Feeling good

Well, our first week in Proof of Concept is complete, and I gotta say, I feel pretty good. Over the past couple of days, I have been working heavily in sound design, our narrative plan, and exploring our secondary mechanics moving forward in our game. The rest of the team continued along our current path, with our artist, Emma, beginning work on our characters and making some beautiful assets for our main game loop. Our programmer, Ryan, worked on developing some super cool particles and is now moving forward into developing some of our more complex books, which he is excited about. Our level designer, Winston, has spent the past few days developing props, but is getting ready to start rapidly prototyping levels which we will be testing in engine.

This week, I really want to talk about our team. Honestly, right now I feel really good. One of the things that is really encouraging about it is the energy that everyone has while working on our project. No one is feeling bored or like they don't want to do it. Everyone is engaged and just having fun with the tasks that we have, and I think it has been a huge asset to our development. From the get go, the plan has been to make a game that we enjoy making, and if we make it through to next semester then awesome, but if not, at least we made what we wanted to. I think this has been a huge benefit to team spirit and we are not as stressed as we would be otherwise. By choosing something that we want to make and that we would want to put our energy into, we were able to benefit down the line because people are putting in more work then they would necessarily need to. Sure, at the end of the day, we are all professionals, but there is some true benefits to your project when the team is happy and moving forward together. We have done a good job with talking out our difficulties with each other, and we have been able to assist or rework things to make sure no team member is being held back by anything. It's been excellent for team spirit. And I think that our excitement as a team has been translated onto our peers and professors. It's always hard to gauge exactly how you as an individual are performing within your group, and similarly how people perceive your group to be performing. It's something I personally struggle with, and it leads me to second guess myself quite often, and I know our team has quietly wondered how everyone else would react to our game. The positive feedback we got through our QA sessions and from our peers who have seen our game, I think, has really helped our team's confidence. It's always shaky when you first start a project, because you aren't really sure how people are going to react to it. So whenever you start getting those lit-up faces and bright smiles, the whole thing really starts coming together.

Over the years at Champlain, I always was quietly dreading Capstone. We were always told that it was going to be the worst experience at Champlain because of the stress and difficulty of what we were being presented with. Whether because of my experience in other classes, the people in my team, or my own personal development, all I know is I am having more fun working on our project this semester then I have in a very long time, and I can only hope that this is just a sign of things to come in my future.