BlogPostPostmortem

 From a modeler perspective, I will discuss the process of how making a mobile game has gone to date. First, I’ll quickly go over what I did for this sprint but that will not be my main focus for this post. 

For this last and final sprint, I had a total of 4 cards. These cards consisted of making some of the last generators in our game as well and retexturing the games main background because when it was first imported, it imported wrong. So very briefly, I’ll go over the work I finished.

The first card that I finished was a visual representation of a so-called God Hamster wheel which is one of our last and final generators the player can buy.

The next one is also a generator which was a multiversal battery.

The last and final generator was a black hole harvester generator.

Now let's skip to the 3 main questions. First what went right in our development:

During the development of our game, our team which was led by Andrew had some good successes. This consisted of regular team meetings and updates which helped us maintain effective communication which ensured everyone was on the same page. James who handled the programming aspects, did an excellent job on implementing all the different code to make our game work great. My role as the main 3D modeler was focused on creating somewhat visually appealing assets for our game but nothing too fancy. One thing that went right for our development process was sticking to our projects timeline and getting work done when it was supposed to be done. A couple of other things that went right was adding all the generators we wanted to get into the game, but they also had visually appealing textures as well. As a whole having Andrew as the team lead and James as the programmer worked out great for us. Our main end focus for our game was it being playable and adding some fun to it which I think we achieved in the end. 

When it came to what went wrong, I can’t really think of much. One of the only things I can think of is getting plenty of students to playtest our game during on sprints. This is something us as a team should have figured out because any of us could have gone around to have students, friends or even family test out our game. We were able to however get a decent handful of people from outside of class to playtest, so that was good, but it could have been more. Looking back, this highlights the importance of actively seeking diverse feedback early in the development process to ensure a more comprehensive understanding of user experiences and preferences.

Reflecting on this experience, there are things we'd do differently in future projects. A more comprehensive pre-development planning phase would be essential to clearly define project scope and objectives, avoiding scope creep. Emphasizing testing throughout development, possibly incorporating automated testing, would help identify and address issues earlier. Regular team checkpoints for communication and a more flexible approach to resource management would be priorities, however it didn’t go bad. Establishing a feedback loop to gather insights from team members and stakeholders at key milestones would be crucial for making informed decisions and adjustments to our development plan based on valuable feedback. 

Another topic I’ll go over is how the work was divided as a team. At first the lead would assign us work and I guess that's now how it's supposed to go, but after the first couple sprints we would choose our own cards buts that's something us a team learned. So back to the question about how the work was divided. James who is the main programmer would take on the code while I would take on the 3D models to give the game that sort of pizazz. 

When it comes to something I would do differently for our game, it would be to not taking so much time on the models and not making them as detailed because this is a mobile game, but I tend to go a bit overboard, but I guess it worked out in the end since I was able to get everything finished. While the detailed models did contribute to the overall visual appeal of the game, a more streamlined approach to modeling could have resulted in quicker production times and potentially improved the game's performance on mobile devices. This insight prompts me to reconsider my modeling priorities in future projects, ensuring that the level of detail aligns more closely with the platform requirements and the overall design objectives. Striking a balance between visual aesthetics and resource efficiency will be a key consideration, allowing for a more agile development process. For me personally, this experience serves as a valuable lesson in project prioritization.