We started this project with a united team, and we have finished it in the same way we started it. This subject has always been said to put you to the test, but it also makes the talent of each one shine, as well as giving rise to work on what you want to dedicate yourself to in the not so distant future. So, with the nerves and excitement to get into this project, we didn't want to wait any longer with our arms folded and, months before officially starting the project, we already started the preparations for everything that was coming our way. However, we must also highlight that some classmates had a good relationship with people from higher grades, who gave us a transfer of how their projects had gone and what were the critical points that we had to be careful of. All this prepared us all much more, in order to prevent possible future problems and how to manage time. However, since the first year of university, we have been a close-knit class where everyone gets along with the rest. So, one of the first preparations, which we wanted to anticipate and which was not difficult to manage, was the choice of leads and the producer, along with a first selection of which department each of us wanted to be in. As we have mentioned, we can say that we have been a very lucky team to have such a good relationship with each other, both at the beginning and throughout the project. A project that we hoped we would be proud to call ours as well as that it would be one of the most worked, outstanding and excellent at the university. From the very beginning, from the first class, we started off on the right foot when the teachers heard what the game assignment was going to be as well as the theme. This year, we were asked to create a Diablo-style third-person game themed around the Alien movie saga. Without a doubt, we accepted the challenge with enthusiasm and motivation. When we found out about the video game we had to create, we didn't waste a second in getting down to work to create our video game that not only we wanted to be proud of, but also the university and the industry itself.
As we mentioned, from the beginning, we didn't want to waste a second, since we knew that we had little time and all the departments started the production of the video game, starting with concept discovery. The production team, both leads and the producer, were very clear about their role in the project, as well as their importance in developing the game. This began with the scheduling and general organization of the project with all the milestones that we had to meet according to a pre-established schedule. As well as the creation of a general guide for the proper development, operation and communication of the team. The aim was to speed up the whole issue of organization as much as possible, as well as to be clear about the tasks that each member of the team had to carry out and how to relate to each other. From the beginning, the team established three keywords for the project to be developed in the best way. Communication, empathy and motivation. As for the art team, they had the mission to explore and discover what artistic direction we would follow for the project. To do this, on the one hand, each one had to identify which were their weak and strong. With these and an initial research on what the setting of the Alien saga and the Diablo games themselves is like, they had to create various assets with different styles that they felt comfortable, whether it was UI, modeling, concept arts. . . Finally, with the different proposals, as well as with an analysis of each of the styles of its pros and cons, the whole team with the contributions of the art team, decided to follow a comic-style artistic direction for the game. Once the style was decided, it was established what would be the pipeline and programs/tools to follow and use with which the art team should work. Which concluded with the creation of an Art Bible. The code team had one of the most difficult tasks at the beginning of the project, which was the choice of which engine, of those we developed in the previous semester, to use to carry out our game. However, the remaining modules that were missing from the engine had to be implemented in order for it to be complete. These tasks were given maximum priority, but, even so, due to various difficulties and complexities involved in creating their own engine, they were delayed a little longer than expected. On the other hand, the code team was also dedicated to understanding and analyzing the operation of the engine, as well as the creation of a Technical Design Document (TDD) with which the team would be guided by the great programming task that had to be done and prevent future problems, both in terms of performance and fluidity to complete the different tasks. Lately, the design team had the other most important task at the beginning of the project, which was the drafting of the most complete and detailed form of the Game Design Document. To do this, they initially dedicated themselves to a stage of research and inspiration for various Diablo-style games, as well as the visual narrative elements that make the Alien film saga unique. Subsequently, all the ideas that had emerged from the design department were shared, as well as other contributions made by the rest of the team. From this, a GDD was extracted that contemplated two formulas. On the one hand, a very ambitious game that we wanted to develop and, on the other, everything that we believe is essential and necessary to make our identity game, as well as if problems arise in the future, to know that we should not rule out under any circumstances.
