So we have just one week left to finish our 2D games based on the Durham Community. To say it's going to be stressful is an understatement, and this is not because of my group members or anything (they're amazing), it just takes a lot of work to make games. So, in this post, I want to reflect on how we've done so far in production, as well as see if there are things people in the industry do during crunch time that could help us, or if it's too late for us now and this will just have to be a learning experience.
First, the timeline provided by our teacher was simply this: have a playable prototype by the end of 4 weeks. Of course we have many other goals he set for us to reach, but he did not make them time specific; they just need to get done to create the game. He also suggested that we leave the final Friday for testing for bugs (meaning we have the prototype mostly up and ready to go by Thursday). The rest was up to us. So far, it's just been a frenzy of completing different assets, meaning that this week we have to finish all of those as well as put them all together in a cohesive game. I think this was definitely my first mistake. I left our schedule sort of fluid rather than setting strict deadlines. Even if we hadn't completely met the deadlines, having them would have kept us more on track I think, and would have helped to make this week easier. Now for the week ahead, because I can't go back and change my mistakes from the past. Obviously, being high school student, our crunch time won't be nearly as extreme as that for industry professionals, but I wanted to see how they handle the stress. According to the start of this article the answer seems to be, not well. However, it also explains that even with good scheduling, crunch time can still be a problem if any issues come up towards the end of development. This is bad news for us since we will likely have some problems as we put stuff together this week. It also says that you should know by the time you have 2 weeks left whether or not you'll be able to finish your game. But then, the article even says, "it’s very difficult to figure out how long it might take to finish a given task." Since this is our first time really producing a game on a team like this, our judgement may not be good enough to do this accurately, but it is a good idea to make this sort of check on whether or not you think you can make it every week at team meetings, so I think I will begin doing that if I am ever production manager again. The article towards the end says that crunching for more than 2 weeks is ineffective and you won't make it, instead you have to cut things. I think for our game it may be beneficial to cut a few things (for instance, the enemies, which we knew we were probably going to have to cut). We will only be crunching for 1 week though, so maybe our work will pay off a little, but at the same time there's only so much work we can do in a week. The whole purpose of this article was to sway you from supporting crunch time, and it was pretty successful, I am worried about this week. However another article strives to give tips on surviving this stressful work time (though it does reiterate that crunch time is bad). Many of the tips are things like "take breaks" which are less applicable to us since we have the rest of the school day to be working on other things, but some of the tips are helpful. It suggests heavy scheduling, communication of expectations, and being okay with failure in some aspects. I think at Monday's team meeting I definitely need to discuss all of these things with my group, especially working hard to set up a firm schedule so that we can get as much quality work done as possible.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
February 2020
Categories
All
|