Kirby and West Post-mortem

Good points

The team felt we had a strong initial concept, good organisation and very open communication (most of the time). Leadership was good and helped by unanimous group enthusiasm. Because of this things went quickly: problems were voiced and resolved quickly, everybody got better at 3D (both texturing and modelling) and every one got good experience with the engine.

Bad Points

In terms of the team we suffered a missing team member and had a communication blip right at the end that though solved maturely did result in repetition of some work and a bit of wasted time and energy.

With the project itself the central room proved difficult to block out and get proportions right and we all felt we could have benefited from a clearer idea of project brief, particularly in the early stages when we found we were going much deeper into game play issues (for instance) than we needed to.

Things we’d do differently

Next time round we would knock out more concepting faster to really stoke through the initial buildup.

Not having a professional infrastructure with builds and so on meant that possession of the level was a scarce resource, particularly in the early stages when making pretty important big design decisions. We would have to work out some way of ensuring the core of the level was available for everyone.

In hindsight we probably should have had only one tech lead and expected them to be around more. We should have given out the assets differently, ie more coherently, such as having one person do all the pillars.

The computers in the lab weren't up to the job so it would have been good to have had the space to work together more, this would also have moulded the team more and energised the non-leads to get more work done.

From a design point of view it probably would have been more interesting to have done the back corridors rather than the main hall of the building. The project certainly developed our understanding of what buildings are.

What we learned

We learnt that communication is key. Working together better - more often, more effectively, more efficiently - is so important in a group and we should all be actively working harder to be better group members. We learnt delegation skills, problem solving and time management.

From the project we will take away a better understanding of the creative potential of engines, it's a creative tool too. And we have all developed our abilities in and understanding of generating ideas and artistic judgement.