The last bits of documentation for Calamity Witch was a postmortem and a final self-reflection of my own contributions to the project. The entire postmortem is a lot more detailed since another team member helped me write it, so I'm only including the sections of the postmortem I directly wrote, maybe one day I write a more thorough personalized postmortem about the project as a whole. I'm also posting some of my self-reflections about the project which I wrote throughout the development.
Postmortem
About the Project as a Whole:
Despite the drastic amount of changes that were made to collaboration and productivity that were a result of the online transition. The project ended up being a pretty decent interactive experience in terms of implementation and design. It feels like just a little bit more work and the project could be a fully functional beta/game. Although it was difficult at times to work on because of many of our situations at the time and our planning wasn’t the most effective, we accomplished our team mission statement. That being completing a game as developers that results in a strong portfolio piece and further our abilities and learn beyond our apparent skills
About Game Development for the Project:
Most of the concepts that we had to implement into our game weren’t the hardest thing to include since a lot of the concepts were build-offs of things we practiced with MonoGame throughout our semester. The most challenging implementations were making sure everything moved correctly by scrolling and projectile firing.
Scrolling is something that we learned earlier in the semester but was not tasked, it required a lot of semi-awkward math to implement correctly especially considering that the background had to scroll only up to a certain point and that everything else that was visible on the map had to scroll with it. The projectile firing was hard in that the challenge was in making projectiles fire directly to its target destination in a straight path, it took a while to figure out how to do this as intended and it eventually came down to us asking for help and seeing how other people may have done it.
These are the main suspects but there were many more implementations where time could have been saved if we reached out for advice sooner and/or planned out our implementation in much more detail. Also, our scale of what was going to be implemented into the game was pushed back quite a bit as it came closer to the deadline, which is another thing we should have analyzed and considered more often as it did result in certain implementations being favored over others. These cut implementations include advanced AI, detailed menus, unique spell behavior, and level progression.
Self Reflection
Self Reflection at the End of Design Phase:
Evaluating the team as a whole:
Everyone showed up to all of the meeting times and we were able to finish all of the requirements for the first milestone and beyond by filling out a catalog of concept art and style for the game. Sometimes it felt as though we didn’t prioritize finishing the most pressing requirements for the design phase and would work on extra non-required details, which did slow our completion of the milestone. But we worked together and completed the design phase which is of utmost importance.
Evaluating myself:
I ended up working the most on the project document compared to the other members, which in itself made up most of the requirements for the design phase. I dedicated the most time outside of the meetings working directly on the project which wasn’t too much of an issue considering how much we got done during our meetings but it was still an extra commitment that was almost entirely on me. I was usually the only “directing” people. Sometimes during our meetings, people would be sitting around doing nothing and I would have to remind them of the work that needed to be done. I wish there was a little more initiative amongst the group to know what needs to be done and stay on top of it. But to give credit there were some parts of the documentation that I had little confidence in filling out myself and that's usually when a team member would help fill it out. My plan to take more initiative in these situations.
I don’t blame other teammates for not contributing to the project as much. I’m always happy to hear ideas and give feedback. I’m afraid I might come off as too leader like at times and don’t really give the group enough mental breaks during meetings, but I don’t want to boss people around. I would like to hear feedback from my team about this subject and hope I can do better.
Self Reflection for the Minimum Viable Project Phase:
Evaluating the team as a whole:
Team collaboration was really hurt by the online transition. I felt like I had to take up responsibilities for people who didn't take them up themselves. There were and still are issues with transitioning into the new lifestyle even outside of school, and I feel bad for the people who have it worse than me.
Evaluating myself:
I did my part and had to pick up others' responsibilities along the way. But despite the loneliness in collaboration of the game, I was still motivated to get as much done for the development phase. Some days were better than others in terms of motivation which did impact my contributions on those days, but I still completed my responsibilities. I even shared what was going on with my life and my progress to the project in hopes it would inspire others to contribute. I had a difficult time getting to a position where I can directly contribute to the project in meaningful ways, but I made up that time and more. I didn't contribute much to the external tool but that wasn't really my responsibility which I was already filled with.
I promised myself to not ask people to do work or blame people for lack of work because I can never truly understand their situation. I made sure to actively post progress on discord and respond to other people's posts all in the hopes of fostering a better work environment. I'm not going to stop trying to inspire the team but I wonder if there's something I need to change to improve the working environment.
Self Reflection for the Polishing Phase:
Evaluating the team as a whole:
Open dialogue and understanding were better than the last milestone but not by much. Some people just continued to stay silent or didn't change their communication much from the last milestone.
Evaluating myself:
I only commit to a handful of tasks this time around, which made things a lot more manageable for myself. Instead of committing to a few things and picking up other people's work at the end, as I did with the last milestone, I just committed to a handful of meaningful important tasks and did as much as I can. For the most part, if there was a task that wasn't essential and no one committed to it, the feature was cut. All this greatly helped my motivation for working on the project. That isn't to say I liked cutting aspects of the game just that I greatly improved my motivation and dedication to the project instead of worrying over incomplete tasks that weren't my responsibility.
I always tried my best to communicate my current work progress/situation through discord as much as possible, in hopes of inspiring others to contribute. And forgiving people who apologize for a lack of progress. Which is all I could realistically do during this situation.
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