticed this problem was with our scope document, where each member of the team was supposed to report the hours they worked on each task. After a few mishaps with team members entering numbers in the wrong columns, the producers decided to close the document for edits, and have team members post their hours in comments instead. This seemed to create problems for team members who didn’t know how to comment in a Google Sheets document.

However, the problems with the scope document were only indicative of problems elsewhere. There was a disconnect with some members of the team and the producers, where certain tasks would be completed but no worked hours were reported. This resulted in documentation that didn’t accurately represent the work that the team had put in. Similarly, there were instances in which people were confused about the tasks they were supposed to complete, or where they worked on the wrong tasks at the wrong time.

4. Capacity usage and task completion

Conclusion

0 notes

ajlambert-blog1 · 7 years

Text

Asset Management Group Post Mortem

A compelling, dynamic story that draws players in, set in an interesting world.

Expressive character art for both human and alien characters.

Exotic background locations to set the story in.

What Went Right

Brainstorming Session

The first step of our brainstorming process was to toss out the prototype we had from a previous project and move on to something new. Given our new team composition, we decided to make use of our writers and create a visual novel with a complex story. We felt that we had enough artists to populate exotic environments and feature interesting characters, and that the coding side of a visual novel would not be so strenuous as to overwork our single developer.

By the end of our brainstorming session, we’d settled on a basic plot premise, a rough idea of our setting, and concepts for a few characters. The entire session functioned smoothly and the team worked well with each other through out. The energy we had from that first meeting carried over into the work we all did during our first milestone.

Story, Themes, and Setting

The story’s defining themes were nostalgia and the innate human desire to compete for success. Missy, the game’s protagonist, longs for the days when humans competed in a capitalist society to prove who was best. This felt like a fresh perspective to the team, who had grown tired of modern stories touting the same themes of equality and peace over and over. We wanted to work with a new idea, and explore the truths and fallacies associated with Missy’s unpopular opinions. All of this, combined with our concepts for a unique human-alien world, kept the team excited throughout the production process, and was one of the highlights of our completed work.

UI Artwork

What Went Wrong

Visual Effects

To substitute for our missing particle effects, the team tried to incorporate some visual HUD effects in terms of screen flashes and shakes. Unfortunately, due to the rather static nature of the rest of the artwork, and the inherently slow pace associated with a visual novel, these effects often came across as jarring and out of place. Because of the late stage at which we decided to incorporate these type of effects, the screen flashes did not have an accompanying sound effect, and thus felt incomplete. Similarly, the screen shakes only shook the HUD, and none of the background art. As these were supposed to represent explosions in the game world, this created a disconnect that did not serve the purposes of our story.

Time-Gated Decisions

Communication and Transparency

The first area we noticed this problem was with our scope document, where each member of the team was supposed to report the hours they worked on each task. After a few mishaps with team members entering numbers in the wrong columns, the producers decided to close the document for edits, and have team members post their hours in comments instead. This seemed to create problems for team members who didn’t know how to comment in a Google Sheets document.

However, the problems with the scope document were only indicative of problems elsewhere. There was a disconnect with some members of the team and the producers, where certain tasks would be completed but no worked hours were reported. This resulted in documentation that didn’t accurately represent the work that the team had put in. Similarly, there were instances in which people were confused about the tasks they were supposed to complete, or where they worked on the wrong tasks at the wrong time.

4. Capacity usage and task completion

Conclusion

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a-h-thegreat-blog · 7 years

Text

Team Postmortem

Postmortem: Make Earth Great Again

Introduction

· A compelling, dynamic story that draws players in, set in an interesting world.

· Expressive character art for both human and alien characters.

· Exotic background locations to set the story in.

What Went Right

1. Brainstorming Session

The first step of our brainstorming process was to toss out the prototype we had from a previous project and move on to something new. Given our new team composition, we decided to make use of our writers and create a visual novel with a complex story. We felt that we had enough artists to populate exotic environments and feature interesting characters, and that the coding side of a visual novel would not be so strenuous as to overwork our single developer.

By the end of our brainstorming session, we’d settled on a basic plot premise, a rough idea of our setting, and concepts for a few characters. The entire session functioned smoothly and the team worked well with each other through out. The energy we had from that first meeting carried over into the work we all did during our first milestone.

(An early concept for the HUD, based on the brainstorming session.)

2. Story, Themes, and Setting

The story’s defining themes were nostalgia and the innate human desire to compete for success. Missy, the game’s protagonist, longs for the days when humans competed in a capitalist society to prove who was best. This felt like a fresh perspective to the team, who had grown tired of modern stories touting the same themes of equality and peace over and over. We wanted to work with a new idea, and explore the truths and fallacies associated with Missy’s unpopular opinions. All of this, combined with our concepts for a unique human-alien world, kept the team excited throughout the production process, and was one of the highlights of our completed work.

(The Resistance HQ, where Missy plans to take out the alien government.)

3. UI Artwork

What Went Wrong

1. Visual Effects

To substitute for our missing particle effects, the team tried to incorporate some visual HUD effects in terms of screen flashes and shakes. Unfortunately, due to the rather static nature of the rest of the artwork, and the inherently slow pace associated with a visual novel, these effects often came across as jarring and out of place. Because of the late stage at which we decided to incorporate these type of effects, the screen flashes did not have an accompanying sound effect, and thus felt incomplete. Similarly, the screen shakes only shook the HUD, and none of the background art. As these were supposed to represent explosions in the game world, this created a disconnect that did not serve the purposes of our story.

2. Time-Gated Decisions

3. Communication and Transparency

The final and perhaps most important of the things that didn’t go right for us was the communication and transparency of the team as a whole. Given that this entire project was an exercise in documentation, tracking, and communication, this failure stings.

The first area we noticed this problem was with our scope document, where each member of the team was supposed to report the hours they worked on each task. After a few mishaps with team members entering numbers in the wrong columns, the producers decided to close the document for edits, and have team members post their hours in comments instead. This seemed to create problems for team members who didn’t know how to comment in a Google Sheets document.

However, the problems with the scope document were only indicative of problems elsewhere. There was a disconnect with some members of the team and the producers, where certain tasks would be completed but no worked hours were reported. This resulted in documentation that didn’t accurately represent the work that the team had put in. Similarly, there were instances in which people were confused about the tasks they were supposed to complete, or where they worked on the wrong tasks at the wrong time.

Conclusion

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