Post Mortem - TheOnlyFrank/Obituary_GAME GitHub Wiki
Arnold (Producer/3D Modeller)
What went well?
Overall, what I think went well was how easily the designs for each aspect came along as although some parts did end up getting slightly changed. I did expect the characters to be a little harder to model but overall, I'm verry happy with how their shape came out, especially the iron man model, i am verry happy with how that one came together. keeping everyone up to date wasn't really required for me as the standups each week kept everyone in check for work output, so no one was left without work.
What didn't go so well?
The only problem I have were with how some parts of the john model were done, as it made it a pain in my ass to paint and move for rigging. another issue was with painting the skin weights, I had an issue that appeared, that if a part of the model was left unpainted and unaffected by any part of the skeleton it would automatically be assigned to another piece of the rig near the end of the node tree. after looking for solutions online as I didn't know at the time what caused this problem, it was stated that locking the paint of the joints would fix this (it didn't), causing me to pull my hair out for days. once I figured out the issue it was easily fixed.
Another big issue that was an outside factor to the class was time management on my end. The 3 units I chose this semester caused me to prioritize other classes, meaning I didn't have as much time to work on things I wanted to.
What would you have done differently?
As I mentioned before the main thing I would have done differently was model the characters around the idea that they were going to be rigged, as the issue without it being modeled with rigging in mind is that is caused the model to warp and bend in some joints.
UVs would be completed as the model was finished as leaving them this late was a major problem for us on my part, implementing them earlier would have improved the look of the game earlier on, and probably given Charlie some "fun work to earlier".
The last one I would have fixed was balancing my time easier throughout the semester and checking the workload of each class before I chose them.
Charlie (Art Lead)
What went well?
I think quite a bit went well during the duration of this project. First off, I do think we got off to a great start - deciding the look and feel of the game on the art and design side, and figuring out how the game should play, with the controls and camera angles, etc. on the programming side. The game did feel like it quickly developed a style. I think that playing the final build (or close to the final build), we have a really strong gameplay loop, and it's clear that the team has put everything we have into this to make it work. I think that after the Playtest, we really figured out what needed to be done and at least implemented for this final build release, and have been working with all the time we can for it.
What didn't go so well?
I think time constraint was the main factor impacting what didn't go so well. Leading up to the Playtest, we were all scrambling to get things ready, the combat and health system, the models, the puzzles, the inventory, etc. While we did have a playable build, many of the elements didn't work properly. Namely the combat system didn't work as intended, where the enemy would glitch around the player, instead of doing damage, meaning there was no lose condition. I wouldn't say this is the fault of anyone, I think is mainly due to the time constraint we had, and that we might have bitten off more than we could chew with what we wanted to have ready for the test build.
What would you have done differently?
There's a couple things I would have done differently. First off, personally I would have not spent as much time on the inventory system. This took a significant chunk of my time, and I think if I had to go back, I would have spent less time on it and trying to get all these faetures for it. It wouldn't have mattered if it was barebones, we just needed it to work for the test build. Doing that would have really spared time for me to work more on the props and the textures, which we did have to rush at the end. For the test build, I think instead of attempting to get the full first level into the game, we should have chosen a small slice of the level and built around that. I do think this may have been a bit difficult to do if we decided to this though, as the most of the level is used for puzzles and item collecting where a small slice of that may have impacted the gameplay loop of it.
Andrew (Tech Lead)
What went well?
We got a build together, even though the final release for the semester doesn't reflect it due to unforeseen issues. I've learnt a lot about coding over the semester, and feel I'd be in a better place for tackling another project like this in the future as a result. I was able to persevere and trouble shoot many of the problems I've had over the semester, the biggest one being solving my enemy spasmodic rotational errors and enabling them to block player movement.
What didn't go so well?
I spent a lot of time working on things that either didn't work (for a long time, or at all), or inefficient ways of doing things due to a lack of knowledge of how I should have done some things. An example of this would be spending 6 hours trying to get an unnecessary movement option working at the start of working on this project, another would be using different scenes and trying to implement a massively cumbersome (and ultimately non-functional) game-state-save function, rather than just using canvases for in-game pop-up screens. Unity's way of showing hierarchy and world space based coordinates also made life difficult, though in the end I was able to work around them to resolve placement and movement issues before final build submission
What would you have done differently?
I'd have spent more time early on researching how to set things up in time and code efficient ways before getting too heavily invested in trying to amalgamate different internet-based tutorials and having issues near-constantly rearing their game-breaking heads.
Chelsea (Test Lead/Design Lead)
What went well?
I believe setting up the level at the beginning went well, enough time was put into it where a basic model of the map was made and we were able to playtest movement around the level. I also believe that me chipping in with helping all my other team-members was a good decision on my part as well since I was able to relieve some work off of their hands and get the build in order a bit quicker. I reckon, in the end, we all communicated well with what we wanted to implement into the game and also held up with our intended aesthetic and design choices. All in all, I am incredibly happy with where the project is at right now!
What didn't go so well?
Time management and also being stuck on one component of the game was a struggle for a majority of us. For me, I feel as though with the Wire Puzzle I could have worked on it a lot more and tried to figure out the wires not 'extruding' with the end-wire piece. That and along with the combat and moving to separate screens also factored in a lot of time being spent to try and fix them. In the end they were fixed though so that's good. The Inventory has also been a thing that has got some of us struggling and have intended to leave it for an 'over-the-break/next-semester' thing to do.
Personally I reckon that I often found myself not having much to do and had to work on some things to help with the others; which isn't so bad but it also made me feel as though maybe there was something I could have done to improve our progress throughout the lead-up towards the Test-Build and Final-Build.
What would you have done differently?
I reckon we could have used the Trello a bit better to block out sections of what needed to be done in order so that there would be more clarity and more cohesion to tell what each of us needed to work on next.
I'm not too sure if it would have worked well, but I also reckon that maybe we could have worked on the basic form of different mechanics/features, then polish them a bit later after all other basic versions of mechanics/features were implemented; I say this because it would have been interesting to see during the Test Build that, if the other mechanics/features we wanted to add were at its most basic level, along with the polished mechanics/features, how the Testers/Players would interact with our game.
Since I also reckon we were also constrained behind other units and assignments, more time could be spent on the project (I of course say this as we are now going into the break and semester 2).