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Reflection: Post-Mortem

Description; I am a designer currently working on the video game Colony 7. The purpose of the blog is to address the issues of the game's development and to address any solutions or alternative methods to better prepare for the arrival of inconveniences in the future or how to avoid them entirely. The blog also addresses my individual performance. The team is made up of two programmers and four level designers but all do not necessarily combine roles during development. The game is being developed in Unity (2017.1.1f1 onward) with a development time of 13 weeks for a college allocated task. This is the final bog for the development of the sci-fi adventure game Colony 7. It has been developed by my team, studio Embarrassed Tent, and was unfortunately an imminent failure. The purpose of this task was to build the skills I have been taught and work under the unfamiliarity of strangers and test workload limits. Individually I would like to begin with stating that I am content with the work I have provided for Colony 7. I came up with my own solutions to the problems faced within the time developing the game and I proceeded to inform and meet the deadlines I set for myself as well as those addressed by the team for me to complete. Almost all of the assets I created for Colony 7 have gone unused in the finalised result of the game and I had to leave knowing that most of my hard work had not been vital to the eventual forced outcome of asset cuts. This is something I have known from the beginning was a very possible event and I blame my team in no way for the lack of usefulness of my individual work. The time we have spent on the game was something better dedicated to the span of a year before a realistically shippable product could be released but all intended features had been started in some way and had been implemented in the project. I can state that not all team members were entirely useful in their performance but I have had no issues with them understanding me or my concerns. Our scope and ambitious attitudes are our initial downfall but this is something that I am satisfied with having happened now and not after the completion of my education.. I am able to put my emotions into account and understand how I must best approach my next game knowing that containing my excitement is priority. Disappointments are going to happen and that will always be inevitable if my passion is put before my expectations. Passion, I am clearly announcing,  was Colony 7's biggest issue, this is what halted Colony 7 from any realistic finished result Unfortunately Embarrassed Tent's first, and more than likely last, game Colony 7 is an unfinished project but the time I have dedicated and the design skills I have been able to build on is valuable to my experience as a designer. There will be no more further blogs. Thank you for your time. Colony 7 Designer, signing off. Thank you gamedev.net for providing me with a means to reflect and learn on my experience as a designer.
Colony 7 Production Blog

Colony 7 Production Blog

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Issue: Scope

Description; I am a designer currently working on the video game Colony 7. The purpose of the blog is to address the issues of the game's development and to address any solutions or alternative methods to better prepare for the arrival of inconveniences in the future or how to avoid them entirely. The blog also addresses my individual performance. The team is made up of two programmers and four level designers but all do not necessarily combine roles during development. The game is being developed in Unity (2017.1.1f1 onward) with a development time of 13 weeks for a college allocated task. It is week 10 of development time for Colony 7 and the game's build has had a profoundly obvious issue that has escaped all team members thus far. Scope. We have all suffered from our ambition to create a game with too many mechanics and small features that are not critical to the core of Colony 7's gameplay. Though despite our intended vision I can confirm that everyone had the same expectation and understanding of what the game is meant to be. As a designer I understood the risks and necessities of shortening the project and it's assets and narrative quality in order to respect the deadline in week 13.  The game's initial ideas and representation is still understood and the team is now preparing to secure on level of the game alongside a main HUB World. The intention was to have five completed levels with finalised aesthetics alongside the HUB World but our desirable goals now has us considering that two completed worlds with certain objectives would be satisfactory before the due date. This is our solution to the consequences of our scope. We have all decided on this new goal and are restricting our asset creation and secondary functions to our gameplay. Both designers and programmers are confident in out time management as we have all delivered our task's results on time and have contributed every week to the game's finalised build. Our intentions were not realistic in the time given for our project we have identified as the biggest issue thus far. Our game simply does not have time to feature a fully functioning set of mechanics due to having only two programmers in our studio team. As a designer I have experienced this issue twice during my education and have implemented my new strategies to Colony 7. I accept the consequences my team has faced and will improve  upon my initial and early planning with a team by studying what the idea needs establish as a project, what goals are realistic and small so that any further development is is additional and how reliant is the project on it's asset pieces and how is this work best split amongst team members.   More unexpected halts in progression will be addressed with future blogs throughout Colony 7's development time and the next blog is expected to be the final for game Colony 7.. Thank you for your time and feedback is appreciated. Colony 7 Designer.
Colony 7 Production Blog

Colony 7 Production Blog

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Issue: Unity Collaborate

Description; I am a designer currently working on the video game Colony 7. The purpose of the blog is to address the issues of the game's development and to address any solutions or alternative methods to better prepare for the arrival of inconveniences in the future or how to avoid them entirely. The blog also addresses my individual performance. The team is made up of two programmers and four level designers but all do not necessarily combine roles during development. The game is being developed in Unity (2017.1.1f1 onward) with a development time of 13 weeks for a college allocated task. Unity Collaborate was the bane of my team's existence is what I believe I should begin with. After having solved recent issues with it beforehand, the solutions my team put in place to avoid any mismatching between project versions stopped when too many members were altering the project version they had and upload their own copies. Much like my personal difficulty with MagicaVoxel once they had finished and prepared their changes Unity Collaborate would update the initial copy but would delete all changes made. Two days of both programming and design implementation were lost to this error but were quickly implemented again after the error was noticed. We found that using only two machine had no effect on the project but once three were using Collaborate then the errors would begin to appear. As our new precaution only two team members were allowed to work on the project when intending to use Collaborate to upload new additions for Colony 7. Using Trello to update our organised production we could focus on when changes were made and communication over Slack was more than efficient to tell the team when Colony 7 needed to be updated on all machines. Given my little interaction with the current copy of Colony 7 I did not have much to do with the solution but I was able to refer everyone to the similar issue with MagicaVoxel and the team now checks that they can upload without any halting progression before any major or big implementations are started. More unexpected halts in progression will be addressed with future blogs throughout Colony 7's development time. Thank you for your time and feedback is appreciated.   Colony 7 Designer.
Colony 7 Production Blog

