Good evening people of the land. I'm stopping this act no worries. 

Production! The big time of development where you envisioned yourself when joining gamedev. I've learned a lot during this production cycle for Steelfire Garden. A lot of misconceptions when it comes to gamedev where cleared up in my head. My approach to designing things changed quite a bit. When creating designs I feel the core of my philosophy stayed the same. Look at the requirements, see what systems coexist with what I'm designing, what purpose am I designing this for, how can I improve the design to coexist/improve adjacent systems, try and answer as many hypotheticals with as few diagrams as possible. 

What changed is how I approach presenting a design to other team members. I was super focused on having the design be as clear and technical as possible to make it transferring it over to the programmers as easy as possible. I've learned that this is a bad thing to do. First, I'm doing a part of their job which is never good to do. I don't allow them the space and creativity to apply their history and knowledge as programmers onto my designs, and so the way the implement the design is a little skewered. Second, it makes the design harder to read for non-programmers. 

I got rid of this approach and made my designs focus solely on how they function in the game in terms of rules (known & hidden rules, how they act in scenarios, etc.). This keeps what needs to be implemented clear and allows for the programmers to grow in their craft.

I've also learned to try and not be so structured and perfect in the process of gamedev. Of course things still need to be structured, project management is still needed and I put effort in being aware of those facts. But we're students working on a game with internships on our backs and all of our other courses on our mind. And we aren't designing for pay for some corporate thing so being intensely structured is a hinderance. I've learned to design the pipeline and structure around the team, and our processes did become "less official" I think it benifits us cause our results have been improving.

I'm grateful for what I learned and have hope for finishing this game for the end of the semester.