Into My Frying Pan - Personal Post Mortem

I’ve mentioned in my previous post that Mami is a good game, with a strong team, that did a superb job in the game projects course.  However, it could have been so much more, and I share that burden despite my work, or because of it.  For a summary of what I think I did well (or not), see the end of the article.

On Team Squaybies, I was titled as the QA Lead, allowing me plenty of room to delve and assist in every aspect of the game.  Through development, nothing lacked a bit of my touch.

In the beginning, early god-bosses and enemies were needed.  Team Squaybies brainstormed a breadth of designs and characters, and I directly assisted in making a few.  Using an industrial production process, the pieces were turned-out very quickly with decent variety.

To help secure the direction of the game, we had to illustrate what was wanted in Mami.  To do this, all of Team Squaybies contributed to the game design document, with me as chief editor (spelling, grammar, inconsistencies, etc.).  Taking it from there, my QA instincts took hold, and I had a number of outside individuals read through the premise of the game, and took changes they suggested or loved to the group, implementing them appropriately.  In anti-climactic fashion, the document was never touched again, but I bear it on myself for not iterating the five letter word of every project: S-C-O-P-E.

For most of the year, I ended-up doing little programming features and research to assist the work of the chief programmer.  Being as unfamiliar as I was with the ActionScript language, catching-up to the employed skills of my friend made the impact of my work fairly small.  Slow work and low impact features are my downside (though I know AS3 so much better now!).

However, other than the chief programmer, I was the only other team member to actively program within the game.  Making the necessary changes to effectively fix minor issues that arose sped production processes along.  With the research I conducted, enemy examples and coding parameters were found, and a shadow system was discovered that is in current use within Mami. So, with all that, those contributions can be a plus on my part.

Now, let’s cover some items of a more superficial nature.  In teamwork, many times I became short with other group mates, and that is inexcusable.  On attendance, the chief programmer and I have the best showing of the entire class!  Concerning work ethic, I would rate myself above the average, in that I did not waste work time Facebooking, perusing Imgur, or reading Reddit.  That, I would state, is possibly my best trait given to Team Squaybies.

Well, there’s my frying pan.  I make no claim to be unbiased, and really do welcome your input in the comments section.  For my failings, they were wrong, and I can only hope to never make the same mistakes again.  Concerning my achievements, I don’t think that aiming to do better is out of my scope.  Again, please comment what you think down below, and take care for my next post of Half Life.  See you then!

• + Being there to benefit every section of the game.
• + Designing and carrying-out a number of visual concepts of possible characters.
• + Spear-heading needed quality assurance with industry-grade detail and procedure.
• + Actively programming features in ActionScript and finding asset examples for implementation.
• - Repeated failure to raise the “scope” flag enough.
• A fix: Scope!  Set conservative deadlines, believe attainable goals, and work on details after the main design is satisfied.
• - Slow, plodding programming work.
• A fix: Know what engine will be used prior to entering the project to catch-up on code writing.
• - At times, short with other team members.
• A fix: Patience is a virtue.