The First Milestone

On Monday night we had to present everything we had done so far to Ben(our tutor and producer for the project). This included the Concept Document, pitch document, 5 pieces of concept art, project plan and finally the tech prototype. As a team we were well on top of everything although there were some nervy moments in the run up to the deadline. There were worries about who was going to finish all of the concept art so me and Simon had to lighten Harry's load a little bit and do a piece each. My main task was to write up the pitch document. Originally Phil and Simon wanted to do a page of the document as they want to contribute to the overall design of the game. However, I ended up taking on the full document as they had plenty of programming to keep them busy until the deadline rolled around. I didn't mind this as I felt they already were contributing enough but it was nice to see their hunger to get involved with other areas of the game and help out with more work than they probably had time to actually do. The pitch document went well! I was a little worried about having enough time to get it all finished due to the amount I had to work during the last 3 weeks before the deadline. I settled at my desk with some snacks and a constant stream of tea to make sure I got it all done. It started out quite rough because I had no original art to use in the document. This came from a lack of a dedicated artist to contribute to the document but I quickly got over it. I thought I'd use the one piece of concept art that I had to do as something useful to stick in the document. This ended up being a picture of Hop in The Void dimension (Which you can see in my previous post) which ended up becoming the front cover for the document and used in the character profile I wrote up for him. I also drew some little sketches of each unique dimensional mechanics in action.

The front cover of the pitch document.

The Mechanics page of the pitch document.

So the document ended up getting finished on time along with the concept art. It took a couple of proof readings from Simon to get everything perfected in terms of the text. I seemed unable to proof read the damn thing myself due to staring at it for days on end whilst writing it. So, it was lucky Simon was there to tell me where I'd gone wrong. I was extremely proud of the document when it was finished, it seemed like there wasn't too many pages to it but each page was full of information so I didn't feel too bad about it. I managed to get everything I wanted to say and show the reader in there and that's all that mattered to me by the end of it. I just hope my faith in the document isn't misplaced!

When it came to the day of the actual presentation we were all a bit nervous but I got out nice and early, got it printed out and took it into class. The other teams seemed to be in a mad rush getting everything finished. We had some minor things to take care of and we still had to get things printed off but we must've been more organised than I thought we were. As, when 7 o'clock rolled around we were in the classroom ready to present everything. However, we didn't realise it had to be handed in digitally too so we had to sit and sort through that. Everything was really tense in the final weeks but I guess I didn't think about the other teams and how they were feeling too. I assumed it was just us because we weren't the most organised and I guess you could say the least balanced team in term of covering all the development disciplines. Although, I spose we have Simon's regimented use of ClockingIT to thank for at least being organised enough to get us through this milestone.

The presentation itself went fairly well. We planned out what we would say and how we would present our work. With Simon doing an introduction and a recap to start things off. I talked everyone through the Tech Demo as Phil played it and discussed the gameplay. Harry then took over by talking about the concept art and we passed around a couple of things. James finished off with our vision for this project and how we plan to move forward and make it a reality. Meanwhile the whole team pitched in and was answering questions throughout the whole thing. I was proud of the guys afterwards as we tackled the presentation as a team just as we had done with the work that had to be handed in.

With all of that out the way, we decided to review the first milestone and self evaluate our performance and how we may be able to work more efficiently as a team from now on. The daunting task of the remaining art work in the project was our main topic of conversation. We decided that, as nobody wanted to do it, we would all do it. So from now on we are going to divide up all art work and just keep it simple. It's the only way to handle the rest of the art without forcing someone to do it all. We all have varied but limited skills in art so keeping it very basic is the key to making this work.
We also discussed the fact that we crammed a lot of work into the last week when it could've been done over a period of 3 weeks. We would now try to break work up into more manageable chunks by giving ourselves a lot more short term deadlines. I also suggested giving ourselves a personal deadline about a week before the actual deadline for the next milestone so that we can review what we've done and make any necessary adjustments. Some pieces of work such as the project plan went without proof reading by other members of the team as there just wasn't enough time. This would also give ourselves the chance to print and prepare everything a day before hand in so that when it comes to hand in day we can just relax and go in as normal without rushing around trying to finish or fix things.

Overall, I'm really pleased with how the first milestone went. I think we did well as a team to have everything ready and to what I feel is a high standard. We've shown as a team that we can pull together and get things done and even though we definitely have some noticeable weaknesses as a team, we've shown that we also have some strengths. We've learnt our lessons from the first milestone and can hopefully go on to do this project justice!

That's all for now!