Week 32, Year 2: Alice's Adventures Off The Map Post-Mortem.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that for the past 14 weeks I have been working on a project with 5 other Game Art students called Alice’s Adventures, Off the Map. Hosted by GameCity, Off the Map challenges students to use collections from the British Library as inspiration to create interactive digital media. DMU has participated since it began a few years ago as part of the second year curriculum. Game Art students in the past have been very successful and all of us were very excited for the competition. So at the start of February, we were placed into teams, given the brief and cut loose.

In our first team meeting, we began by discussing how we could impress the judges and win the competition. This was our first and probably most severe mistake. Of all the changes, difficulties and decisions I’ll discuss here, I feel this mind-set right from the start was the greatest hindrance to our project. Despite being a team of artists, we felt pressed to create a game. A complete and well-rounded interactive experience. Because of this, all of our early work and decisions were driven by trying to create a game. Something none of us have any experience in. What we should have done is play to our strengths. We should have designed a world first, and then added interactive elements and gameplay. While that statement flies in the face of conventional game design, we are not a conventional game development team. We are a team of 6 artists. It’s a question of priorities and our first priority should have always been simply, create something beautiful.

Of the three themes we could choose from, we picked Oxford, as we felt it was the most interesting. In the first week, I organised a trip to visit Oxford for a day, to gather reference, get a feel for the town and search for inspiration. Hiring a car was expensive and planning it all was exhausting, but it was one of the best things we did. It brought us closer as a team, we had a great time and it got us out of Leicester for a day. I’ve come to really appreciate that a change of scene is absolutely invaluable.

The closest we got to a team photo.

In the first few weeks we also setup a blog. Having a tool to divide the documentation work, right from the start, worked really well. None of us like to write when there's painting to be done, but updating it regularly allowed us to stay on top of it as a team. We found it very useful to keep our tutors in the loop throughout the project and notify them of any changes.

One of the biggest changes that took place was the decision to move from our original 'courtyard, street and river bank' idea, to the 'foggy streets' plan, in an attempt to cut back the amount of assets we'd need to create. While it was a good decision, it was made too hastily. We did need to dramatically reduce the scope of our project, but we did so without taking the time to properly visualize the new idea.

Layout plans. 'Foggy streets' (left) and 'river bank' (right).

Visualization ought to have played a central role to our work, however I feel we severely neglected that critical part of the process. As a team, we didn't take concepting as seriously as we should have and we were too distracted by 'the game idea'. The majority of the early concepts we produced were paintings for the sake of painting. With the exception of a good deal of overpaints, the lack of visual development throughout was another major barrier to a successful final outcome.

I especially missed an opportunity to do more concepting at the start of the project, but as usual it seems I was distracted by technical problems. My primary complaint these past few months has been feeling shackled to the engine. I learned a lot, but being the sole 'engine guy' was quite miserable, especially towards the end. However in hindsight this was largely self-inflicted, as we could have made major improvements in the way we divided the work.

Once a level reaches a certain size, using the usual 'make a list and distribute it evenly' method of assigning assets is inadequate. I learned this too late unfortunately, but it's a mistake I won't repeat. If I were to go back and do it again, I would allocate work by area, rather than by each individual asset. Everyone would be responsible for their section of the level, from concepting through to engine. This would diversify the work load, encourage team members to take pride in the key areas rather than individual assets, and promote seeking help and feedback from one another.

 The Apothecary.

The Lane.

The Streets.

The Alley.

The Florist.

The Garden.

I am left with mixed feelings at the end of this project. As you may have guessed at this point, I'm quite disappointed with our final outcome. We could have produced something of much higher quality, if we had only made better decisions. Our team should have achieved something vastly superior to what we did, but while we all work well individually, for a variety of reasons we don't work well as a group. This has been a monumentally frustrating experience, but I do feel I learned from it.

A small, masochistic part of me wants to go back and do it again, now that I can see all the places we took a wrong turn. But a big part of me is just glad it's over. Still, for next time:

• Visual Development and Communication is pivotal to the success of a project. Concepts should only serve to move an idea forward and improve the project. In future, I'll take this more seriously and ensure that I'm not wasting time with pretty pictures.
• An opportunity for a change of scene shouldn't be missed. We all probably spend too much time behind our desks. I certainly do, so next year I'm going to make more of an effort to visit different places.
• Divide the work up by area, not by asset. I had previously thought that the best way to divide tasks in a group was to delineate the work as much as possible and allocate it based on individual strengths and weaknesses. I was wrong. Next time, I will divide the work by area and not shy away from assigning challenging tasks to team members.
• Encourage and support one another. I think I underestimate the value of positive reinforcement and it's something I could definitely improve. Moving forward I will make an effort to be more encouraging.
• Make decisions based on what will make life easier. Work smarter, not harder. At the beginning of this project, we were all encouraged to create a 3D side-scroller. We chose not to, which in hindsight was probably a big mistake. Had we done a side-scroller, we would have avoided a lot of the problems we encountered.

It feels like I've been working on this forever, even though it's only been a few months. But then again, it's the longest project I've worked on nearly 3 times over. It's been a hell of a ride but if it pays off next year, it'll all have been worth it. See you then.