This post marks the end of Alpha. With the main gameplay loop mostly implemented, most of the changes made to the project at this point were minor adjustments and fixes, alongside the change from 3D to 2.5D in the game's dodging segment to bring it in line with documentation and plans. Most of this post will pertain to my reflection of myself and the team throughout alpha.
Changing the dodging pawn's camera was incredibly easy - rather than building a new system I simply just had to rip the camera controls out and place it at a comfortable distance from the player. As for changing the conductor, this mostly came down to adding another one of its attacks from the list discussed with my team (a 'coin rain' attack where the conductor throws coins into the air, aiming to land them on the player's head). The conductor gets the location of the player, spawns a warning for half a second, then peforms the attack. This cycle happens until the round ends. I also slightly edited the whip attack that the conductor already had so that it's more fair for 2.5D player by making it a little slower and having it spawn at a consistent degree of rotation around the conductor to make it more predictable.
Alpha has by far been the busiest segment of development for me. The contrast between the lack of work I had to do in pre-production compared to alpha was stark but manageable, especially towards the beginning of alpha where most of the game's systems were completely missing and my workflows were mostly untested. I think overall my work during alpha has been to a standard I am happy with, although if there was anything obvious to improve it would be the speed at which I implement features, as we're leaving alpha with not all mechanics fully implemented. It isn't a massive issue, as the mechanics that aren't entirely implemented are just minor additions to the dodging phase (like the two unimplemented attacks) and the rank feature at the end of the game. Additionally, we've yet to even design how the puzzle segment will work yet, something I need to bring up with my team at the start of beta.
As for the performance of the entire team, I think we work together fairly well. My biggest complaints come with the sometimes lacklustre team meetings we had in the midst of alpha. While it wasn't detrimental, as I knew what I was doing for the most part, it would've been helpful to hear what others in my team were working on daily (or weekly), and get some extra direction as to what to focus on mechanics wise and where to leave for later in alpha or the start of beta.
My biggest concern for the entirety of the project is the lack of testing we've been able to conduct. Aside from my own bugfixing and QA, nothing has been indicated as to when (or if) we will do the big alpha playtest to get some much needed feedback about the UI and (especially) UX of the game's mechanics.
Overall, I think we've done well comparatively to some of the other teams. The focus we should have for beta should be implemeting the diaspora of 2D and 3D assets that have been made in alpha into the game, alongside merging my mechanics-focused development branch and Ethan's level design branch of the GitHub together.