The Final Results
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It’s over… It’s finally over! The final release of our first game is out, and now, we can relax! Or at least… we can relax until the next project. Today was the final presentation of our class very first video games, and it was finally time for the rest of the students to try the final version of my group’s video game “Behemoth”. First of all, the end results turned out to be better than any of our team members had expected. All of the elements in the game were functioning as they should. The switching from the start screen, to the game sequence, to the ending and game-over screen, all worked with no errors, and the graphics, especially the animations received a lot of praise. This was especially true regarding the art of the player and the enemies (Shout out to Mr. Felix Rahm! Your art style and 2d graphics looked gorgeous). While the game might have been unstable regarding enemy difficulty, it was still possible for a lot of students to complete the game. It’s also worth mentioning that the game’s input, as well as the UI, worked great, and it seems that the scripts of programming that were used in the game, functioned with no flaws! In the end, we had fulfilled most of the original goals in our Scrum document, and outside of producing a solid first result of a video game, these past three months have been quite the experience and I have learned a lot about team-work, communication and first-time programming in Unity. A lot of lessons that I will definitely remember for the future.
(Our art for the start menu) Lesson #1: A schedule will save you so much time If I have learned anything from using the scrum method, it’s that having a schedule will really help with planning out the right features for the right period of time. Thanks to the scrum planning, I got the chance of following a schedule, setting up what days I would work, and make plans for the next week. For most of the time, our group followed the our video game plan very well, and if there was something that we missed, we would either make sure to fit it in for the next week, or scrap it completely. I will always be thankful to the lessons that I’ve learned from scrum, and I will make sure to include more planning and make more schedules in the future. Lesson #2: Be prepared for anything In the middle of the production of our game, one of our members left the school, leaving us with only four members to finish the game. This meant that workloads and scheduling needed to be changed drastically, including having our game designer help out with some of the graphics. While one of our members quitting left us worried, we managed to figure out what to do together as a team, and in the end, we managed to release our game without suffering from any of the consequences. Lesson #3: Don’t be afraid to say no This lesson hit me especially hard during this last week of work. There was a lot of things that we needed to finish for the final presentation, such as an introduction video to the game, and new animations that would be commanded by pressing buttons while playing the game. Both of these things are new to me, and something that I wished I had started doing earlier in the process. While I received a lot of help from my tutors, I felt that occasionally it was too much to handle and it left me very stressed and worried. While I managed to work through it before the final hours of presentation, I really should have said no and explained that by being a beginner at programming, we should have skipped a few production notes. But hey! The game got finished on time, and all that stress got me through, in the end! Lesson #4: WORK TOGETHER I find that the last day of work, which was a day when the entire group worked together to finish the game, was the most exciting, fun, and one of the most productive days because we gave each other energy. In the end, I wish we had worked together more often and not separately, which probably would have made us better co-workers, and maybe even better friends. In conclusion, me and my group’s first video game project was a very educational and interesting experience. I learned something from both the positive and the negative, both of which I will remember for future project. In short, I’m very pleased with the final results, I have grown as a programmer, a co-worker, and as a person, and I’m highly looking forward to bring my new-found knowledge and experience to future projects.  |
