Ryan T. Miller

Vectormirror: The Other Side

Purpose:

Creating a Unity game in 48 hours that challenged perception for Global Gamejam 2014

Description of Game:

First Person Co-Op Puzzle Game similar to Portal 2

Team Setup:

1 Producer, 4 Programmers, 5 Artists, and 2 Sound Engineers

My Role:
Programmer

Tools I Used:

Unity 3D 4+, Dropbox, C#, Photon Networking, Maya 2013, and lots of coffee

My Contribution to the Project:

Assembled the team, Aided design of the game, both initially and through development, Programmed multiple puzzle elements (such as the plant growing and ladder mechanic), improved our FPS controller, performed integration of all art assets, C# scripts, and sounds, to ensure that everything played nice with each other (and reworked anything that did not until it did).

Thoughts on the Project:

This project was a great challenge for us because we all had experience not only making games, but making them in a crunch time-frame, so we really wanted to push ourselves as hard as we could. We had a large team setup with a lot of talent between, and we gambled high and tried to make a unique networked game.

Admittedly, as the deadline loomed closer, we realized that the gamble was going to definitely harm us, but it didn't matter because we all were working hard and the game was forming regardless.

We adapted as we learned that the networking was not going to work smoothly, so we took the assets and scripts we had and reworked them to become a single player puzzle experience.

Developing this game I got to learn a lot more about the production pipeline, and to witness what happens if you bottleneck the entire game onto one person's shoulders. Choosing the right people for the right place in the pipeline is essential for not only being efficient, but to keep the momentum going. It was drastically harmful to our team spirit and momentum when people would have to wait for hours on another team member to complete something. 

That being said, I was happy to see that no one ever got upset with someone else; if someone had to take time to finish a bottle-necked task, that was fine, no one got impatient and tried to rush them. We knew everyone on the team was working hard and trusted in their abilities.

That trust in each other is what made this game possible.