Overall I believe our project went quite well, we had hiccups along the way, but it all played an important role as experience. Learning how to function and work as a team, a glimpse into the world of working in industry.
Many issues within our project stemmed from communication and teamwork. Rarely were there issues with developing; assets, materials, shaders, textures, etc. Specifically the work side of the project; figuring out how to achieve set tasks. Issues were raised with pre-production and communication.
Production began too far forwards, not taking into account important, necessary steps for efficient pre-production. Which would smoothly transition us into production, and what production we did do, didn’t prioritise game functionality. On top of this; there was a great lack of communication, and management. For the first three months of our project, we were blindly working independently for an undetermined goal, with no leading voice, provoking mass confusion, as no sprints were defined. This was rather hard for me to work with, since I aspire to be a TA; optimising and working on an unorganised project was extremely hectic. However, I did help throw together an organised discord server, in attempts to rectify communication issues, this only mitigated the issue slightly.
I never got the opportunity to plan optimisation techniques within the group, as we strived so far ahead so quickly. Fortunately, our game is rather simple, so optimisation was never an overwhelming issue-- but something I would of loved to work on. It would of still been very beneficial focusing on optimisation, especially for foliage, as 65% of the tri count within our scene is that (could of been fixed with pre-planned LODs). Furthermore, as our game is split screen, post processing must be rendered twice. Plus, more tris will be rendered at a time, as both players will be navigating the scene.
For months the project was not readily available for group members, so even if we wanted to, changes in engine couldn't be made. Which is especially detrimental to those specialising in roles focused on in engine tasks. Unfortunately, the GDD was also not readily available, I only gained access to it's layout months in to project. This created an obvious disconnect in communication; members weren't on the same page, sharing clear ideas, and there was a great lack of communication between those working in engine, and outside of it.
The style document was also created much too late, members of the group frequently were lost in confusion when producing assets to match the style of our game. With no explicitly defined parameters. This especially caused much confusion when passing assets between one another. Breaking the flow of the pipeline, as we frequently returned to an asset to attempt it once more, or make small changes. With our style and pre-production defined we could of focused more on the implementation of tiling maps, similar to those of World of Warcraft. So simple assets, such as wood, which we had plenty of, could be textured quickly. With the added advantage of less draw calls. UVs and textures could be produced with this in mind, if we had the suitable planning beforehand.
Another obvious issue, specific to out game's style and production, is the overwhelming volume of assets that needed to be hand painted. Also due to a lack of pre-production, we never truly optimised this side of the pipeline.
We never developed a coherent whitebox, or greybox for that matter. Skipping straight to implementing finalised assets. The whitebox was extremely underdeveloped. We were producing assets with no obvious purpose, with the risk of them not being used. Any asset requires information and purpose to create, for example:
How close is the asset to the camera?
Where should the asset be placed in engine?
Is there a pre-existing block-out?
Are there any reference pictures?
Will this asset be rigged?
Is there a special shader being used?
Is there any special requirements for the asset?
Without this, the group was lost for months, production was extremely slow.
Fortunately, the group reverted back to pre-production halfway through the year. Working through said issues, ensuring everyone is on the same page and with set roles, and purpose within the project.
The group, for the most part, has worked flawlessly together.
If I were to mitigate these issues in the future, I would be much more upfront or dedicate more time in the decision of management roles distributed within our group. Unfortunately, issues relating to my personal life made it difficult to propagate such ideals.