So, today I spent time creating a simple mini-game in the style of Balance Beam games we all know and love. After schooling the other members of my studio at my own game (with a grand score of 2:16 before one of them lashed out in a jealous rage and made me crash) I took a deeper look at integration, menues and scoring, and did a few of my more general producer-like duties.
This week has been incredibly full-on. I came out of last week feeling like we were in a good position, however, after a few days in to this 3rd week I realised I had made a number of critical errors. My first major error was not editing the design documents for each level stringently enough. As much as I tryed to guide people to implementing the features and artwork I thought was of highest priority, unfortunately some of the ambiguous wording in the design documents resulted in people implementing unnecessary features that had been removed or changed, resulting in wasted time and work.
The second issue stemmed from the previously mentioned issue of the first level’s design being lost. This eventuated in the printing and distribution of an un-approved design document for the first level, before it had actually been finished or locked in.
The difficulty comes in from inter-team communication, in that, on the one hand it’s great for everyone to have a cohesive idea of what everyone is doing, and how a particular element should operate- on the other hand, if you have all the team members communicate with all the other teams willy-nilly you inevitably get a series of “chinese whisper” inspired miscommunications, resulting in me finding out someone is implementing something completely differently to how it was originally agreed upon, which, as you may expect, results in both parties getting a little upset if tempers are not kept in check.
Of course, all of these issues are part of the learning experience. The studio now has a more stringent process in place for the locking in of particular level designs such that we should have a more coherent, and cohesive design document in which to distribute among the teams.
Anyways, it’s now time for me to pass out for the weekend in an attempt to recuperate.
… Oh, who am I kidding- tomorrow some of the more dedicated members of the team (read: those who lack any form of life) will be coming in to the studio and continuing to work on the project. Who needs a life, right?
~Rory
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