Promo's Adventure (Or Monte's Quest?)-- Post-Mortem

Finally! We did it!

We were literally in a battle against time for the first half of this week. We were so efficient that we forged a "pipeline" that successfully lead us to finish the game in time.

The Pipeline

When I look back now, I still can't believe how could we made a game from this:

Early last week

To this in just a week:

Screenshot1

Screenshot2

I'm so glad that in my first prototype in EAE:MGS, I have such a awesome team! (Andrew the Producer, Vaibhav the Co-engineer and Nathan the artist.) Although the process was tough, but we had our fun. We laughed at our mistakes and jokes so many times that I almost lost count. 

Now, for the post-mortem. Although we finished the game at last, but I think we could have done it a few days earlier. And yes, there are a few things that could have done better, as we discussed in the meeting on Wednesday:
1. We should have started the level-design as soon as we finished the first-stage prototype (which is in the first week);
2. We should consider the art factor at the beginning and work out the solution at the second week during which period we were so exciting adding new features to the sandbox that we wouldn't even gonna use.

On the programming part, I'm still a little confused which approach is better, divide the work and do it on your own, or just work on the same stuff together? 

For the first two weeks I was using the first method, things went pretty well and I was able to finish the first-stage prototype and add a few functions myself. But as a team, it is a little vague about how we divide the work, and merging the code also takes many time. However, the good side is  we can concentrate and often that's when we make progress. And face it, this is how it works in the industry.

And for the last two weeks, I was working with Vaibhav most of the time and that also went very well. Things went pretty smooth, we made a lot of progress and most importantly, we finished the game! No more merging the code, so we didn't have to read and understand each other's code. The program became crystal clear as we all knew what we put into the code. The downside is one of us stuck, the team stuck. And it is kind of hard to get into the "zone" when someone is sitting beside you typing, or talking. But it is a good way to learn from each other, that's why we are here, aren't we?

Anyway, there is still time to figure it out. We're going to have a another prototype tomorrow and this time it is gonna be C# and XNA. I can't wait to get started.

-Max