Trial of the Valkyrie Post Mortem

The game we created is called Trial of the Valkyrie. The game is a 2D pixel over the top camera view shoot ‘em up game, think similar to Space Invaders. The game is played in portrait mode. The game was made with the intention of it being able to be played on any Android device. The player can move their player from one side of the screen to the other, spears constantly firing, to either hit enemies or dodge the enemies axes. The game has a static background as enemies travel down the play field flinging their axes towards the player. There is a berserk mechanic in the game which is filled over time along with enemy deaths. Once the berserk meter has been filled the player will shoot their spears faster as well as do more damage for a set period of time or if they take damage berserk mode will dissipate. The game has no end to it, it plays until the player dies.

The team that this game was created by are;

Justina Mil- Project Lead, main 2D art asset artist, programmer and voice actor.

Eric Cox- Main programmer, audio producer, 2D background artist.

Brandan Line- Programmer, voice actor and UI designer.

Each member of the team has worked on very small scale game projects, and every member has had some experience with programming. I myself am more of an artist, I tend to lack in the field of programming and audio so those were my major struggles per say, however this project allowed for me to explore these more in depth. I brought most of the sprite art assets, from the character sprites, weapon sprites and the button textures. Eric brought a lot of programming knowledge to the team and worked on learning and expanding on his art asset creation as well as audio creation. Brandan brought more programming knowledge to the team, and helped in some scripting where other members of the team couldn't. Brandan also took this project to learn more about creating art assets as well as audio assets.

For this project the team used several different software tools to get the game completed and working. Firstly we used Unity 5.6.1 to create the game. We used MonoDevelop to create the scripts inside of the Unity project. Alongside Unity and MonoDevelop, we used Android Studio and Java JDK to test whether our game was working well onto a device. We used Photoshop in order to create all of the 2D art assets using the basic brushes and we did create one custom brush for the game background. Lastly we used Famitracker and Audacity for all of our audio assets. Famitracker was used for the background music, created by Eric and Audacity was used by myself and Brandan for the character voice work.

The team would meet with each other for almost every day during the last two week period of the three week development cycle, excluding the weekends. Sessions would last several hours, some even lasting the entire working day at the SAE campus. The team would look for areas where all members would be able to work in close proximity to each other in case any member needed help as well as so the team could communicate. Apart from our meetings on the campus we also had several other means of communication. These being our group slack as well as a Facebook group messenger. We also had a Trello and Gantt chart to try and keep on track with our schedules. We also used Unity Collaborate in order to have the same up to date working Unity project. Individuals were to only update if they had a working build so as to not mess with anyone else's work. The team worked best when we were all working together in the same proximity.

Like all projects, this started off with lots of brainstorming. We originally had several different ideas for the brief. A Viking 2D shoot 'em up definitely wasn't our first idea. Most of our ideas before this were space related or a tower deference fantasy setting. Trial of the Valkyrie's theme came out of a joke about vikings shooting spears at other vikings. Silly enough it was different from other bullet hell/shoot 'em up type games, most of which are space related. We had very quickly came up with a wild story for the game and come up with lore for the characters and bosses which were originally going to be part of the game, later which were taken out. We came up with Hilde, our gorgeous main protagonist, a valiant Valkyrie taking on the children of Loki, a cult. The game has changed since we had originally brainstormed it.

One of our original ideas was a generic space related bullet hell game. You were a space ship attacking a fleet of space ships or UFO's. This however has been sort of overdone in the genre. With games such as Space Invaders already having so much popularity we would of had to of done so much to it to make it unique and stand out more.

Another idea of ours was a tower defense game. However this idea was way too complex for the amount of time we actually had to make the game. This was way out of scope, we wanted to have player characters the player would choose from, each having their own ability, different units and different enemies. It's a game that I would like to one day create however for the three weeks we had to develop this, it wouldn't of been possible.

As stated earlier, the idea for the game came from wanting to create a bullet hell but wanting to make it different. After discussing the tower defense idea, the idea of a bullet hell type game with Vikings throwing spears and axes came into our heads and we had a laugh. Then we thought, why not? It would make the game more unique against the rest in the genre and it could turn out a bit comedic. We had originally come up with a incredibly complex idea with so many different aspects to it, so many aspects that we couldn't possibly get everything done in three weeks. So in the end we had to cut a lot of different things we wanted and had to change others.

I tried to go by and lead this project in a diplomatic approach. I personally have a bit of a hard time ordering people around and I wanted every single member of the team enjoying themselves while making this. I wanted to get the entire teams input on decisions and honestly tried to make sure no one really felt left out in the decision making. The process we took to create the game was kind of intermingled, I tried to make it so that everyone was focusing on getting something done and so that every member would get the chance to work on the programming, the art and the audio assets. However the process went something like this;

1. Brainstorming

2. Creating the Unity project and scenes and assign tasks

3. Get a working character

4. Get working enemies

5. Working on main art assets

6. Get berserk mechanic done and working

7. Get the rest of the art assets done

8. Get the audio assets done

9. Check over the entire project

However most of these steps were intermingled. Meaning that members were working on these at the same times. Once we got the brainstorm out of the way and our main idea ready to be created, we started off by creating the Unity project and assigning tasks to each member. During the second week of the task, Eric was to work on getting the player character working, Brandan was to work on getting the enemies working and I was to work on getting the main sprite work done. While I was working on the art assets, there were problems with the enemy and player scripts, meaning that we would have to work more on those and the other things would have to be done in less time. It got to a point where we had to get rid of some things such as the temporary upgrades, as we just wouldn't have enough time. About half way into the third week we were able to finish all of the main mechanics for the game. It was then just the rest of the art assets and the audio assets that needed to be completed and putting the game together so that the game would run smoothly on Android devices. The whole process was long and each team member put in a lot of time to come together and get the project completed in the three week time period.

