In hindsight, getting everyone to actively work on implementing their additions to the game, instead of depending on one individual familiar with the engine, would have been a better course of action to take. Our teams hard skills were based around artwork, and with only one programmer, it meant that we had one individual who could implement the artwork produced. it also meant that the predefined roles we assigned ourselves at the start of the course hindered overall progress on the build, as we had to wait for certain functionality to be implemented and understood by the team.
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You're absolutely right! having everyone contribute to the game development process would have leveraged our collective strengths more effectively. It's a great learning experience for future projects, showing us the value of flexibility in roles and skills development.
It's good that you guys are aware of faults in your team composition and workflow, sometimes things like that are just unavoidable or too late into development to change which is unfortunate but I think there's a lot to learn from that if you're aware of it during production. Hopefully the stuff you guys experienced will help in capstone!
Our pipeline suffered a similar fate, with there only being one dedicated artist while the other two programmers worked on the systems. It made testing out how things would look pretty tricky, and with only 2 people being on the engine throughout development it made it tricky to keep team morale up with making progress.
Yeah, having a single programmer familiar with the implementation often does set a delay, with them both having to juggle adding new features and adding the assets of the game. That, in addition to fighting against your roles, I hope that your team is still proud with the result over the course of development.
This devlog insightfully reflects on the challenges faced by a team primarily skilled in artwork, relying heavily on a single programmer for game implementation. It's a common scenario in many projects, where specialized roles lead to bottlenecks. A potential solution for future projects could be investing in cross-functional training, enabling team members to gain a basic understanding of each other's roles. This doesn't mean artists need to become expert programmers or vice versa, but having a foundational knowledge can facilitate better communication, streamline workflow, and reduce dependency on a single individual. Additionally, leveraging game engines and tools that are more artist-friendly and require less programming can help balance the workload.
Hi Ethan!
I'm sorry that you had one programmer working on your project but I really want to see the build that you have so far! If anything, you can work more on it on your spare time over the summer!
I understand the feeling where all in engine work falling on one person it does really slow progress down and especially if you wait to get one thing done at a time that's why even though a group may have their roles I find it better to have roles overlap to allow multiple people to work on the same task if needed.