Week 12 - Post mortem report (Kryat)
Project Goals:
Kryat is an adventure card game where you capture creatures to gain dice in order to fight Grand Beasts. This is the biggest project that any of us in the team have undertaken, so there was a lot to be learned from the past few months of development.
The ultimate goal for this project was to deliver a completed vertical slice by the 19th of May. We were successful in this endeavor, having completed our vertical slice before our submission deadline, allowing us extra time to consider the progress we made with the game, and what we could potentially do in the future with this project.
Our next goal for the project was to have the vertical slice in a presentable state for the arcade event that we’re holding after our submission. It would’ve been alright to not have completed art for the game, but we wanted to go above and beyond with our project, and I think we were able to deliver to a suitable standard.
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Max
Personal Goals
My overall personal goal with this project was to develop my skills in 3D modelling, as I was given control over anything concerning 3d models. i feel like with my combined usage of clay modelling and 3D software's like blender to make and 3d print counters i was able to achieve this. before this project I have always wanted to dive more into the ins and outs of 3D modelling especially different ways it can be completed, I was able to create a variety of characters in unique poses who each had their own unique features which provided me with well of knowledge of different techniques especially when using clay to 3D model.
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Furthermore, I also wanted a chance to show off some artwork of my own as art has always been a very weak area for me in regards to my skills, I do believe I have been able to show off and complete this personal goal through the use of the player mats and the promotional materials.
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When it came to understanding the pipelines and processes of making a game I feel like I have gathered a decent understanding of how the process of character creation and modelling go hands in hand like deciding on a time period that the game is set in in order to govern clothing, equipment etc. depending on the time period selected and other factors of the world in which the characters reside, I'm conflicted about how I handled this in this project with some characters like the hunter being halfway through the design process before decide ding on the era and other factors that will effect that characters/models design, i am happy however that this turning point of development was spotted before anything unreversible was done in regards to the model but it defiantly made other processes slow because more creation had to be altered in response, this is something I have learn to consider in the future when making characters for modelling.
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The good:
Firstly, I believe I managed my development time on this project rather well following plans layed out by the team leader in the scope analysis and i think I relieved my contribution in good time with set internal deadlines, the team worked exceptionally well together always communicating ideas and posting thoughts that would overall change the games feel and getting opinions from the other members before proceeding even when certain members were unavailable due to unforeseen circumstances.
I'm very proud with how the models turned out for the game and models, there were some design problems with blender files and such that have helped me learn what to avoid when making models that will be 3d printed
although some peoples contributions felt lost in space at times (more detail below) i think that our game turned out super well due to the amount of times we tested the game with unbiased players like other classmates, first years and alumni who gave us feedback on certain mechanics that we hadn't thought off which helped us improve our vertical slice based on the audiences requests allowing us to engage our community early on.
The bad:
there were times during this project where peoples contributions either were misheard and misunderstood or overlooked although I agree that it was imperative to keep the game on a steady track of development even if specific members are unable to contribute due to unforeseen circumstances i believe the mechanics could have been more fully fledged out and whist I agree that the end result for gameplay works perfectly in the sense of being playable i do however believe that the mechanics do seem to be one team members vision for the game leaving certain members to feel invalided which I believe could have been improved with better communication on the part of both party's involved in mechanics designing.
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and finally although helping me to fulfill my personal goals for this development I did however feel like my contributions to the game lacked a purpose and that without me the game would still have worked and that talks about potential uses for the models were lacking on the part of me and other party's so increased communication was defiantly desired here in order to leave certain members feeling invalid and like their work had no meaning.
Logan
Personal Goals:
As the leader for this project, my primary personal goal was to be successful at managing the project and my team. I was worried about whether I was going to be up to the task, as I was completely out of my depth being a leader for a serious project, but upon reflection, I think I did a successful job. I organised the team into roles within the first week of development, and we were able to get to work almost immediately on the game. I got what days that everyone was able to work and found a day where we were all free to have a dedicated discussion about the week's progress. I also created a scope at the beginning of the project, considering everyone’s speed of work, and setting milestones based off this scope. This scope and the project’s goals were also edited a couple of times based on how we were progressing, to make sure that we weren’t going to go over budget on our scope. Overall, we made sure to have consistent communication with each other. If there was a problem, we would make it known on Slack and work together to solve it, and we’d critique each other’s work to help us all improve.
