Over the course of last project I feel that working in a group had it faults and difficulties, for example when it came to communicating as a group, I found it hard to express my opinions or creative ideas to the whole group because we had a group chat that allowed us to communicate but only two of us were actively using the chat to communicate and keep on track with new ideas or even help with issues in development or planning. We also used a trello board in order to track progress and this yet again worked well but only for me and another team member as the third frequently did not use the chat or trello and was ineffective at communicating with the group affecting our outcome and also workflow. As much as I helped and encouraged the team members, they were still lacking in work. I feel that communication was challenging because they seemed to not listen or even respond to communication well resulting in a project that was incomplete by the original deadline. This also affected my workflow as I was spending too much time getting the group up to speed with what we were doing and what needed to be done due to the lack of communication and even updates to the tracker, this ultimately slowed down my workflow. To overcome this we held group meetings regularly to keep on top of the work and the progress and then we also kept working together to share code and art to speed up production further in order to meet the new deadline.

Overlooking the negatives, working collaboratively in a group also came with a few advantages, for example we were able to collaborate with art and also help each other on tricky areas of production such as coding and implementing mechanics such as health pickups and rigging the enemy AI correctly. One major positive was that we were able to share our knowledge to better improve each others knowledge of game design and development, this was a huge advantage that played in our favour by the end of the project because we were able to share our research and experimentation to quickly learn new techniques such as adding sound to an Unreal project, so that we could utilise this going into development. This helped greatly when it came to meeting the new deadline and crafting a better outcome because by the end we were able to sit down as a group and explain how to implement a feature or mechanic that would be needed, helping to craft a more well rounded and structured outcome compared to if we spent longer on researching the techniques separately and then each using a different method. This was also a good learning experience because I was able to learn about new techniques that I previously had not worked with before such as Sound design in Unreal and using an in-engine tool to change the scene points of an object.

Based upon previous group working experience on this course, I have been able to see that communication, collaboration and effective planning have all helped to create a smoother flow of work and also to better improve the workflow of the group overall. By going from this, in this group project I will adopt the following in order to ensure that we meet the deadline and brief effectively, the first work method will be using a trello board or some form of tracker. By using this method the team will be able to track progress and ensure that each team member is able to see and complete the tasks that they have been set, as I said previously in the last project we used this and it proved somewhat effective, I was able to effectively use this tool as well as another team member and this helped us to manage our time and plan what tasks were important and needed to be focused on first. This will ultimately help for the team to track and manage time so I will be adopting this in this project too.

The second work method that I will also bring into this project is team meetings, team meetings allowed us to communicate our ideas and also to keep on top of workflow and tasks that were outstanding. The meetings also helped us to collaborate engine methods such as mechanics and features so this will be helpful to improve knowledge on game development and will ultimately help to meet the deadlines. In addition, as this project will be made up of a team with different job roles then it is essential that the artist communicates with the game designer to ensure that an art style matches the design set out in the GDD. In addition to this, the programmer will also need to communicate with the designer to ensure that a feature matches with what is set out in the GDD. So going into this project I will ensure that we have some form of effective communication such as meetings or general group discussions when a team member is unsure of a design or working of a mechanic.

Going from my personal workflow and work ethic in the last project, I would say that that was consistent and on par with that of previous projects as I was able to effectively manage my time throughout, leading to me having more time to help with issues in the group. However, going into this project I will ensure that I am more communicative than I previously was to ensure that I can express my opinions when needed and also to help with an array of issues that may arise during the course of the group project.