July 23rd, 2011: The day G4 productions faced annihilation!

"A day to remember", is the name of an American rock band my friend introduced me to on the 22nd of July. Ironically, the following was indeed a day to remember!

G4 productions, our game development team hadn't been functioning well in the last 2 weeks (namely weeks 9 and 10). The main issue being the workflow and teamwork. 

Despite the fact that every member had a specific role in the team, and that almost everyone was doing their part, the problem was with the end product: It looked like it was all Mohammed's work. The workflow was supposed to be something like this:  Abbas (project manager/ lead designer/co-animator) would convert his drawings so that they could be used in Flash, set up the environment and interface, hands them to Fatima (lead animator), who would then add animation and send the Flash file to me (sound designer/coder). I would then add sound effects and make adjustments where appropriate and finally, send the file to Mohammed (lead coder). I've highlighted our roles because now I'll explain the actual workflow and how the roles were thrown around.

The actual workflow was something this: Abbas converts the drawings and sends them to me, period. The reason being the poor communication between him and Fatima, and that she and I communicate more in Facebook therefore I ought to send the files to her myself. Knowing that it would take time for Fatima to finish the animation from past experience, and that Mohammed was impatiently waiting for the actual scenes to apply the codes on, the files were not being sent to her. Khalid, the sound designer and coder had volunteered to design the user interface, put a background, add texts that would simulate notebook writings, and draw a ladder. (For reference, see my previous work). After that, the files would be sent to Mohammed for him to apply his functioning codes that had waited so long for the actual mazes to be applied on. 

However, the final content that had been going to Mohammed wasn't professional and up to the quality of a video game. The main problems were the postioning and alignments of the maze symbols which created placements problems when the ActionScripts were applied. Therefore, Mohammed had to re-do and fix nearly everything himself. For maze 2( the sea maze), He had to fix the positioning issue, and animate the enemies himself; issues that he shouldn't had to worry about. Despite that, Mohammed at that time claimed he was fine with what happened, however, he had hinted out something like: "I am the coder, I can't worry about everything else". 

What I received from the lead designer.

What was added excluding the waves and small box below. And no, that object doesn't resemble a lost key; it's merely a key item that was forgotten and should've been taken to the back and shot, along with the rest of the ideas that were scrapped because of the bail out plan.

For the colored boxes maze which was later scraped, a similar workflow had been followed. Despite being cautious about the alignments, and that the lead designer, knew more about alignments having fixed the sea maze's problem, I designed the box puzzle stage and the same problem preceded in the second maze, the positioning and the codes. This time though, Mohammed not only fixed the issues, he had to change the whole puzzle just to get the maze working and the playable character moving,  The coder was seriously annoyed and frustrated; this time it showed strongly by actually telling us that he is the coder and that he shouldn't have been doing what he did, wasting his time on a final product that is mostly his work. In other words, the final output would look mostly like one man's work, not teamwork.

Even though  it may seem like I am attacking my other team members, I am not trying to point fingers and saying that it had been all Abbas' and/or Fatima's fault for this workflow and its outcomes, nor am I trying to say that I did nearly everything where as they haven't contributed with anything. As a group, it was our fault for what happend , I am just stating the facts while trying to be as objective as possible. Still, in my opinion, Mohammed took most of the beating.

Which leads us to the main topic of this post, the day to remember.

Having been working on the game for two weeks now, by 23rd of June, our functioning prototype had been made up of two mazes, one worked as planned, and another completely changed in terms of maze idea. Mr.Owen, our multimedia tutor sat down with us and and became our worst nightmare that day (for the better though).

After looking at our puny progress compared to the other groups, who were mostly half way through completing their games, Owen started criticizing each member of the team constructively; the issues mentined above were addressed and all of us took a lot of beating in the face, Mohammed being the least of course. The rest of us, according to our tutor, weren't really doing our parts as we were supposed to. For instance, I'm supposedly  the coder and sound designer but I've only made a demo theme song and an opening sound and had never done any coding for the game. However, what made a huge impact on me from Owen's comments was when he said that was considering a split up solution, in which our group, while still working on the same game, would be split into 2 pairs. In my opinion, I thought it was a very revolting , depressing, as well as demoralizing solution that could kill our game's potential. However, that was just an idea for a solution being suggested; a last resort, but wasn't the only solution!

However, despite being very direct and firm,  I belive that our tutor's apporach and intervention were very appropriate and timely given the circumstances and the situation our group was in; we only had two weeks left and what had happened that day was obviously a wake up call for G4 productions to act immediately.

Everyone seemed disgusted from the split up idea (no offense Mr.Owen), however, besides Fatima, who took off  just after the beating, and was generally displeased from Owen's comments and his approach specifically, the boys and I got our spirit and momentum back and decided to come up with an emergency rescue plan to save our game and team from demise. We ended up with a game that is visually similar to our planned one, lacking a couple of pages and extra cut scenes. Despite that, the main objective was altered so much that I felt our game isn't  actually the same game we sat out in our design document. The reason for that being the elimination of the 3 key items that were supposed to be obtained after the completion of  each level, as well as the cancellation of level 3 maze  and replacing it with a much simpler one. The boss stage and all the awesomeness in the finale were also scrapped.

Following the end of class that day, the boys and I talked about what had happened and we all agreed that it had been a good experience and that we've learnt a lot from this unfortunate event; communications were very shallow, we talked much about what was needed to be done but hadn't really done much, as well as the workflow. On the other hand, our only female member, as aforementioned, wasn't pleased with what had happened, and thought that Owen was very harsh. In regards to that, we all agreed  that if Fatima couldn't handle this now from her tutor while inside a higher education institution, what is she going to do in the real workplace when her boss makes negative comments on her work and/or work ethics?

Overall, We all experienced a soft and light simulation of the real workplace in which employees receive  some beating from their managers and bosses when work isn't being done, or done adequately.

In the next post I will elaborate more on what we did with the game in week 11 & 12.

Another reason for being 23rd July a day to remember is because this day was the day our Research paper of the use of Flash on the web had to be submitted. I had not done much even though I had ".. a month to do it" according to our English tutor, Ms. Alyson, who refused to give me an extension alongside Mr Owen. I had only started gathering resources at the beginning of the final week when I should've been already done with the research paper. I should've been proofreading on that day like everyone else!

I felt really embarrassed  and disappointed with myself as a university student, and as an Arab. Paromath, my alter ego  talked to me on the back of my brain: "what are you doing? This not like high school dude! you're not being taught by those lazy and uncaring Arab teachers!". Not that all of my teachers were bad, however, most were and probably still are. The point is though, having been criticised by Bahraini and Arab teachers, while most of the time wouldn't really affect me , the feeling was very different for when a western teacher does the same, especially when I have much respect for that teacher. In my case, my multimedia and English tutors, Owen and Alyson, who were both disappointed with my lousy performance.

I felt super stupid and dispirited that day for not working enough for the game as well as the research paper. I think I've really learnt my lesson this time, and for everytime Paromath would tell me to procrastinate, I would say: "Remember 23rd of July, my worst day as a university student in terms of academic performance", a day to remember.