Semester 2: Post 7

Semester 2: Post 7

We made it to the break but there will be no rest for me. I know no matter what the team grade is at the midterm I'll blame myself for it not being higher. I've failed my team in so many ways thus far in this semester.. It hasn't been all bad but with a bigger team there were so many new mistakes to make and I made them all. I'm going to probably work on some stuff over the break that'll help the team out when we return. 

I've already scripted one new feature into the google sheet planner I just need to do that for anything I could possibly want in that. More importantly I need to make the video very soon, as in today. I'm going to possibly just ask for the bad footage if I need to. We need new footage for the video for the folks going to GDC. Even the bad footage is better than the really old footage.

I'm going to try to get some rest but I think It'd be easier to rest if I just do enough work to satisfy my self imposed debt to the team.

Semester 2: Post 6

Semester 2: Post 6

I spent last week with my nose down focusing on making the better presentation. I hit what was written on the check list of things that needed to be addressed in the presentation but I didn't sell that we had a plan moving forward. It seems that we really didn't. We were working on something better but I'd been too hands off leaving everything to the leads. People were working in isolation and I didn't want to disturb them in their hole. People have emerged from their holes now though.

We have a plan now. I was afraid to plan. I selected the members of this team because I respect them a lot and I didn't want to shackle them with my incompetent producering. In doing that I was incompetent. I wasn't ready to plan because I was waiting for the designers to produce good, solid documentation and in not making it clear that I wanted that I failed them again. It's not too late to be great but I'd say we've lost at least a week of good work in these weeks of playing it loose.

Semester 2: Post 5

It's been a while since I felt so much like shit. First the Greg LoPiccolo disaster, now the Greenlight debacle it's been a bad couple of weeks. I made a poor presentation for the greenlight, it didn't hit all the points and what's worse I spent a really long time on it. What kind of precedent am I setting for the team if I keep on failing to do my job well. I remember during the presentation seeing the other producer rub his face like my father did whenever I'd bring a report card home. I cannot let the team go on spring break with morale being this low.
There are a few things that could raise morale: The next presentation could be amazing, the playable boss fight could be very fun in the first iteration, I could talk to each individual team member to discover their concerns. I know one member is concerned about the writing and I hadn't heard about that until recently even though the concern has lingered. How can I overhaul the plot without hurting feelings? I need to take a more active role. I've left most of the departments to their own devices but I need to just be over 2 times the producer I was last semester.

Minor concern: bad things started happening after I shaved. Is my team going to associate bare faced Jacob with failure Jacob?

Semester 2: Post 4

Semester 2: Post 4

The meeting with the Harmonix guy went badly. I don't want to talk about it. I learned to overprepare for something that vital.

The time has come to abandon the idea of having all the backend stuff done first. It was a wonderful dream but it's been too long and the blueprints aren't all C++ yet. One of the programmer has moved on to gameplay programming and we'll just fix everything that breaks as we go along.
2 weeks from now we are going to have the boss playable, he might not be great but he'll be playable. 1 week from now we are challenging greenlight. It's been a while since I had to do a powerpoint presentation. I hope Edmar doesn't dislike my presentation style. I know I don't like my presentations but everyone else does. I've been in theater though during this semester so I probably won't choke during the presentation. 

Semester 2: Post 3

Semester 2: Post 3

Finally! Visible progress! New UI! New Lighting! 

I'm always thinking about Dan Shredder,Dan Shredder is my life. My life is finally picking up and becoming exciting again. However, we need to get those greenlight deliverables done soon. Greenlight is ambiguously on the horizon. We need to get that done soon but we also have a meeting with a creative director from Harmonix on Monday so we want to slam as much polish in as quickly as possible.

Semester 2: Post 2

Semester 2: Post 2

I know what we're doing next now. we're making the boss fight before we make level 2. It makes sense since the boss will 100% introduce new mechanics and the pacing of the music will be better planned out. I'm happy about knowing that much since we were rather unfocused until recently.

We will be seeing a lot of new stuff added to the build by post 3 and if not that is cause for alarm. We will hopefully have a new fret board in tomorrow. The assets are done they just need to be implemented.

Semester 2: Post 1

Semester 2: Post 1

Development has finally resumed and it's uncomfortably sluggish. A bigger team has more inertia, it takes longer to get the ball rolling, etc. I'm still feel a twinge in my stomach when I go to bed at night and know that we haven't made any visible changes to the build yet. Programmer have been working on cleaning things up and tools so that when pre-production on level two and new mechanics is done work will happen quickly. I might need to set a milestone limit on the pre-production though because while progress is being made it is slow. Any idea being locked down so that we can add it ti the game would be nice and would be good to keep morale up as well. I'm not super concerned yet but stress is mounting within me. I won't know if I'm mismanaging until later down the line but I definitely know that I'm taking a risk by allowing this much time in pre-production.