When creating content for anything you, anyone involved, must think of the big picture and the small picture. Try not to just see the forest for the trees, see the forest for both the trees and for what it is. Sometimes it may seem that its easy to just say something and say that you will do it, the hard part is giving a correct estimate and following through.
An example of what I'm referring to would be a milestone deliverable. The idea of a milestone deliverable is that you set a goal for yourself first, tell the people above you( the people who expect work from you), plan out a decent schedule, and follow through. For our POC( Proof Of Concept ) we promised the following....
"For POC, we’re shooting for our AI to attack the player when they come within a designated distance of the enemy. The player will be represented by a place holder mesh, and an enemy will be able to spawn at a basic spawn point in the area, represented by a position in space. Pressing the space bar will spawn an enemy. The enemy will be represented by the same mesh as the player with a different color. The world will be a simple piece of terrain, 30x30 ft for the player and enemies to stand on...
The collision in the POC will be basic ground clamping to the terrain, combat collision for attacking, and taking damage - you’ll be able to view these collisions by basic spheres or quads. The enemy will be able to die and attack, so the player may lose if their hp reaches 0. The player will win if they reach level three, by killing 10-11 enemies. The player will be able to move throughout the area, with the basic mouse and keyboard controls, and the camera will follow the player with the ability to rotate around the player. The player’s stats will be displayed on the HUD, including stats, gold, exp and level. The main menu layout will be present, although not everything will be complete. The options, scoreboard and credits wont be functional, but begin game will be. The player will be able to start the POC game from this menu. In game, the pause menu will be functional as far as leaving the game and resuming the game. The area will have some music in the background, to show we have audio and some combat and menu sound effects as well. ..."
Proof Of Concept basically shows that the team is making progress on the game and that they have the ability to create and implement the basic of the game promised. That large wall of text is exactly what we said we would have for our Proof Of Concept. What we did, and that benifited us in the long run was our wording. We specifically tried to word things to be vague, but still specific and not misleading. "The world will be a simple piece of terrain, 30x30 ft for the player and enemies to stand on." This statement was not completely tru, but was vague(relitively), but specific. That statement was primarily worded that way as a fallback, so just in case we had some issue that came up we could have something very simple to do last minute.
When we presented our Proof Of Concept, this was greatly exceeded. We had a full mesh of triangles loaded with the player walking correctly on it. For those unsure of that i mean by a mesh, think of the gound you walk on, in a game world it could potentially be made out of over 9000 triangles, sadly ours was only over 5000, but maybe one day. The whole point of this is to show that the attention to detail as a programmer is EXTREMELY important, and it has hurt us a few times, but it hasn't been anything we couldnt overcome as a team.
An example of what I'm referring to would be a milestone deliverable. The idea of a milestone deliverable is that you set a goal for yourself first, tell the people above you( the people who expect work from you), plan out a decent schedule, and follow through. For our POC( Proof Of Concept ) we promised the following....
"For POC, we’re shooting for our AI to attack the player when they come within a designated distance of the enemy. The player will be represented by a place holder mesh, and an enemy will be able to spawn at a basic spawn point in the area, represented by a position in space. Pressing the space bar will spawn an enemy. The enemy will be represented by the same mesh as the player with a different color. The world will be a simple piece of terrain, 30x30 ft for the player and enemies to stand on...
The collision in the POC will be basic ground clamping to the terrain, combat collision for attacking, and taking damage - you’ll be able to view these collisions by basic spheres or quads. The enemy will be able to die and attack, so the player may lose if their hp reaches 0. The player will win if they reach level three, by killing 10-11 enemies. The player will be able to move throughout the area, with the basic mouse and keyboard controls, and the camera will follow the player with the ability to rotate around the player. The player’s stats will be displayed on the HUD, including stats, gold, exp and level. The main menu layout will be present, although not everything will be complete. The options, scoreboard and credits wont be functional, but begin game will be. The player will be able to start the POC game from this menu. In game, the pause menu will be functional as far as leaving the game and resuming the game. The area will have some music in the background, to show we have audio and some combat and menu sound effects as well. ..."
Proof Of Concept basically shows that the team is making progress on the game and that they have the ability to create and implement the basic of the game promised. That large wall of text is exactly what we said we would have for our Proof Of Concept. What we did, and that benifited us in the long run was our wording. We specifically tried to word things to be vague, but still specific and not misleading. "The world will be a simple piece of terrain, 30x30 ft for the player and enemies to stand on." This statement was not completely tru, but was vague(relitively), but specific. That statement was primarily worded that way as a fallback, so just in case we had some issue that came up we could have something very simple to do last minute.
When we presented our Proof Of Concept, this was greatly exceeded. We had a full mesh of triangles loaded with the player walking correctly on it. For those unsure of that i mean by a mesh, think of the gound you walk on, in a game world it could potentially be made out of over 9000 triangles, sadly ours was only over 5000, but maybe one day. The whole point of this is to show that the attention to detail as a programmer is EXTREMELY important, and it has hurt us a few times, but it hasn't been anything we couldnt overcome as a team.
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