Teamwork Practices FINAL EVALUATIONS + Cut-Content discussion

Team evaluation

Jimmy: 

A very dedicated 3d Model maker, responsible for the torch, fences, batteries and buildings. Very ambitious and detailed with the objects he made and would tweak them to better assist the programmers such as moving geometry on the buildings rather than having to change the level. An excellent Teammate. The only issue was some of the buildings being too large or not file efficient such as the church which would cause UE5 to crash and the barn model which would freeze the editor when being imported. As a result, the Church wasn't included but I have its Files.

8/10 - Hardworking, dedicated, enthusiastic. Minus one point for overambition. Minus another point for lacking knowledge of 3D Graphics that caused technical issues in the Game such as with the oversized Barn and Church models.

Mo: 

The other programmer, bug/ level tester, character designer who also gathered Audio assets. When he did work, it helped, such as with adding and refining movement for me while I worked on the map, speeding up the workflow. I do feel a little guilty however as he didn't have much to do because we had two modelers and could never get Github to work only one of us could work on the actual game at a time, usually just being me by my own design. Notable bugs he found were some out of bounds glitches and the main level crashing when starting from the main menu, which I would not have noticed without him.

He did hinder me in places though such as improperly referencing sounds on the design document or dragging in the preset of his movement from his project, leaving me with loads of empty, useless or confusingly named folders/ files. He also would sometimes try and rush a given job, wasting time for everybody, such as when I asked him to make an illustrated background for menus. When he did that he spent 2 minutes in MS Paint, which I would not even show on here, for your sake.

6.6/10 - Wanted to help out more but could not because Github wouldn't interact with the project, leaving only one person to work on it at a time. Was very helpful in testing, gathering audio, adding movement, designing the enemy etc. Cannot in good faith give a 7 or higher though because of long periods of absence and not even starting the Game design document- which he could have done

Nyssa: 

My second 3d Model maker, Nyssa worked on the shipping containers, streetlights, the enemy, the cave, fences and boulders. She was brilliant, always working on the next model and always there to bounce ideas off of. I will say she did lack some technical knowledge in relation to Blender though such as the enemy file size being so big that it would crash the project or being improperly rigged so that we couldn't apply stock animations to it until it was fixed the second time around. The 3 streetlight models were also created in a strange way that separated the model when exported, because it was never fixed, these were ultimately cut as a result, though probably for the better as they were out of place.

8.5/10 very helpful and dedicated, always suggested interesting ideas and put in the most hours during lecture hours. Cannot giver her a 10 though because her lack of technical knowledge in regards to animation and making 3D models impeded progress once or twice in the project, some of her models were also broken such as the streetlamps so they could never be used. Should have a lower score than Jimmy due to the issues with her models but I will give an extra point for the sheer effort.

Kevone:

Not really much to say, because he didn't know much about 3d modelling or Game Design, as a group we decided he should record sounds or gather some using stock websites as we eventually did anyway without him. I also suggested maybe he could work on a Game Design document. Unfortunately, that never happened and he vanished for 3 months and did nothing.

0/10 - never did any work, lied about gathering sounds

Individual Performance

Spike (Me): I was placed in charge of the group by the others and most of the work done in Unreal. It was down to me to learn more about programming in Unreal and its landscaping tool to make the level appear as how I wanted it with assistance from Josh for coding where needed. Most of what i did is in the Blog but if I had to evaluate myself, I would say I was a bit controlling over the project, even though it was a group decision to make this type of Game, a lot of the decisions were left up to me as I was the only one placing assets in the unreal project, I was ultimately the arbiter of what stayed and what went in the game, which I wasn't really a fan of however much it did speed up development. I also worried over the short development cycle often shooting down ideas because of time constraints that may not have fully been there or because I thought some suggestions wouldn't have been worth the effort. Instances of this are the idea for a bridge to collapse at the end of the level and have a cutscene play, the idea of having hands for the player and a voice and a dynamic weather system, like a random chance of Rain or something, I really don't know. Be honest with me, could I have done these???

8/10 - I assembled everybody else's work in the final Game with help from Josh where needed. The rest said they were scared of coding and making the level and Jimmy thanked me for stepping up to do it. I do feel I was a little controlling too in places and could have listened to ideas more but that was only the case as I was trying to be realistic.

Other content I considered was having a timer, a death counter and a battery counter but I ultimately didn't. these probably would have been next because I had them in my previous unreal project but I just feel like I didn't have enough time. I wanted this game to be more atmospheric though as this time there are sounds, ambience, animation. All things my previous project lacked, though I wish there could have been a little more.