Posted May 05, 2020 by Haley Price
Postmortem:
Overall, this was a great experience for the three of us. We were all nervous at first about going from in-person team work to remote teamwork, but the transition was much smoother than anticipated. For some of us, it was our first time using Unity Collab, and it worked well for us. We established loose deadlines for tasks ahead of time and were very fortunate to avoid blockages in our pipeline that way.
The biggest skills we learned in this project were associated with remote game development. The three of us communicated effectively over Slack and Google Hangouts. We were all invested in the project's success, and we were eager to take on new tasks and as well as the advice and insights of our teammates. The work was divided well amongst the three of us, and we each pulled our own weight.
Breakdown of contributions:
Zach was responsible for designing the dock and and the small ship. He was the lead programmer, and he regularly took on extra work to realize new ideas as our game evolved. In addition to taking the lead on the gameplay, he was quick to offer advice or directly help write the code when Maddy and Haley got stuck implementing an art or sound element.
Haley was responsible for designing the medium ship. She found and implemented all the sound effects and ambient noise, and she added particle affects to mimic splashes. She also took up the task of lighting the level. She planned out how much light should come from the moon and how to use added lanterns to lead players to key locations in the space.
Maddy was responsible for designing the large ship. She found all of the 3D art assets for the level and ensured that the world was visually cohesive. Determined to come up with the best assets, she remained flexible throughout the project to changing or tweaking things to best suit the overall art direction.