Here’s the review for Milestone 2. Again, I’ve tried to be succinct, but you can let me know if there areas you would like to see covered in more detail.
Two major goals were set for this milestone:
- Improved Editor Support (In-game object and level editors)
- Implementation of basic gameplay.
The editor goal was accomplished, but I barely dented the gameplay goal. The editor goal involved:
- A resource management system.
- Basic support for an in-game object editor.
- Improved level editor.
The editor goal took up the majority of my time because of my decision to switch to an component based entity system. This decision was taken midway through the milestone and threw off all my time estimates.
The gameplay tasks took a back seat to the editor tasks and suffered as a consequence.
Task Performance
I made significant progress on the editor side, and especially in the resource managers. The tasks I laid out were accomplished in their allocated time, except for the component based system, which was unaccounted for.
The time allocated for the gameplay tasks was eaten up by the component system. Overall, my performance was below par, especially compared with the first two milestones.
Areas that Suffered (and Why?)
Gameplay:
- The component system was an important piece of software to implement and ended up taking precedence. I needed it in place before I could continue with the resource management and editor work. And I need the editor in place so that artists can start providing their work.
- It wasn’t as high risk as the editor work. Now that I have a design that I am happy with, the pressure to implement it was less significant than the pressure to get the editor out of the way.
Planning:
- I did not correctly anticipate the amount of work that needed to be done for the editor, and there is still a lot more to do. I am still too ambitious in some of my estimates. In the future I need to be more thorough with my planning to avoid unforeseen events that should have been easily predicted.
- I overthink the design of new areas I am not familiar with as I am coding up. Again, this can be resolved with better planning beforehand.
- I was not realistic about my motivation to work through Christmas. Aside from being distracted by family obligation, when you see everyone lazying about, your natural inclination is to do the same.
Areas that were Successful (and Why?)
Editor:
- It got priority and most of my focus.
- I cleaned up a lot of useless or redundant code and simplified my gui workflow. It takes less time to implement new GUI screens (although still a lot more than I would like. I hate GUIs).
Physics:
- I think I mentioned this in one of the dev diaries, but I ended up fixing a huge physics bug. This is one I thought I had previously fixed before, but really just transformed into a more devious, hidden bug. Nailing that bug pretty much made my day.
Breakdown of Areas of Focus from the last 4 weeks
- Week 1: Component system, design.
- Week 2: Resource systems, serialization, editor, gui.
- Week 3: Resource system, object and level editor.
- Week 4: Editors.