Colony 7 Production Blog

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Issue: Exporting from MagicaVoxel

Description; I am a designer currently working on the video game Colony 7. The purpose of the blog is to address the issues of the game's development and to address any solutions or alternative methods to better prepare for the arrival of inconveniences in the future or how to avoid them entirely. The blog also addresses my individual performance. The team is made up of two programmers and four level designers but all do not necessarily combine roles during development. The game is being developed in Unity (2017.1.1f1 onward) with a development time of 13 weeks for a college allocated task. I experienced an issue with the program Magicavoxel during development time and was bale to warn the rest of my group and they have not yet experienced the issue as of yet. MagicaVoxel's export function was no longer working/ My attempts to create an object (obj) for Colony 7 resulted in any work that I had completed within the previous hours to be deleted.The program would stop working and would need to be shut down and opened again to be used. However I created the same assets multiple times and lost them the same way. I first tried taking Vox files from the program's folders and creating copies on my laptop manually but that resulted in objects that would not import into Unity and into our game properly. My final solution was to save the Vox files not completed recently (which were already stored online for anyone in my group to access) and then deleting and reinstalling MagicaVoxel to which the errors did not return. My conclusion is that the new update my device received did not agree with something that MagicaVoxel was prohibiting as the program stopped functioning after the Windows update. Despite having lost 3 days of time and work  I was able to warn my group of the issue and the work was caught up the following day after knowing exactly what it was I was making. There is nothing I assume I could have done to avoid the error but I now try to export a default object every time I use MagicaVoxel to verify if something has caused the program to halt my progression again. I am the only one to have received this problem so far and I make sure to upload any assets I create for my project online as soon as I have finished them in case of any sudden issues. I have not been personally efficient in covering more jobs as I haven't asked also. Due to some personal circumstances I wasn't able to work and I have hindered my group because of the week I spent doing little for Colony 7's progression. I plan to combat this by communicating more thoroughly with each designer and in the future assist with any programming I am able to despite my difficulty in that area. More unexpected halts in progression will be addressed with future blogs throughout Colony 7's development time. Thank you for your time and feedback is appreciated. Colony 7 Designer. (Below are all the assets that I had to recreate due to this issue)  
Colony 7 Production Blog

Colony 7 Production Blog

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Issue: Content Sharing and Textures

Description; I am a designer currently working on the video game Colony 7. The purpose of the blog is to address the issues of the game's development and to address any solutions or alternative methods to better prepare for the arrival of inconveniences in the future or how to avoid them entirely. The blog also addresses my individual performance. The team is made up of two programmers and four level designers but all do not necessarily combine roles during development. The game is being developed in Unity (2017.1.1f1 onward) with a development time of 13 weeks for a college allocated task. Previously the team discovered that Unity's sharing capability (Unity Collaborate) was disabling code and the intended implementation of the assets created and placed into the project causing 'colliders' on each object to conflict with each other when connected via our custom kit pieces. To solve the issue my team decided to create one distinct project that would serve as the complete copy of Colony 7. We also agreed upon, when necessary, finalising the complete copy of the game when together and distributing that project amongst each other before departing for the week. I did not have much influence in the resolution to this encountered issue but did make suggestions based on previous experience. I have encountered trouble with Unity Collaborate previously and am unsure how to approach using it correctly and understanding why projects may conflict with other versions despite not having any errors on the initial device. If code specifically were transferred in person from device to device then issues would be expected to be resolved with the exception of the project on Unity not being current with it's most developed copy. My team is using the program MagicaVoxel to create almost all assets (and all aesthetic assets) for Colony 7. Placing the exported files as an 'obj' from MagicaVoxel from my own device would always display the correct colour scheme that I had designed and selected in the initial program. However retrieving objects created by other members of my team from places including Google Drive and USB transfer would display objects defaulted to one colour with their additional image being of no use to the asset. A fellow designer managed to figure out that the Albedo function of the 'material' of the object in Unity was the disrupted aspect. By placing the image featuring the intended colour scheme could be added to the object. I identified the complication of the asset issue first and the solution discovered was the only preferable way to solve the issue in a short amount of time. Due to my designated role of asset creation I have not had any impact toward understanding how Colony 7 will form together as final product. MagicaVoxel being the program I have most used thus far has limited my chances to learn about other functions in the coding and implementation of my assets. Spending time with each team member and having them each explain their role and actions during development time would be beneficial in involving me in positions I can undertake and perform tasks not suited to me but needed, - These two problems encountered were the main disruptions my team encountered and we were able to solve with little cost to our development or time management. Individually I was able to point out the problems and make suggestions on how to best correct them both but I did perform greatly in solving the issues themselves. These were both things met during the early development of Colony 7 however. More unexpected halts in progression will be addressed with future blogs throughout Colony 7's development time. Thank you for your time and feedback is appreciated. Colony 7 Designer.
Colony 7 Production Blog

Colony 7 Production Blog

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