This project was my first large scale project directing, producing, game designing and leading a group of over 20 people. It was a long month and a big way to start the year. While there were hiccups along the way, I am extremely proud of our team, and very humbled and honored that so many people not only volunteered to work on this project for this jam but to continue working on it after to make this game all it can be. 

Running a group of so many people can be difficult, but I did learn a lot about the production side of games for longer term projects, as most of the game jams I have done have been shorter in length or longer endeavors. 

I wanted to highlight some things I learnt from this experience, as not only a diary to me but to any other aspiring game developers and producers.

Always always prototype the idea first

In game jams, due to the limited time, it is easy to go with your first idea. For the first 3 days of the game jam my team and I ideated on boss rushes and the theme spin. We came together to present our ideas and plan and decided on the idea that became Turntable Takedown. While we didn't go with the first idea, I think before we committed to it, we should've done a small prototype to test the basic mechanics.  It seems obvious but with projects under a time constraint I find it easy to forget and just focus on making something.

We weren't fully able to test our game towards the end of the project and that uncertainly of 'will this play well', 'is this too hard, too easy?' and normal doubts came creeping in for me. Having a crappy prototype at the start I believe would've helped given me that extra insurance that our game is truly amazing. I think what we have made is a great game, but the last crunch made it hard to fully test it all. 

Work with those who are ready and willing to communicate

Communication with the team during this project was so so so important. I cannot stress it enough.  Life happens to everyone, so many things can occur over a month, I am grateful to my team that they trusted me enough to let me know when they couldn't complete a task or if things may be delayed. As producers its important to be understanding with your team! We were able to move tasks around, adapt to new deadlines and accommodate those who needed it. That being said, enforcing necessary deadlines is important, but if you are understanding to your team, they will be understanding to you! 

One thing I wish I had done earlier on is made a calendar which had when people were unavailable! Since it was the start of the year and close to the Lunar New Year many people were on holiday having amazing times with family and friends, as they should! This would've helped me organise task deadlines and delegation. It would've almost helped with knowing how much time we truly had and thus be able to scope in the project if needed.

Establish your file system early on

One consistent problem through the project was naming conventions and file management. We ended up with many duplicate files over iteration on our Google Drive and image scattered across our discord. We also had 3 different programmers on this project - a lot of hands on deck! Establishing a clear iterative naming process and clear places for files early on would've saved a lot of headaches and confusion. I feel like, as we did, it is something easily overlooked in the initial stages of a project but become more of a problem later on when it is a lot harder to fix.

Have regular meetings

One strength of our project was we had weekly team meetings. I believe this helped our team get to know each other further, know how we work with each other and stay updated. While we would text throughout the week, having these long form discussions helped us express and concerns, questions, ideas or queries that we had. It was a great way for me to check in on everyone's progress and see if anyone needed extra support or more tasks to do. We also had department meetings throughout the project, such as with the 3D animators to establish a baseline of what each attack would look like, how to implement it and who would do what.

I wanted to shout out my wonderful and dedicated team,  those who always were ready to give a hand, those who stayed up late with me, those who attended our meeting, truly we made the dream team.

I am working on an Art Book for this project as a thank you to the artists who started on this project from the beginning and the artists generous enough to jump on mid project to help reach the finish line. They are all incredibly talented and deserve their flowers, I could talk on and on about each of them but I believe all their art speaks for themselves better than I ever could. Though when the art book is ready, believe me I will try. However, I wanted to take the time at the end of this post to highlight the other members of the team who won't be featured in this Art Book but are just as talented and crucial to the project, our programmers, designers and musical artists.

Our programming team consisted of myself, Cooper and Michael who both did such amazing work from the beginning of the project. Cooper created all the attacks for our bosses, creating prototypes quickly and to the design. He was always willing to take on more tasks and is defiantly one to watch! Michael created a beautifully dynamic and fluid movement controller, his code was wonderfully organised and it the movement was flexible and allows for the players to use so many movement opportunities. Michael also programmed and designed all the amazing UI in our game, it is stunning and perfectly suits the vibe of Turntable Takedown, always knocks it out of the park.

We had two rigging artists for this project, who were able to work quickly and created wonderful work within our short time line. Collins is a wonderfully talented rigging artist who rigged both the Country and Metal boss with facials rigs too! As we go back to further develop this project you will be able to see these facial rigs in all their glory. Skylar picked up her rigging tool belt to help Collins finish all our rigs due to the short time frame and rigged the EDM boss and the Player. She created face keys for both rigs and was always ready to jump on to any station within the project with her technical expertise. 

For our audio I was very fortunate to have multiple musicians on the team. Oscar had never worked on a project like this before and created awesome music for the Metal Boss. When I initially asked him to join this project I didn't know that it would be so music heavy, despite this he created an amazing product and was great to work with. To round out our trio we had Omar step up and complete the Country and EDM tracks - and on short notice too! All the tracks embody their bosses designs and truly make this game what it is. I cannot forget the amazingly talented and kind Nick who was the Sound Designer for this project. He was able to work off all our 'not quite done' and 'almost there' screenshots, animations and gifs to create a wonderful set of sound effects that elevate the game to the next level. He was open to iteration and is always a joy to work with.

Game development is an ever evolving team sport. Surround yourself with those who don't just do great work, but encourage you to do your best work. Those who build each other up and support each other. My biggest advice is use game jams to find these people.