Hello all to the last design blog for Guilded Fletching. In this one I will be going over the right and wrongs that happened over the semester. This will not be a super long read but should be very informative so let's get right into it. 

What went wrong

The first thing I did wrong was for the art team I did not gather enough information for them when starting. Examples are super necessary when telling an artist what you want as it will take 10 times longer if you just let them free form it. Building off of this I gave my team too much freedom especially when it came to level design. I had a vision and the level designers had a different one. I tried to fight it at first but let them win and overall the game is much worse because of this decision. I also did not test things near enough so a lot of nasty bugs made there way into the main build.

What went right

One of the things that we did right was to always challenge our teammates. This made it so that we always had good work and we were able to see their weak spots and force them to get better at them. We kept multiple iterations of work/ the project because if work got corrupted we were able to jump back on the old uncorrupted work. We also made sure when assigning work that the pipeline was always followed we never had to block work because we made sure it was done on time.

What would we do differently

I would have worked more hands on with the level design team because they were allowed WAY too much leeway when asking for features. With the art style I would have not changed it as when in the beginning was slow I changed it to low poly. I should have just started with this but I was too stubborn and wanted “higher” quality assets. I would also gather reference for art pre assigning it so that I would not have to take time to explain what I want past the description of the card. 

What would I do again

I would continue to challenge myself and the team to allow each person to grow. I think it is very valuable to find a person's weak point and press it until they can grow enough where it is no longer weak. I would also remember to keep old versions of the work Keeping people within there own features helps so there are not to many cooks in the kitchen. 

What did we learn from this

Over this project I have learned that every team is different and because of this as a leader you need to adapt quickly. Another thing I have learned is that you need to be able to adapt with in an online environment. The world is different now and with people working from home you need to be able to schedule around them and make sure you are in contact with them as things can slip through the cracks. When leading a team that is more than just a title you need to be able to support them ot just as a member of the team but just understand them on a human level. 1 on 1 meeting not talking about work is super helpful to just get to know each other better and from there you can better understand there work flow this is key to a successful team.