As far as understanding the pipelines and processes that go into making a card game, planning is obviously very important. Before making the art for the cards, we needed to decide on the format of our cards, as well as getting a feel for the layout. Depending on the layout, the art could have been covered up by the card elements, so I’m glad I caught this issue quickly before too much art was created. Luckily, the pieces that were created were fine, but this is something to consider at the start of producing cards for any future projects. I also developed a good flow for making cards. We would come up with different effects and playtest those, before finalising the mechanic. Then we would create concepts for these mechanics, before creating the final artwork for the card. Then I would come up with flavour text for the card and add the effect and the rest of the text on to the card, ready for printing. This was a very efficient method of development, especially with two team members able to work on the art.
The art direction for the project was very different from what I’m used to personally. I usually work in a more illustrative style, whereas the art direction for Kryat was more painterly, which I’m not very skilled at. However, I think I was able to produce some really good artwork from this project. I mainly flatted out a background for the card, and then used a layer mask to create a space for the main subject matter. The layer mask helped to keep all the brush strokes together and maintain sharp edges that separate the main subject from the background. I would then add some nice lighting as a final detail to the artwork.
My final personal goal was to try and build a community and market the game a little. This was a lot less successful than my other goals. I created both a Twitter and Instagram account for our game where I would post what the team and I had been working on. On Twitter, I tried to be a little more proactive with marketing and promoted the game under different threads which would support indie games, but I didn’t manage to gain much traction with that. I understand that marketing is a very complicated subject, and next time I’d ideally have someone to do a dedicated job marketing the game.
The Good:
Organisation for the most part has gone very well. We tried out different ways to communicate with each other, with Slack as our main channel of communication. We tried out using Trello in the first couple of weeks, but that method was quickly abandoned in favour of using pinned messages in Slack. These were easier to access, and it’s easier having all our important information in one place. We also had a Google Drive where we shared all the files we were working on over the project, so that we could easily collaborate whilst working at home, as well as in class.
I’m very proud of how well the cards came out. Thanks to James’ suggestion, we were able to use MakePlayingCards to print off our cards. There was a small issue with the design for the tuck box, but that was able to be quickly fixed, and the cards were even delivered earlier than expected. The cards look very professional, although it is a little hard to get them out of the tuck box. I also maybe would have changed up the design of the tuck box a little, as the one that we have currently was a quick placeholder. A couple of the card designs could also do with a rework, like the Poacher Camp, but overall I’m very proud of the designs, and the quality at which they were printed.
I think the reason why our game turned out so well was due to the amount of playtesting that we did. We conducted about 14 individual playtests, testing different mechanics, and iterating and improving upon those when necessary, so our game played together very tightly. We took all the criticism we got very seriously, and used it to come up with new solutions to improve upon our game.
The Bad:
There was an issue with getting art for the project started at the beginning of the project, but we were able to fix that almost immediately. It turns out there was an issue with communication, and different parties felt like they weren’t being heard. However, we were able to fix this by initiating conversation, and discussing the problems that we were having with the project. This was difficult to do initially, but after breaking that barrier, subsequent communication became a lot easier, and our overall synergy improved massively.
There was also an issue where one of our teammates had to work from home due to testing positive for Covid-19. This was a very big complication, as without being in person, it was very difficult to show off the different bits that we were working on for the game, as well as how the game would play. Without being able to grasp how the game worked and the progress we were making, there wasn’t much our teammate could do. However, as team leader, I should have made more of an effort to find work that needed to be completed, or made use of other ways of communicating, such as through Slack calls, in order to better show the work that we had been completing so the whole team could understand where we were at.
We did overshoot our project scope a little bit. We intended to finish the designs of the cards by the end of first semester, just before Easter break. However, due to complications with the designing of these cards, we only ended up sending them off two weeks after. This was still before the last week we could have waited to get the cards printed, but I think with a little more organisation and leadership, we could have gotten them printed earlier and saved cutting into Easter break.
