POSTMORTEM

When our team first received the prompt "a poem that reshapes reality as it’s read" we were a bit surprised but pretty quickly came up with the idea of having the poem reshape reality by having it cause transitions between elements. 

From the start we were too ambitious. The result was that there were some features that were not implemented such as grappling mechanics, storytelling elements, unique enemies for all levels, and we didn't have collectibles. Originally we were going to have one giant level that changed but instead we moved to having the elemental levels be separated. However, despite not being able to fulfill all of our ambitions within the given time frame, we were still able to accomplish a lot and finish the game.  The main lesson we learned as a team was that we should have managed our time better and stuck more closely to the plan we outlined in our pitch. Given extra time, we would love to improve the level design, finish our grappling system, improve the aesthetic of our game, and add some sort of tutorial.

Luke Murayama: Looking back at what I did, the thing I regret most is not starting as early as the rest of the team. The initial plan was that I would work on enemy behavior and the menu. What ended up happening was someone else created a simple menu so they could get started and I didn't really do much the first week besides create a script that was only used once in the intro. I kept putting off working on enemy behavior because I kept thinking that the game needed to be more fleshed out before I could start properly working. As the deadlines got closer I realized I needed to take more responsibility and start contributing. My main contributions ended up being creating the unique mechanics for each level, creating some shaders and doing some post processing, and finally helping with bug fixing. If I had more time one thing I would have liked to do is make the poem verses more juicy instead of having them just show up on screen and fade away.

Tony Pau: Going into this project I felt confident and thought we'd even finish ahead of schedule since we preplanned to limit how crazy we were getting. The plan was simple parkour with some advance movement and we did get that. The main issue I faced was the code i learned to do wasn't working in the project due to many issues like a misalignment in the player objects, grappling makes players fall through the world, and more. I really got stuck on that part and with many other things outside the project happening with similar deadlines, the stress was building up. I honestly think if I took on this project even now (a week after) I can do so much more and in less time. I've learned so much more about movement systems, particles, and camera shaders in just a week alone. If I had more time I would've liked to fix up the movement and not cut out the grappling hook, and also potentially add some camera related stuff like shaders to set a specific style and tone to the game and potentially enhance the game overall.

Nhat Thai: Doing this team project was an eye–opening experience for me as this being the first unity group project that I have been on. It is so much different than just working on a project myself, and I have learned what it is like to work with others. Though the game didn’t turn out completely as we expected, it was still a good learning experience that will surely be beneficial in the future. Even so, I am happy with everyone’s work and communication during the project. If there were some thing that I could’ve done differently, that would be to be more strict with our planning and more flexible with how we handled workload. We were too heavily dependent on one aspect of our game that everything else was just halted for a while. We definitely should have created a more basic foundation for the game and work on our each individual tasks. Regardless, it was no one’s particular fault, group projects are always challenging. As to my role in the game, I am somewhat happy with what I was able to accomplish given the time restraint.

Brennen Tsang: When we started to build the game, I didn't realize how much harder it will be to create a visually pleasing world while creating unique level designs. I feel like the levels we currently have are short and not as challenging yet. It can be hard to balance gameplay controls and making levels challenging enough to beat. We did meet our goal of making four different levels with four different themes. My main contributions were making some of the levels and creating the trailer for our game. I learned how to balance out levels and create fun yet challenging levels. The fact that each level had its own theme helped with creating levels because I would make levels based on the theme. If I had more time, I would have liked to create a longer and more functional levels with appealing designs.

Test Level