Ricardo Yanofsky PPJ 12 Post Mortem
Ricardo Yanofsky, Postmortem Journal
Overall I am very happy with how the project turned out. The game is fun, somewhat polished and I felt I contributed enough.
My favorite part of working on this game was the level design. I liked making a level and updating it over time, fixing the things that worked and adding more areas. It is really satisfying to build a level and then be able to ride a shopping cart through it. I think we found a good size where the player does not necessarily see all of it in one run.
The hands ended up looking good, but I think I spent too much time on it for what ended up happening. I spent a long time weight painting the fingers for them to not move at all. Also the problem with the normals ate up half a week for it to be a simple fix in unity.
Joe and I modeled a good amount of items and they are all pretty good. This is the only game that I know of to have jicama in it, and I like that.
The store overall is a bit dead, since I did not make any animations that made it in the game. I would like to add more life to it in the future if we go on to work on it next term.
Despite the time spent on them, the arms still look good and several playtesters have told me that they like them, and it was good practice for me, since I had never modeled hands from scratch.
Some assets and concepts were not put into the game in the end. I had created an ice block melting animation that could have been a cool mechanic for a special item (it would be worth more if still frozen by checkout). A few items were oddly shaped and the animations I created for some items were taken out due to performance issues.
Overall:
Good:
Level Design
Plenty of items
Arms look good
Bad:
Too much time spent on arms
Store is not alive
Some assets are not in the game
