Titan Maria Postmortem

What Went Right

Our organization since the beginning of the semester has been really good.  Since the beginning we quickly found out what tasks we needed to do and when they needed to be done by.

I think most of us were able to adapt quickly to switching groups and games.  Since we were originally in three separate groups at the beginning of the year, I think that we managed to switch over to a different art style and mindset fairly quickly.

At the beginning of the semester we were able to delegate tasks fairly well.  We quickly found out what people wanted to work on and were able to give tasks to them that correlated with what they wanted to do.

What Went Wrong

Our communication wasn’t the best it could have been.  We didn’t communicate if we had any blockers or if we needed any help.  Also the main way that we talked to each other about the game was face to face in class.  There isn’t a problem with that, but we needed to talk to each other outside of class as well.  The main thing that was communicated outside of class was where the most updated build was.  

Time management was a big issue for most of us.  Most of us had jobs along with other classes that we needed to focus on.  This posed a problem for most of us.  We needed to find a way to balance our personal lives, any jobs that we may have, classes, and this project all at the same time.  Time management played a huge part in this and it’s something that I think most of us never got used to.

Our in class time wasn’t used to the fullest potential.  Sure we learned about how to make our portfolio, business cards, resume, and cover letter, but we didn’t really spend much class time working on the game.  I understand that all of those things are important, but even when we weren’t working on those things, we still weren’t working on our game.

Lessons Learned

Time management is very important when working on a game.  Without proper time management a game will get nowhere fast.  This was very apparent when we were working on Titan Maria.  While in the game industry we won’t have to deal with classes, we will have to deal with constant interruptions and our own personal lives.  Learning how to properly manage our time now will help us later in the future.

Communication is key, especially in big groups.  Our communication wasn’t the best which turned out to be harmful for the development of the game.  If we had communicated then the game probably would have been better then it turned out to be.  I understand that communication is a big deal in the game design industry.  Communication allows the developers to know what is going on with the group and the individual people.

Originally we were working on 3 separate games at the beginning of the school year.  This changed when two programmers left two of the groups due to various reasons.  What this meant was that we all needed to start focusing on one game.  For all groups this was a change in mindset, and in some cases art style.  This posed a problem for some of us but was easy for others.  For me, I personally liked the original game that we were working on, but I understood that this was the best course of action to having a solid game to put on my portfolio.