Clearer MVP: When waiting to test Charge! I kept trying to get us to gameplay that felt representative, first making the basic laser weapons shoot reflective shots in blueprints, and making a function library for reflections and refractions, then learning multiplayer shooting and gamemode implementation through unreal's Replication, Blueprint RPCs, and sessions, and then how to combine that with unreal's gamemode system. However, even after doing this, and reaching a functional deathmatch, we still had considerations for other game mechanics, like melee, throwables, and other things, and I continued to prioritize making things new or better, vs testing what we already had, even if it wasn't 100 of what our vision was. I realize now that without the core experience, none of that other stuff can be helpful to us, and if I were to do it over, I'd make sure we were 100% clear on what base Charge! needed, and once we had that, go all in on testing, to bring out those issues with reflections as a main mechanic, and have more time to find solutions. And, during this time, I would also establish an understanding that we should avoid talking about implementing new things until the core prototype is solid. In balancing a more tech leadership role for the first time, I tried to be available to establish the art pipeline, and implement the new assets that were being created, even if they weren't core feature related, so that art could still progress while core mechanics were being fleshed out, but I realize now that this still took too much attention away that I couldn't properly finish the MVP in a timely manner. It was just me as a programmer for a while, so this may be more feasible when a team starts out with more programmers, but I know that if we could have made the concessions necessary to be able to focus on finishing our MVP for unique gameplay, then take stock at what we could achive from there, we could get a lot farther in making a uniquely fun game with the scrappy power of our team.

Realism of making 5v5 combat: Given our team size, in hindsight, 5v5 combat is quite the task, and looking at it now, I likely should have had us make a more concrete plan for how we'd be able to test that, given our team size, and situation, being an online team in the summertime. 5v5 isn't impossible, but it requires a lot more resources for testing, having an ideal player count of 10 players, and especially when the player count matters more in a collaboration-focused game. So, it would have been worth it to consider more closely whether this player count was necessary to our goals, or if we could cut down on players, and achieved the same effect. To help with this recently, I made a playtesting discord to organize times to test with a larger group, and this was helpful, but doing this sooner would have helped us gain a lot more momentum, seeing the game in action sooner, and identifying ways to make it better from a realistic set of players. Also, if I was to do this again, and we still wanted 5v5, I would make implementing AI player bots a much higher priority. We did start this, but by the time we did, I was already more busy with school, and we had needed to be playtesting much sooner. Plus, having even simple AI that can shoot and complete an objective would have been a great help for those working on level design, to more easily see how combat plays out in their space.

Scope and clearer vision: If real estate is all about location, location, location, this project has further cemented that game development is vision, vison, vison. Whenever we have had a clear vision of what we wanted, we've been so much more effective in utilizing the capabilities of our team, and collaborating, such as when we implemented the first arena level and got reflections working on it, implemented basic character animation, or other things that we knew we wanted, where we could make clear tasks to collaborate on, and ultimately, feel they were complete. However, with mixed ideas on how a basic match of Charge! should play out (slow and tactical vs medium speed and high pace, all about teamwork or can an individual carry a match?, etc.), things dragged out more, and this affected other aspects of the development cycle, such as our ability to say we were ready for playtests, or confidently implement more features, because the current core gameplay was still lacking a definite direction. In hindsight, scoping down on the features we were willing to consider (throwables, melee weapons, potential gamemodes, player count, etc.), and the fidelity of art features we wanted to make a pipeline for (full 3rd person blendspaces for opponents, 1st person ones for you, different character models, etc.), would have helped immenesly in letting us get past that milestone of being confident in the viability of our MVP. It's not that implementing the blendspaces, 1st and 3rd person animations, melee weapons, and all that, were an immense challenge, but needing to consider all that while trying to hammer down a core fun experience meant I and eventually the 1 other programmer,only had so much bandwidth, and couldn't focus as well on just refining the reflection-based shooting, identifying the issues with it, and finding a solution/ deciding to pivot much earlier. In being the lead programmer, I felt bad when I could clearly see the artists were doing work fast, and needing pipeline help to get their work in game, and so I split my attention to try and do it all, but as I've stepped away and been able to focus on other school projects, I've been reminded of just how important focus is for making the best thing I can, and also being able to work fast. So, if I was to do this in the future, I would make sure that we can our clear vision of what the core gameplay, but then be stalwart in giving my team's gameplay programmers, provided it had a reasonable deadline, a headspace free of other polish considerations, so that we can focus on making the core gameplay work, and then when the team and testers are happy with that, then open conversations for how we can polish it, and add better art features, from there. And, even if we would have to make some concessions, at least we'd have a solid game foundation to build on, so that the assets we would have the scope to implement would matter more.