Adonai Invitational Production Postmortem, the final step in this long journey. I know that each step of the way has been very interesting, but at the end of it all I am pleased to say we have made a really awesome game! Lets get down into it by checking out the final burndown chart!

 As you can see at the end of the final sprint, there was a whole 1 point left in progress and 90 points in the backlog. This means my team accomplished a total of 468 points throughout the semester! It is really wild to see how much effort they put into these last 14(ish) weeks! While there are those 90 points left, a majority of them were for features that we were going to improve or for the 3rd level we had planned. But points are not everything, lets briefly talk about somethings we would (or would not) do differently!

1.  Solid team communication: From day one this team has been really good at communicating with each other and with the leads. This communication lead to things be seldom forgotten or misplaced. Overall saved us dozens of hours of wandering around lost in our project.
2. No aversion to feedback: Making games means that you will have people criticize your methods and results. Sometimes player feedback can rub developers the wrong way, but not this team. Iteration after iteration, they never go upset or downcast by the players feedback and questions. The result was a great game with tons of player input.
3. Attainable vision for each sprint: At the start of each sprint I worked with Ben (my game designer) to set up a goal for our build that sprint. This goal was not always easy, but each time the team had something they knew they needed to get accomplished. These goals helped us build up this game step by step and really gave us the encouragement to keep pushing into bigger and better builds of our game.
4. Horse Morale: Ok, look I know it is not really a thing, but this team has always had a really great attitude. Overall the jokes and good atmosphere in the team made it so that everyone was approachable and THAT fed into all the previous points here. High spirits and morale are important for teams on difficult projects, and this team had those spirits in abundance.
5. Skill progression for everyone: Believe it or not, sometimes people can go through an entire project and not learn a single thing. This team though, they have stretched themselves into different areas that most of them have never filled before. Things like sound and lighting design are hard to come by and our group still had people willing to learn and fill in those rolls. It truly was awesome to see.

  Now, as you can imagine, this game development cycle was not all roses and rainbows. There are some things we would totally change if given the chance, here are a few of the more notable points.

1. Backlog wording: Sometimes the problem with using a certain phrase or term is that you forget or change it and then forget what it was called the first go around. This leads to duplication of cards and missing cards in the background, which is a no-no. In the future I would have set up a standard naming convention for more things and stuck with names in order to keep it all organized.
2. Team members doing extra work: So the thing about doing work you are assigned is that it is accounted for, when I left my developers alone for a bit they would tend to get really antsy. This led to them doing extra things not assigned yet and that caused me trouble for trying to keep on top of things. In the future I will be certain to get people the work they are doing in a timely fashion and check in on them more often.
3. Level designers misused: So believe it or not, Ben and I both agree that we totally dropped the ball with assigning our level designers on separate levels. In the future we would have them both on the same level and ensure that one did the macro level design, with the other coming in and doing micro level design to put the details in.
4. Communicating what makes a piece of work done: While communication overall was great, there was an area that some folks needed more guidance from myself and Ben on when it came to realizing what was actually finished. In the future, we would be certain when assigning work that the developer knew exactly what was expected of them so they can more easily tell when they finish their work.
5. Meetings include the producer: The last one on this list is also about communication, but is me focused. Those parts earlier where people do extra work and do not understand when they are done is because they are talking to each other and the designer without me there. If I am not present, I cannot verify what is and is not done. This leads to backtracking and re-verifying that work is completed, which wastes time.

Overall the team did really well and these points (while important) are in no way meant to cast doubt on their abilities. To close we will go back and look at some of the highlights from each team member for this project. (Quick note: I cannot upload gifs at this time, so you will have to play the game to see everything in action!)

PROGRAMMING:

  Adam was a programmer that dealt primarily with training our AI throughout the course of game development. He did a wonderful job at teaching everything they know and coming up with a really easy to install system to show them where to drive. He also provided some UI elements for the menu system and just did an amazing job.

 Justin served not just as another programmer, but also as our build manager, a role that he crushed. He was always one step ahead of the game and even found time to make the UI elements, menus and scenes all work well together. A solid core for the rest of the team to function around, his work is a major reason this game turned out so well.

2D ART AND ANIMATION:

Daniel took a task that would have been intimidating for most animation students in our program and knocked it clean out of the park. Starting in the first sprint with his own practice horse, he continued to work hard on getting the different equine movements just right, and that work shows when playing the game!

Tamil has been providing us with professional level artwork this entire semester, and I will argue 6 ways to Sunday anyone who dares to disagree. His contributions to this project made the modeling team's job so much easier and completely eliminated the guess work from what theme the UI would have. Given the opportunity, I would work with him on each and every project I have in the future, I just cannot get over his amazing work!

3D MODELING AND TEXTURE WORK:

Now to be fair, Tristin pulled double duty on this project and did modeling AND programming work. Never having had a flex person on my team, I was not entirely sure what to expect, but this developer did not leave any doubt in his abilities. From arches to animation integration, everything he worked on went really well and I think we all can appreciate having such awesome models to look at.

Erika was one of the only people on this project I have worked with before, and once again the choice to have her on my team proves to be correct. Her tireless work on the chariots, horses, player characters and more left this game with a consistent art style that fits perfectly with the theme. Her chariots are all really unique and I encourage everyone to go back and look at the production blogs and spot how well she built them with Tamil's concept art guiding her, its like they were ripped right out of the page!

LEVEL DESIGNERS:

William really took the idea of a forest level to heart and while he worked on many different parts of levels during this semester, I believe this image captures his crowning achievement. The forest level was an excellent piece of work that showed off how so many people could work together on a singular feature when guided under the level designers vision. I really do look forward to future projects with his work in them.

Hudson without a doubt is probably the most patient member of this entire team. From almost the word "go" at the start of the semester, he has been working on iteration after iteration of level 1. He created visual effects for it, animated water for it, went over the map for hours at a time with both myself and Ben, moved objects, deleted some things and installed others. Truly his work was long and tedious, but the result it certainly amazing. I encourage you to see it for yourself right now, just go download the game and play that first level!

      In closing, this team has been really wonderful to me and I could (and totally would) go on for days about how great they did on this game. Sadly though, all good things must come to an end and what a true end it is. This was my last game made at Chico State with the Computer Animation and Game Development department, it has been such a wild ride I cannot even start thanking everyone enough. All those hours have been worth it and I wouldnt trade them for anything!

Thank you out there for reading all this, I know you didnt have to, but I am glad you did.

Thank you friends and family of all my team members, for letting me have so much of their time. 

Thank you my friends for being so awesome to me and being such great supports during this process.

I leave you with this image, it is a silly image, but to me it speaks about how much fun this game, this team and this semester has been.