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<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Eyes of the Exorcist was made as the first collaborative effort What went Right:<\/strong> What went Wrong:<\/strong> Conclusion:<\/strong> Tags: post-mortem<\/a>, postmortem<\/a>, unity3d<\/a><\/p>","time":"January 9th, 2012 2:24 pm","title":"Eyes of the Exorcist Post Mortem."}
\n between six strangers from who met through the San Diego Game
\n Developer\u2019s Meet-up Group<\/a>. The team consisted of 3 programmers, two 3D
\n artist, and one 2D artist\/musician. We spent the full 72 hours of the
\n Jam in the living room of one of our member\u2019s home. On a whole it was
\n an incredibly fun learning experience.<\/p>\n
\n * The Location<\/strong> \u2013 Caryn and her family were gracious enough to let 5
\n strangers take over their living room for the weekend. Sharing ideas,
\n sketches, and code face to face was far more productive than a more
\n technology based solution.
\n * Concept Voting<\/strong> \u2013 Once the theme was announced we brainstormed for a
\n while but had not reached a consensus. We agreed that main proponent
\n of each idea would do a final pitch, then we would vote on all the
\n ideas. Voting was handled by anonymous paper ballet. Each participant
\n wrote the numbers 1-8 next to each of the eight ideas. Eight indicated
\n their favorite idea and one was the least favorite. Each idea\u2019s ballet
\n score was added up, and we picked the one with the highest cumulative
\n value. This process allowed all of us to air our ideas, and choose one
\n that we could agree on.
\n * Team Energy<\/strong> \u2013 Working face to face and having other people depend on
\n your output brought about a tremendous energy among the group. Two of
\n us had participated in prior Ludum Dare\u2019s as individuals. We both had
\n far more energy and drive working as a team than our individual
\n experience.
\n * Using Unity<\/strong> \u2013 We used Unity for game development. We were able to
\n take advantage of the input, GUI, character controller, particle
\n system, and camera components that unity provides. This saved us a
\n great deal of time not making basic game control objects.
\n * Art Asset Naming Convention<\/strong> \u2013 Despite using Unity for our project
\n our artists used the Unreal Engine\u2019s naming convention to organize the
\n art assets. This naming convention allowed us to keep track of who was
\n working on what, and what stage it was at.
\n * Division of Labor<\/strong> \u2013 Since our team was comprised of programming and
\n art specialists the programmers could focus on the scripts while the
\n artists could focus on the art.
\n * Food<\/strong> \u2013 Prior to the start of Ludum Dare the team acquired a large
\n quantity of sushi, sticky rice, tea, coffee, and chocolate covered
\n banana chips. We were able to graze off this bounty over the course of
\n the contest and only had to go out for food three times.<\/p>\n
\n * Ambition<\/strong> \u2013 When we selected our initial concept we voted on the idea
\n that we felt would be the most fun game, not what we could complete in
\n the time limit. This concept involved a spooky ghost town, two
\n different vision modes, multiple attacks, power ups, inventory items
\n and a leveling system. In retrospect this was way too much for a Ludum
\n Dare.
\n * Lack of Documentation<\/strong> \u2013 We kept verbal and mental track of what
\n features we wanted to implement and in what order. As development
\n progressed new features were added to the list, but there was no clear
\n indication as to which features were vital to the build and which were
\n nice add-ons.
\n * Tool Familiarization<\/strong> \u2013 Since this was our first collaborative
\n project the artists and programmers were not familiar with each
\n other\u2019s tools. As such we spent valuable contest time figuring out how
\n to get art assets into the game. Also we could not utilize the
\n artist\u2019s time to do level design due to their unfamiliarity with the
\n unity editor. These things should have been resolved prior to the
\n start of the event.
\n * Lack of Leadership<\/strong> \u2013 We did not have one person in over all control
\n of the project, and instead spent a lot of time debating amongst
\n ourselves over the proper course of action. Also we were unable to
\n incorporate some of the art assets since the programmers were too
\n focused on programming tasks.
\n * Lack of mile stones<\/strong> \u2013 We had an idea of what we wanted the end
\n result of our project to be and when it had to be done. We did not set
\n time limits on the intermediary steps to get to that final goal. There
\n were two attempts to have working builds by a certain hour, however we let
\n both those deadlines slip trying to get it to work perfectly instead of
\n Kludging together something so we could move on.
\n * Wasted time on Kitty<\/strong> \u2013 One of our team members (Wilson) was insistent on
\n getting kitty bonus points and wasted valuable time creating scripts
\n for an NPC cat that did not do much for the end game experience. This
\n feature was cut from the contest build and all that time was wasted.<\/p>\n
\n Ludum Dare Game Jam was an incredibly fun learning experience. Working
\n as a team kept us incredibly motivated. Sadly we bit off more than we
\n could crew and the end result suffered for it. We now have a better
\n idea of each other\u2019s capabilities and what can be accomplished in 72
\n hours.<\/p>\n \n