There was also an issue with getting the tuck boxes for the cards printed, although this wasn’t a big problem. We were able to get in contact with the company immediately, and send over a new design for the tuck boxes. However, this wouldn’t have happened if more care had been taken when picking out the products, and if everyone had gotten necessary rest to avoid making these mistakes.
Kat:
Personal Goals:
The general concept of my ambition as a games designer is to successfully accomplish the ability to create high-quality artwork that will effectively narrate and transfer my own ideals and emotions during their development, brining my ideas to life through my efforts. My dream is to make my way through some of the most highly reputable companies, collaborating with innovative teams full of experienced and skilled individuals within a professional environment (e.g. EA, Riot, etc.) and greatly increasing my own potential, in order to one day contribute in the development of a massively renowned game that will impact a great amount of player's lives and bring them joy and entertainment, and maybe even influence them deeply in a positive way. Knowing I would have contributed to a game that could prove to possibly even be life changing to someone would be one of the greatest personal achievements I could ever wish for.
As for more specific art oriented goals, what I would like to focus on fulfilling would be to explore many different orientations of art styles and techniques, in order to broaden my own knowledge and gain a more flexible approach in the field, having the ability to offer diverse methods and styles to anyone I could be working together with in any project. I wish to further research and practice creating artworks with brushes and blending tools I am currently unfamiliar with, and experiment with various colour combinations I hadn't thought of mixing before, discovering which are the combinations I personally find most fascinating and interesting to work with, in order to create the best possible outcomes I would be happiest with.
The Good:
First and foremost, the most obvious noteworthy objective would be to constantly practice and improve my own capabilities in art, and focus on progressively experimenting on different art styles and techniques in order to broaden my own knowledge on the subject and possess the ability to offer as many alternative versions for any given theme. That can only be achieved by constant research and involvement in the field. That means that aside from simply focusing on drawing as many different art pieces as possible and expanding my pool of personal developments, it'd be wise to try finding specific art creators and developers that I personally find inspiration in, and stay up to date with their content and projects they could be involved in, try to reach out to other people with similar interests through those connections and ask for advice on how they create their own art, what brushes and tools they use. It is also extremely crucial to be open to criticism of your own work and always ask for feedback, as it will only benefit myself in improving my own work. Above all, be passionate about what I create and not blindly execute orders and wishes of others on subjects I find unfulfilling, as a person who works on something they love and desire to improve will always achieve a much better result than someone who's absolutely ignorant to the idea they're working on.
Another important point I would like to focus on including in my future work is the usage of the gamut technique. Gamut mapping is a technique for choosing a limited set of colours that work well together. It can usually simply be performed by adding 3 separate dots on the colour roulette and choosing to only work with shades existing inside the triangle created from those 3 points. Apparently, using this technique helps keep a balance between the mixture of different colours and avoid creating awkward combinations and unwanted contrasts in the final outcome. This point is vaguely summed up in the previous "experimenting" and "trying out new things" observation, but I felt like it was important to point it out as a more specific and direct goal.
A very valuable target I can guarantee that I achieved was the efficiently handled cooperation and communication we maintained within the team's grounds. I effectively kept up to date with any potential process during the development of my artworks and requested further feedback during every stage. I would like to believe that, even though I already possessed a significant amount of skill in efficient communicative and teamwork abilities, through this project I further enhanced those capabilities and became much more competent in working with a team, grasping a solid idea of how the circumstances of working within this field in the future will be like.
Additionally, I greatly improved my ability of multitasking and working on separate projects simultaneously, in terms of quick adjustments and art style switching. I worked on two separate projects for two teams, whose art styles and themes were practically the total opposite of each other. On one side, Kryat preserved a more realistic art style with a wide usage of water painting and air brushing, and an intense amount of shading and contouring. It involved a completely different blender from the one used for Glass Gardens, which required a lot of cartoony art styled designs, with a lot of outlining and simplified colouring and blending techniques, and the absolute absence of the usage of air brushes.
