My Role and Work I Did

My role in this project was primarily that of an artist. I was in charge of designing the layouts of the levels in the game and then creating the set dressing/environment art of the levels. On the Kanban board, the total time of all the tasks amounts to 24 hours. However, I probably spent at most half of that time working on the project due to unfortunate circumstances in my personal life. For the work I did complete, screenshots of the layouts I drew up and the music I created are attached to this devlog. It took me about half the time I anticipated to come up with the layouts and about 3 hours to make the music as opposed to the 4 that I had predicted. I also assisted Cole in coming up with the concepts for the puzzles and planning how they would be incorporated into the levels, as can be seen in the screenshots.

The Most Difficult Part

While the unfortunate circumstances in my personal life prevented me from completing most of the work I planned, I would say that the most difficult part of the work I managed to get done was the music. Even though I had a clear idea from the beginning of what I wanted to do, writing music is no easy task and I still had a tedious and frustrating experience with it.

What I Learned

The main things I learned during this project were simply things I had already known before. The unfortunate circumstances in my personal life took me out of the last week of the project. From what I did experience, there are two things I noted that need to be worked on. The first and more apparent issue was my poor time management, which has been a frequent problem throughout my college education. I need to work on properly breaking up my time outside of class and not going on 10-hour-long gaming binges. The second and less severe, yet still important, issue was mixed up or missing communication. In the first week of the project, there was very little communication I feel between myself and the other team members, though this could be for a variety of reasons, so I will not speculate as to why. However, this did leave us somewhat underprepared at the start of the next week. Additionally, there were one or two instances where details about the project had gotten a little mixed up, again mainly in my opinion. The main instance I can think of is what puzzle was in each room. I wrote down on my layouts which rooms I felt each puzzle should be in, while someone else had written down in their notes a different order for the puzzles. I should have properly communicated my ideas to the whole team when I was coming up with them, as while the different order wasn't a problem, it was confusing to realize that they didn't match up.

What I Am Most Proud Of

While I was not able to do everything I had planned for this project, out of what I did, I would say I am most proud of the music I wrote for the game. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do for it, how I wanted it to sound, and how I would start it, and the finished product is probably one of if not the best soundtrack I have written for a game project.