Postmortem

5 Things that went well:

Planning of the project

Personal development

Testing

The Team

Time Management

5 Things that went wrong:

Work Allocation

The Aesthetics

The programming      

The concept

The Narrative

The Team:

I really liked the group/team i was put into as i knew one person in it and the rest were new people, everyone communicated which was great and made everything so much easier. Once we were all ready, we had a group call on Microsoft teams and worked out what everyone’s strengths and weaknesses are. We then decided who should be a team leader based on who felt the most confident to lead and make sure the project stayed on track, this did become a shared role when the other person was not available.

Personally, I was very happy with this team as everyone asked for help if they needed it or even advice from another member if they were struggling with a certain aspect of their job/work, this was key to making sure we stayed on track and the project kept moving forwards and did not come to a halt. We also used an app called discord which allowed us to keep in contact easy, we also had different channels within the server where we could post game files or asset files, links to the google drive we shared or general ideas.

This was extremely useful as it allowed us to find files, concepts etc really easy and was great for referencing back to if i need to refresh my ideas.

Planning of the Project:

Following on from the previous point, planning the project was done pretty quickly, we originally started thinking of some concepts for what we could do based on games we all had played and enjoyed these covered genres such as horror, action, RPG, etc. We then came up with the idea of a haunted mansion and the user had to complete different puzzles to progress. Different ideas kept getting shared which was great because it meant we had a lot of choice/freedom, here is an screenshot of some examples we came up with.

We thought that doing a psychological horror would be easier for the coder in the team as they would not need to code a monster/enemy to follow the player or walk around the mansion(however looking back now and the final product of our game this still would of been quite hard for one person and was definitely underestimated by us all) . As the first couple of week or so went on we continued to generate ideas for the game and decide how things would be done by concepting how the mansion would be laid out and how the player would get around the mansion interacting with different assets.

Even though I think it went pretty well there is still room for improvement as nothing is ever perfect and this is shown in the project as we did end up changing the idea as lots of other teams had a similar one to us, so we wanted to be a little different which leads on to my next point.

The Concept:

Personally, I do not believe the concept went very well as we decided to change it after coming up with ideas and possible assets that could go within a haunted mansion horror game. Once it was decided to be changed, we then had to start coming up with ideas that would fit the mansion environment, the main one which most team members liked was Mansion Mania, where the user has to clean up the mansion by throwing objects that they pick up into a portal type bin.

However, I think a change like this could throw users off if the game were teased/trailered to them before the change was made. The way this could have been done better is discussing more than one option and possibly having an idea as a backup so that if you want to or have to change ideas you already have something which all members of the group have a few ideas about. Here is an example of the concept a group member made for the mansion layout.

Personal development/growth:

Throughout the project my understanding of the software being used increased allowing me to create better looking assets than I could of a few months ago, an example of some software I used is Substance Painter which allowed me to explore lots of different textures and how they would look rendered. I also gained some more understanding of how working for a company would be as I was working with new people, and how a group can work well as long as you find out everyone’s strengths and work to them and how communication is key to being a successful group. I will be able to take this experience into future projects and hopefully into the work environment as well which will allow me to contribute more to my group and be a better group member all together.

I’m really proud with how my part of the project turned out since it was better than I thought it would be and i most defiantly underestimated how well i could do but like anything its still no where near perfect and has lots of room for improvement.

Time Management:

Another thing I think went well was time management, both within the whole group and my own time personally. As mentioned before the group communicated really well which allowed for work to get done when needed like the library and the main hall so that the coder in our group could have time to do each room and make sure they are working. However, I do think I could have managed my own time a little better as some days I did not get as much work done even though I should have done more which is one of the contributing factors to why my part of the project did not get included in the final game, i think i also underestimated how long it would take me to make certain assets because i did not realise how much detail was needed for them to look how i wanted them too, for example the wardrobe was quite tedious as the doors etc had little designs on them which were quite tricky to replicate and some i just left out completely as they were too difficult Following on from this point is work allocation.

Work Allocation:

This was a mix of positives and negatives really because as a group we had figured out everyone’s strengths and weaknesses then the work was then allocated based on that, which was fine, but the main issue was how the programming work was allocated since only one group member was confident with programming and the rest of us were not. This meant they had a lot of pressure on them and we struggled to help, and their job was the main thing since the game could not be played without it. So, I do think that this could have been done a lot better if the work were shared out, even if it were just small lines of code to take off some pressure. However, this could not have been done at all since the files had not been shared with the group which was another mistake we made as a group because if the coders pc broke or had any issues no one else would have a copy of the code or would be able to continue it, it also did not help that towards the end the coder was not communicating as much, as the rest of us.

The Programming:

As mentioned previously the programming did not go well with allocating it in the group and making sure it got done. The other issue is things had to be simplified and cut out like the bedroom I made for the mansion due to it being too much work and there being issues like objects spinning when picked up, walking through walls and just other little bugs. However, like I said before the fix for this would have been spreading the work out better so the coder did not have as much pressure on them to get all of it done and done right, i also think that as a group we underestimated how much coding would be needed and how tough that coding would actually be for one person to do on their own because non of us were too confident with coding and did not have too much experience with it so we could not really judge how much each thing would take to do.

Game Testing:

Testing the project was successful to an extent, with the few tests we had we were able to find bugs such as walking through walls, assets spinning once picked up and other things like assets not working properly etc. Testing the project also us to get a general sense of how it would play for the user and if the mechanics worked how, we wanted too. One or two group members also got friends and family members to play the game which gave us a better sense of what worked well since they knew nothing about it. However, I think it could have been improved by having it a little more organised, for example every member test it then gives feedback/makes notes and then everyone compares what they have, this would then make it clear as to what needs improving and the coder would not get random bit of feedback from people possibly being the same info, this then also allows for bugs to be prioritised depending on how many people experienced the issue.

The Aesthetics:

The visuals of the game did not go fully to plan as there were some issues with assets and textures for example the library did not work right and there were some issues with lighting etc. I also know my assets within unity did have some issues when I tested them, I did eventually find a solution by changing some of the lighting settings, but it still did not look as good as it could of like it did in maya and substance painter. However, the main hall and the foyer looked really nice and were some aspects I was proud of, so well done to my team member who created them.

I do think the visuals could have been improved if we all had a better understanding of how the software worked when it came to importing assets along with textures etc which will come over time as we use the software more and more. Another reason as to why this did not go to plan for me personally is i did not think about exporting and importing from one software to another and if it would work properly, which caused me to have issues with getting the textures into unity but i did eventually find a fix on a tutorial video.

The Narrative:

The narrative of our project isn’t the best thing and isn’t very clear, I personally think that the original idea for the project had a clearer narrative of the user exploring this abandoned mansion clearing puzzles to get to different areas while also have things to mess with them psychologically, while the idea we ended up going with was the users character bought the house and had to clean with no other real explanation as to what was going on etc and even though it does seem like there wasn’t too much to the first idea it didn’t get continued which is why it was not expanded on. I personally believe the first idea had a really good base/starting point for a good narrative. I also think this did not go as well as it could of because as a group we did not really discuss the narrative we mainly focused on the game itself and what users would be doing in the game.