Overall I am happy with how the team went and got the task completed on time. I believe that even during some hardships with the help of each other we were able to pull through some road blocks in the project. There were times when individuals were struggling with getting certain tasks done, such as getting certain aspects of scripts working such as; getting the touch working for the player and getting some of the audio to play at the right times. Sometimes the fixes were pretty simple however individuals were able to overcome these quite well. Eric had troubles with getting the player touch working on the Android device. After doing research online he was able to get it done and it felt like a massive accomplishment to the whole team. We were finally able to get the character moving on a device.

Getting the enemies to spawn randomly was also quite the achievement for Brandan. Brandan did great work with getting all of the enemies to spawn and getting them to shoot at different times to each other. Brandan was also able to get the berserk bar to function properly and was actually done on the last day of the project, this was something that Eric was having trouble with. It was done excellently and it added to the game, rather than having just some numbers ticking.

I personally had a lot of fun with creating all of the sprites for the game. I don't really work on doing sprites often, I tend to focus more on doing paintings. So being able to create sprites and a small animation for Hilde was incredibly fun and ended up turning out pretty well. Creating the enemy sprites as well was an interesting task in itself. The buttons and the menu titles was interesting and pretty time consuming to make however I think they turned out well. The art assets all turned out well and looking at the finished game I do think that all of the art assets work together.

Things that didn't go too well were few but very important. One of the main issues we had were with time management and work ethic. While we did knock out some amazing and a load of work on the third week. I felt that most of these things could of been completed in the second week like I had originally planned. I felt that the enemy scripts as well as the player script could have easily been completed in the second week. I personally don't understand why there was so much trouble with them as there was but they did get done by the middle of the second week, which I had also planned for just in case something were to go wrong. I tried to work as much as I could on the project during the weekend however there were others that barely even touched the project when they were home. If they did work at home as well I believe we would of made our deadline more comfortably. As well as a certain individual constantly coming late to meetings.

The next major issue was the communication between some of the members. I tried to get across to the team that if anyone had any kind of issues or problems they were stuck on to come to me or another team member so that we could fix it. While I felt that communication between Eric and I were great, if any issues arose we communicated with each other to see if any kind of resolve could happen, the communication with Brandan was lacking to say the least. When he had issues with scripts he wouldn't communicate with us, leaving us to believe that everything was going well. After some intervention, Brandan started to open up with us more about any issues or problems he was having. We were able to start working better after that.

The last issue has to deal with the previous issues as well, because the communication with Brandan wasn't too good as well as him coming in late to meetings and taking so long on his aspects it left and put a lot of work on Eric's and my shoulders, Eric's mostly because of all the scripting work that had to be done. This lead to us having to take on much more work than we had originally planned, putting some extra stress on us. We were able to overcome the issues however some of the workload that Eric had to do seemed very unfair on him.

I would like to work a bit more on the game in my spare time, add some more things such as animations for the enemies, possibly add the temporary upgrades into the game. I have also learnt a lot during these three weeks working on this project. I definitely need to work on getting any future teams to communicate better as well as having better time management. The time management issue has seemingly been an issue in all group projects I have been in so far, so it's definitely an important aspect to have done right, it can make or break a group and project in the long run.

Now I'd like to take some time to discuss how I believe each team member went. I'll discuss what I believe they did well, and some things that I believe they could improve on. This section sin't to bash anyone or make anyone feel bad. This is a section for some constructive criticism. I'll start this off by discussing my part in the project.

Justina: The main thing I did well would be getting most of the art assets done for the group. I would spend days to knock out these assets so the rest of the group could work on their assets. I also believe that I was able to keep a cool head and communicate through some of the issues. However there are definitely areas that I could work on. I need to work on communicating much more with team members, if anything there should be daily communication to see what everyone has done or what they can do. I also believe I need to put my foot down more as a project lead. I feel like at times I might have been too lenient with the time given to aspects or getting people to come on time to meetings, or at least getting them to do their assigned work even on their days off from university. I should also work much more on my scripting so that I could be a more useful member when it comes to resolving issues that come from programming. I felt at times there was not much I could help with. I also need to work on creating much more efficient and hard coded time management methods.

Eric: Eric did amazing work with all of the scripting. He had a lot to do and was able to get it all done on time. He did a lot of things he had not known how to do before this project and took his time to research and learn so that he could implement the important mechanics into the game. He is a hard worker and works well with others. He pushed through all problems he faced and kept a level head during the experiences. The areas that Eric could possibly improve in are keeping to the scope, there were times near the ending of the project that he wanted to add things that we had taken out due to lack of time. He could also work a bit on time management as well, during the last week he knocked out an incredible amount of work but would of probably saved himself some stress and time if he had worked on some of those things more during the second week of the project.

Brandan: Brandan did some amazing work with getting the enemy spawner working as well as getting the visual bar done for the berserk mode. I was impressed with him getting both done well and in a good time. His work on the 2D art asset for the pause menu was also very nicely done and worked really well with the overall game. The aspects Brandan could work on are communicating more with his team members and working on his time management and work ethic. I feel he needs to do more work on his projects at home as well as when he is with his group. I would of also liked to see him have come in to group meetings on time instead of coming an hour or more late, it could possibly put some working time back if his team members are waiting on him.

Overall I do believe that the game turned out well. We have a working game, that we managed to test on an Android device. We had feedback from others on how we could improve the game. As this being our first mobile game I am happy with the progress each individual did and all the work that was put into it. Thank you to my two other team members, it was a pleasure working with the both of you.