As the weeks went by, we saw how the project developed as well as people took time away from other subjects to carry out the tasks. At first, we had a rather slow start due to the different complications of the engine, as not all were working as we expected, including scripting and physics. Because of this, in the first milestones where we intended to have a basic test scene of what the game's gameplay would be, we could not achieve it with full conditions. In the subsequent deliveries, we made a boost in terms of progress in the tasks to be developed, until the moment when we found a bottleneck. In this case, there were several factors that led us to this situation. On the one hand, we had a big problem of memory leaks that prevented us from having a functional game loop as well as problems in other implementations that affected the gameplay of the game such as animations or the enemies themselves. With all these problems derived from using our own engine to develop ours, it produced a lot of frustration among colleagues that ended up resulting in Alpha1 not meeting the minimum requirements to have. At this point, the production team carried out a deep and exhaustive analysis of the situation, in order to redirect it in the best way and as soon as possible. Of the measures we adopted, one of them was to sit down and talk individually with some colleagues to analyze in detail and, in a more personalized way, problems they had had and look for solutions. In addition, the whole team as a whole made a retrospective analysis of how we had gotten here. Where other problems were the low communication between teammates on some occasions, one of the factors that we already knew was going to be a challenge from the beginning, since we had never worked together with so many people. However, we incorporated the daily’s so that everyone could convey what they were working on each day. After this obstacle, the project gained momentum again, with the solution of the various memory leaks, as well as ending the entire engine stage and from that moment on, code could focus much more on what would be the gameplay part. On the art side, they continued at a good pace where the problems that arose were, among them, the precaution of keeping an eye on the number of polygons that the various assets had, due to the limitations that the engine itself entailed, or the animations, which due to the implementation of the animation module in the engine was one of the most complicated, Some animations had to be tweaked to work well in the game. On the other hand, one of the other challenges that the art department had was that all the textures followed the same level of quality and harmony, where in some cases some retexturing had to be done to fit together. Recently, the design team finalized the Game Design Document, with what we wanted the final product to look like. In the following weeks, his main task was to maintain fluid communication with the art and code departments, in order to convey what we wanted as well as to receive feedback and finish complementing the GDD with the necessary information. Other tasks he developed were the first implementation of sound and dialogue in the game, as well as the editing of the different scenes.
Finally, we arrive in May, a month in which, due to several deliveries, the work performance on the project dropped. Even so, lately we were able to start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. In these last installments, a list was made of everything that remained to be done and an assessment was made of everything that we could have in time. In some things, they had to fall by the wayside, such as consumables, but prioritizing others such as having inventory and crafting fully functional. In this final stage, the art department had almost all the tasks finished and they focused on making retouches according to the design or optimizing all the assets according to the limitations of the engine. So, we faced the stage with the last strength we had left, having learned to know how to deal with the frustration of not having been able to implement several things that we had planned, such as lights and shadows, as well as understanding that every engine has its limitations and more than one of its own. We also finished closing the game with several playtesting sessions where they received feedback on how to improve various aspects of the video game.
After many months of work and effort, we can say that we have finished Alien: Extraction! It has been a very enriching project on the one hand for the whole experience of creating a video game with its own engine simulating what would be a professional game studio, but also frustrating at times. If we start with the bad part, as we have mentioned throughout the postmortem, the heaviest part has been all the problems that the engine has given us. We would have liked to have had more time to work on it, as well as other previous knowledge. However, we believe that it has also been very useful for us to learn how a motor works properly as well as all the problems it can entail. Also that of having to learn to decide that it is essential and that it can be discarded. But, we will always be left with the doubt of how the game would have turned out with some of these things solved as if we had done it with a commercial engine like Unity or Unreal. On the other hand, there is the great effort that each of us has had to dedicate to achieve this great challenge. A large amount of hours, work and dedication that caused us to be more lame in other subjects. That is why we believe that the balance of hours between Project 3 and the other subjects is not balanced, since this has also been one of the factors that has caused a great exhaustion in several classmates in order to achieve all the work of the semester together with the development of the video game itself. Lately, if we focus on the positive points, we have already commented on many of them. The most important thing of all we believe has beenhow enriching the experience has been for each of us to discover and find what we feel comfortable with. However, so that he could demonstrate all his talent in the project, putting into practice everything each onehas learned as other new things. A project that we consider to be our first step towards what we want to dedicate ourselves to in the future. It is also worth highlighting all the work and learning we have done towards communication and team organization that we have done: an essential task that until now we had not clearly had the opportunity to put into practice and improve. And above all, how we have learned to overcome the various difficulties that have appeared throughout the project. In how we have learned to understand each other and give the maximum of each of us for a common good above the grade that the project may have. We started out as a tam long before and we ended up being a team, proud of our video game Alien: Extraction.