The Struggles of Game Development

The Struggles of Game Development

By: Pedro Colon

This month has admittedly been a tough one. Between being down to just three and life situation getting in the way, its hard for me to say that I feel the most stratified with the project at its current state. There has been a lot of good work done, the AI, UI controls, Kart controls and the level being made. However, I can't help but feel there so much more could be done and better too. This post will be different from the usual ones. Perhaps a cry for help, a vent post? Hard to say. I do feel I have some blame in hindsight, with my lack of experience with leadership along with feeling defeated for the month has greatly decreased productivity. Do note this is not an attack on anyone nor will be naming who because this is to shine light to the struggles of this game development rather than to provide a hitlist of who to blame. That would be counterproductive for such a chaotic month that made two of our teammates rightfully focus on life responsibilities instead of working on the project since those life responsibilities take precedent first and foremost. So lets get into this.

The Work That Was Done:

On my end, I have done I hope quite a bit of work. Of course, I didn't want to do just everything cause everyone needed/has a role in how the game develops. And so my role was to handle any kind of extraneous stuff, be it level, level mechanics, making sure UI is working well together, and sounds as a few example. Here is the progress made with towards the end of the month:



Turbo Pads, New Track, Added music along with code changes to the level manager and music manager to account new track and music added, adding sounds to the UI, and checkpoint code/game management code for time trial added as well. Quite a bit were added yeah?

Well yes and no. While the code functionality is made and working well, there is no fancy visual effect to it to truly make it pop. Which while may not be the biggest issue for the current state, definitely makes it feel weak rather than something that pops out. This will be taken into account for when we roll out the beta version.




Oh and gap for the base track level has been fixed! So progress was made but not a huge strive of progress I feel.

The Sad Part:

But sadly, the greater issue became with in real life responsibilities and problems that have vastly overshadowed the project. Tasks assigned to a few were delayed heavily due to time and life obligations that greatly led progress for the project's alpha build to be lowered. This is where my fault begins: Instead of checking with them, making sure that things were okay, I instead did not do that. In my head, I didn't want to come off as someone who is too overlooking on their progress since my teammates were people with their autonomy. However, there is a difference between overlooking/helicopter management and making sure everything is okay with team. One shows a lack of trust with the team to do a job well by being overbearing, another shows an investment on their teammates wellbeing by checking in on them to see if things are okay or time/help is needed. Its subtle but important and my mistake was conflating the two as the same.

However, this mistake may have held this project back considerably as if only I decided to take this action sooner, we would be able to do more. But this didn't occur sadly.

What Do We Do Now?:

Honestly, I don't know. With the likelihood that we might lose two of our teammates, we might be down to just being a two man team. The issue now becomes, do we continue with the project that we have or do we start another? I admit it feels weird to continue afterwards without having the teammates there (if they don't come along). However, their work is important to the project and should be showcased even if they might not be there. But, if we do, then we will more than likely have to shrink some aspects of our game due to the fact that we don't have the manpower for the project envision. So at that point, do we just do another project then? Its hard to answer and something I feel worth bringing up with our mentor to see what should be done next. Regardless there is a lesson in this all, with all the struggle given.

If you are a team lead, don't be afraid to check up on your teammates to make sure everything is okay. And for teammates, don't be afraid to message the team lead/management that there are issues occurring, that way the team lead can make adjustments as needed and delegate tasks as needed to others to make up for it. Everyone is in this together, and since we are, so is making sure our wellbeing is okay and along with making sure that tasks might need to be change to course correct, cause life is unpredictable and we should adapt and understand that life just happens and we should adjust/delegate tasks to others if one of the teammates is unable to send much time on it due to said life. Don't let said circumstances keep you down. It had me down and it was so much more of a struggle due to it. Do your best whenever you can and be sure to communicate openly. 

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