What Went Wrong
1. Mr. T-Pose Pities the Fool
We approached Guardians of Neverwood without certain prerequisite skills for the design and implementation of a full 3D engine. This is common at Full Sail, and the teams are expected to fill in the blanks on their own. We assumed that with the wealth of online tutorials available, we'd have no trouble implementing a skinned-mesh animation system in a few days. Then, the wheels on the bus fell off. There were hardly any tutorials available for animating models in OpenGL using skinned-mesh, which we had already instructed our content pipeline to produce. In addition, the one animation expert at Full Sail had recently accepted a position at a game house in the Northeast, leaving the school devoid of anyone who could offer us some help. We simply had bitten off more than we could chew, and it was too late to fix it before we realized it.
We went through, count 'em, five model formats before we finally found one that would even support the features we were looking to implement. Eventually, responsibility for animation was passed off from one team member to another, which forced the research process to essentially be started over. In addition, all of the new graphics guru's previous schedule had to be either cut, redistributed, or simply crushed down into whatever free time was available. This change sent shockwaves through our entire development plan, forcing us to essentially abandon the schedule and just start doing features in the order it came naturally.
2. The Man With No Arms and No Legs, Hanging On a Wall
There is quite a bit more we'd like to do with the game, but we've been hampered by a lack of art resources. Now, let me preface this by saying that the art guys at Full Sail are absolutely incredible. We couldn't have produced anything close to the quality of game that we did without their skills. However, they are seriously understaffed, an issue Full Sail is aware of and actively trying to rectify. Their team consists of four modelers and one sound engineer, plus any temporary interns they can pick up.
Now, while this might be enough to handle a project of the scope of Guardians of Neverwood in two months, these guys are responsible for anywhere from four to six projects per class, and there are now seven final project classes going on at any given time. Translation: a team of five men, and any extra hands they can dredge up, are working on up to forty-two games at any given time. In this case, 42 is not the answer to life, the universe, and everything. The fact that anybody gets any content at all is nothing short of a miracle, and a testament to the superhuman abilities of these fine gentlemen.
That said, it was difficult for us to get the kind of art support that would be common at a professional studio with a dedicated art team. Our music was not available until the day of final presentation, and many of our models and textures came in post-alpha. This is entirely due to the astronomical workload of the art department, and was a source of frustration throughout the project.
3. And in This Corner, Father Time!
There is no other way to say this - it is next to impossible to create a fully polished, full-featured 3D game in nine man-months. Throughout this project, we learned the true meaning of crunch time. We forgot how to sleep, took stock in Mountain Dew, and glossed over anniversaries in order to get this game done. We've pushed ourselves to a place far beyond what we thought our limits were, and lived to tell the tale. That said, we would have liked another month or so to work on this project under the auspices of the school.
As a side-note to this, scheduling played a big part in the difficulty during the design phase. In April, our class schedule consisted of our Console Development class, widely considered to be the most difficult non-project class in the program, and our design class. The Console teacher shows little to no concern for the demands on students' time, and piles numerous assignments with unrealistic deadlines on top of the design work that must already be done. As a coup de grace, the Console class runs from 5:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M., and then students had to be back in class at 9:00 A.M. the next day to work on design. In many cases, it was all we could do to stay awake, let alone be on top of our game for design and research.
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