Industry Practice - Reflection:

In this blog I will be talking about how I think this project went, what went well, what didn't go as well and what I would do differently in the future.

Overall thoughts of the project:

Overall I did enjoy the theme of the project however due to quite a few issues we had with our group I didn't enjoy the project as much as I would have liked to. When we first heard about the group project being about mental health I was quite looking forward to it. I was excited due to having mental health struggles myself and wanting to look more into the topic and make a game about mental health as it could help others with mental health struggles too. I suggested that we add a scene at the end of the game with different links and number of how people struggling with mental health can get help themselves. However as we progressed through the project I became increasingly frustrated with the project as we were getting further and further behind where we should have been. With all the issues we had I am quite proud of the three of us that constantly put effort into the project to make sure that it was at least playable by the deadline however we did get to a product that we were all happy with too. With my anxiety it made it quite hard to be a director for the first time especially when this project is being graded and I didn't want to cause someone to fail due to my lack of knowledge when leading a team. If I would have been asked at the start of the project whether I felt like I could lead a team effectively I would have said no due to how anxious I felt when the others in the team nominated me to be a director. However, now that I have been directing the team through this project I feel more confident than I did when we first started the project however if we had another group project I would choose not to be the director due to how anxious it made me.

What went well:

During the project I had to do a lot of problem solving with coding problems I encountered. With the coding problems it took me a while to find a solution as I couldn't get the correct endings to work with options that you chose in the game. I was trying to find a way to make choices work with the endings so I asked others in my class and one of them suggested a way to have the endings work with variables and after a while of testing I eventually got it to work. As it took me a while to work out the endings there were certain times where I wanted to give up with trying to fix it. I didn't want to leave the game in a broken state where you wouldn't get the correct ending however after a while I was able to finish it and it was quite rewarding to be able to find how to get the endings working with all the correct sprites and backgrounds working too. 

With our character designs I was quite pleased that everyone was able to design and create a character that is scene in the game for Jess then to remake it in the style that we are using for our game. With each of us creating a character and then having Jess change them into the style for our game, it took some of the pressure off us to be able to create it in our own style and have Jess redraw them in a style she was more comfortable with drawing in than the rest of us. It also meant that we could create the base designs quicker instead of having to rely on one person just to create the characters. It made more sense to have one person redraw them in the style so they had a design to work with rather than having to come up with all of them and drawing them in the new style straight away.

What didn't go well:

During our project I would have liked if our team had communicated better and had gotten work completed on time. Sometimes I was quite lenient with the people in our group if they were falling behind as I didn't want to stress anyone out with giving them a lot of work to do however I think that I should have reassigned some work sooner when people weren't completing it on time as we ending up waiting for months just for a draft of our script where I could have reassigned it earlier and we could have been working on coding the script in Ren'Py much sooner. We had a similar situation with the backgrounds where we were waiting for a while before we even saw sketches of what the backgrounds would be. 

During our project our communication wasn't the best as sometimes I would ask for work or just an update of where everyone was up but they either wouldn't respond or they would tell me that it was nearly done and didn't send it until I asked again or up to a month after I had first asked. I think that all of us could have improved on replying to each other when one had questions or when I was setting tasks because a lot of the time it was only 3 or 4 of us in lesson rather than the whole group so I had to send a lot of messages through discord as some of our group would miss what I said in lesson. 

Towards the end of the project me, Jess and Louie were the only ones contributing for the majority of the final few weeks other than Edward giving us the backgrounds that we had waited quite a while for. I had to reassign Lottie's work with the script as she was taking much longer than it should have and I was quite lenient with her and how long she had to do it as I didn't want to stress her out however I believe that if I had reassigned her work sooner it would have meant that we could have worked on getting the project into Ren'Py sooner than we did. Having to reassign Lottie's work was fine however it meant that I had to take on the script writing which I wasn't expecting but I also haven't written a script before so I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to do a good job of it as my writing style is different to most where I explain things in quite a straight forward way with most people don't enjoy when reading stories. 

When we were first coming up with ideas we wanted our project to be quite a dark game being a psychological thriller due to some of the characters we wanted in the game and the way we wanted to portray the decline of the main character you play as however due to limited time we weren't able to create them as I had assigned them to someone in the group who ended up dropping out however hadn't told me until a while after which meant that we didn't have enough time to draw all of them as well as making sure that the game was done and ready. With the finished state of the game it is no where near being a psychological thriller however even though it isn't we do have a finished game which I am quite proud of even if it is slightly different from what we were first envisioning.

What I would do differently:

If I were to start this project again with the knowledge of how it went I would probably be less lenient with extending how long people had to complete tasks as for example, with the script Lottie was given around 3 months to complete the script before I reassigned her a task to do which she completed the same day as I had given it to her. Leaving the script so long when it was the task that should have been completed much sooner made it much more difficult later on as we didn't have as much time for putting everything into Ren'Py as we didn't know what backgrounds we would need as we could make a rough list of every background we would need but we wouldn't know the exact amount till we were done with the script and it was a similar situation with the sprites. We did start with a basic outline of the sprites we would need however we didn't know all the ones that we would need till the script was done.

I think if I were to do another group project where I was the director I would make sure to message in our group chat more often as I feel like even though I did and I would @everyone to make sure that everyone would get a notification some people in the group had notifications off and those that did have notifications off usually were the ones that didn't come into class so it made it much harder to get information to them and reassign tasks to them. I think next time I would message them privately as well if I didn't get a reply in the group chat as when I did for the project they usually answered in private chats rather than in the group chats so I was more likely to get a reply from them doing it that way. 

If I was to be picked to be the director again I would probably pick a different co-director. Originally I wasn't fond of the idea of being the director as I have quite a lot of anxiety and with being a director you have to talk to everyone quite frequently to make sure that everyone is doing well and doing what they need to do. My only condition with being director was that I could have a co-director or that I was co-director as I am quite good at taking notes and being organised with where files go as I can type quite fast and keep each project in different folders with different names. I had a feeling that I would be too nervous to hold meetings each week to see where everyone was up to which would have been the co-directors job or the directors depending on which role I was given. I ended up being the director however I chose Lottie as the co-director as she had previous experience with this project so we all thought it would be a good idea to have someone that knew the project well be the co-director and she would take on the meetings so I wouldn't have to stress about them. As we got further into the project Lottie didn't help with any meetings and was more part of the group as a regular member instead of a co-director which left me in a difficult position as every time I had to host a meeting I had panic attacks about it where if I had chosen someone else to be the co-director that may have been more reliable I wouldn't have been so anxious during the project.  

Final Thoughts:

I think even with all the issues we had we did a good job with the time that we had and the amount of people actively working on the project. I think that if we were able to choose groups I would have enjoyed the project much more as I would have chosen people that I knew I could rely on and finish the game that we were all happy with as I would have picked people that have different strengths so that everyone was able to do something they were comfortable with rather than people having to do things they weren't as comfortable with. Even though I would have rather chosen groups ourselves, it did mean that I met new people and made a few friends from the project which I am quite happy about.