BCU Year 1 Undergraduate Project
Main learning points
Get user feedback as soon as possible.
Create readable and accessible documentation; team can easily stay on the same page.
Use a prototype to help us understand ideas we have doubts about.
A First Person Wave Shooter developed over 4 months with 5 artists and 2 programmers. It was my first team project.
The team followed a design brief created by the university tutors, with some creative freedom on the execution of details.
With this freedom, I was responsible for leading and assessing design ideas from team members for the enemies.
My main objective was to ensure they were feasible to create in the time frame. I created a backlog to help with this task.
With so many moving parts, I personally couldn't focus on design as much as I wanted to. I spent most of my time creating schedules for the team, ensuring everyone was working well and clearing up misunderstandings.
We didn't get user feedback early on, so the design suffered for this; by the time we realised we made a mistake it was too late into production.
The end product was a game created on time and within schedule, but we should have gotten user feedback early on to improve the game.
Due to my thorough documentation and production work, I earnt a First Class on this project.
See below for screenshots from production.
As project manager, I used an extensive backlog to organise the many different moving parts within the team
This focus document to help bring all moving parts into one direction; this document reminded team of certain design elements, and contained design details of whole game.
Research doumentation to bring together the whole production into one place.
Screenshots from our game
Player can choose a difficulty on the start screen, or can opt for Co-Op play.
The player has a special weapon that can be charged at crystals found throughout the level.
The player must defend all 4 crystals from 4 waves in order to win.
Some enemies fire rockets at the player
Player special mechanics:
The player can throw down green landmines.
They explode spectacularly.
The player can throw a ball and teleport to it.
A good look at all of our enemies in the game.
We wanted a mix of enemies that synergised well and challenged the player is various ways.