The Bad:
What I would recommend to myself in the future, however, would be to be more considerate of time frames for specific tasks and try to have a more realistic approach to how efficiently I can complete certain assignments in relatively short amounts of time. It was rather stressful worrying whether I would have enough time to complete all artworks and depict the relevant ideas and visuals I had desired in a small time frame, because as a perfectionist I would feel extremely uncomfortable submitting work that I feel could be improved and further refined, and I would not entirely be happy with. Thankfully in this situation we found a solution to this complication, which was for someone else other than me, who has the ability to adjust to my already existent developments in the sense of art style, to assist me with all the art pieces.
Furthermore, minor inconveniences such as not verifying the correct dpi settings, sizes and canvas, inefficient contrast of colours, or bleeding points and inaccuracies or uneven edges or outlines through the wrong choices of brushes or blending tools, should also be something I should work on avoiding in the future. Small details such as the ones stated above are what contribute to the overall improvement of my own potential.
Dylan
Personal Goals:
One of my primary goals was to improve my mechanics design skills, as I was assigned the role of mechanics designer. I believe I was successful in this endeavour, as I worked on tabletop game mechanics, which outside of tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), I was not experienced with. Whilst I had initial difficulties, I was able to come up with a variety of ideas for board and card game mechanics, and self-reflected on flaws within my development process, such as occasions where my ideas lacked depth, or would take too long to implement.
In addition to this, I wanted to improve my team communication skills, as it is a personal weakness of mine. I have conflicted feelings on whether I succeeded or failed in achieving this goal, due to circumstances that made it quite difficult. I was in self-isolation for 3 weeks due to COVID-19. I had made sure to communicate what ideation I carried out throughout each week and had online meetings with the rest of the team weekly. However, I feel like I could have communicated my ideas to the team more clearly before I had completed working on them, in case the rest of the team did not like the core premises of any of my ideas.
The Good:
First of all, I believe that I worked relatively efficiently whilst I was in self-isolation for 3 weeks (being weeks 2-4). During this time, I continued to work on designing mechanics for the game with a reasonable quality at a solid pace with a large variety of mechanics developed, whilst trying to adjust to any changes that the team leader wanted. I tried to make sure to communicate during this time so that the team knew what I was doing.
Secondly, I believe that those working on art for cards (such as creatures) made high quality art of a variety of creatures and objects fitting the setting, whilst also doing so at a good pace. They shared sketches of the progress of the drawings they were doing so that teammates were aware of progress, which also allowed for any feedback (be it positive or negative) to be made earlier in the art’s development, making changes easier to be made without time being wasted.
Lastly, to make sure that our development pace was strong, our team leader decided to make the paper prototype himself and begin playtesting the game with peers whilst I was still in self-isolation. Whilst some issues stemmed from this (which are noted below), overall it felt like a good decision to make for the purpose of time efficiency, as we were 4 weeks in development without any playtesting of mechanics.
The Bad:
Whilst it was important to use time wisely, -validating the team leader’s choice to playtest without me- I feel that it was difficult to see myself as the mechanics designer in the team, as I do not believe my ideas and design philosophy had much impact on the development of mechanics. Most were ideated and decided by the team leader, with my ideas having to go through many changes to fit his vision. However, I did not make much of an argument to implement my mechanics for playtesting as they were, which could have resulted in a compromise between our views. Regardless, by the end of my time with the team, I feel that my design philosophy opposed the philosophy of the implemented game mechanics. This made it difficult to make any more mechanics or changes, without going against the design philosophy the team leader wanted.
Additionally, there was a significant amount of time spent on creating 3-dimensional clay models of player characters and the ‘grand beast’ creature that served as the enemy in gameplay. Whilst the team member did a good job and greatly improved his clay-sculpting skills through this, I believe that these models were unnecessary for gameplay and thus not important for the development process of the vertical slice. I do think that as a whole team, we could have searched for other tasks that could have been completed by this team member that would have been more important to the vertical slice. Later in development, it was decided that these models could be given in special editions of the game as a marketing strategy, so some use was found for them, even if they -from my perception- were not important for the vertical slice.