This past week, we had Team Evaluations. When we all discussed among each other and when we discussed with the teacher, there was one central theme - we are approaching Mid Mortem, which is our deadline for getting the vertical slice that we want to show off in this game. There definitely seemed to be fear among team members about getting it to the state we wanted it to be at.
After some conversing within the team, though, we truly and strongly solidified what we needed for this game to get it to the state we wanted it to be in. We also talked about any problems we had as a team and how they needed to be addressed to make the team function as a whole better. But that does not mean it is time to take it easy.
No, instead we are dubbing this week as the Make it or Break it week. We need to prove to ourselves, to each other, and to everybody checking in on our progress that we can bring this to a finished state.
This week, I am tasked with creating the layout and terrain of the level (without environment and physics props) along with a comprehensive and detailed Asset List with reference images so that I can effectively communicate what is needed for the level. The first thing I did was create the Asset List so that the artist could immediately get to work on the art for the most important assets. This weekend is when I'm planning to do the terrain and such, so more on that later.
I definitely think that this is a good step for our team. I think we needed the hard shove that we got both from the teacher and from each other. We messed up, and that wasn't a surprise, but we are now realizing the true scale of what needs to be done and how much work must be done to get this game to our desired state. This hard push got us to organize and truly plan out everything that needed to be done. Although this should have likely been done sooner (and, of course, iterated upon throughout the cycle like what happens in Agile development), it's still good that this was done.
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