Ryan T. Miller

Thoughts on the Project:

Never give up. That was what I thought the whole way through this project. When I started this project with my team, we were six programmers, most of whom I had worked with in the past and knew their high level of skill, so I was excited to be on a team with them. Slowly though, due to personal reasons, the team fell apart until it was three of the original programmers, and two new programmers who had fallen to us after they had to repeat a month for their own personal reasons as well.

On top of that, there were many setbacks on the project. Perforce servers dying, difficult design decisions, entire rewrites of the design documents, differences of creative ideas, etc. etc. 

To top this all off, we had set out with an ambitious project that shouldn't have even been possible in our time frame, even with a full team, let alone with one that had suffered so much. 

But you can't quit. You adapt, you solve the problems, you find ways to meet the deadlines, you evaluate and fix and you don't quit.

I can definitely tell you all the things that went right on the project. How awesome our graphics programmer was, how great the level design became, how cool it was to write a script for a game, how helpful modular A.I. behavior is.

That wasn't the part that I will remember though. I will remember fighting and clawing through the project despite any setbacks and making sure the game was out on time, and iterated on to a point where everyone enjoyed it. It wasn't good enough to just be a game, it had to be a game that the player wanted. A game that we took to people, asked them for their opinion, then rapidly iterated on that opinion.

I went through a lot of stress making this project, but it was worth it, so worth it, to make something I am proud of and done with a team of talented individuals. It was the project that solidified that thought that I always wanted to have when I got into this industry. "I love my job."