Ellen Game Mod -- 'The Temple Sword'

9 & ½ Weeks, 8 Team Members, and 189 Asana Tasks.

Those were the numbers that lead to this game mod's creation, looking back at this projects development cycle.

'The Temple Sword,' born of scholastic assignment back in September (2021), was chosen as our team’s focus of development within a class headed by Professor Will Meyers, called ‘Game Modification,’  here at DePaul University.

It started out with an Ice Breaker—typical class stuff—getting to know our team members personal skill-sets a little better, and a weekend of brainstorming, but come the following Monday in the second week of the quarter… we had our game pitch.

Our members-of-eight held responsibilities as follows:

Jon – Project Manager, Design & Narrative Lead

Jaina – Programming Lead

James – Art & Animations Lead

Dillon – Level Designer

Daniel – Level Designer

Greg – Environmental Artist, Cutscene Aficionado

Adam – Programmer

Andrew – Sound Designer

Over the next 9 weeks of our 10-week class, our team, utilizing a system of Bi-Weekly sprints, designed, programmed, and molded a prologue level piece by piece, continuously testing, fixing and fixing each section of the puzzle-narrative.

From a perspective of management, the idea was to create as efficient and smooth process as possible for the team, allowing for weekends off whenever possible, preventing any forms of crunch, checking in with members and giving bi-weekly updates through messaging (discord), and planning for times when inevitably there would be drawbacks like game breaking bugs, or sickness among team members.

Overall, the project went incredibly well. It was relatively easy to plan the schedules so that team members would feel a balance between their work and their lives, taking stress off their shoulders, and maintaining a calm aura of communication between one another when assets would require a touch from multiple departments/disciplines. Hand-offs were smooth and the cycle was methodical. Organization was a vibe and Communication was consistent.

Looking back, this was a great project all around, from start to finish, and it was a pleasure to work on, as well as a newly made source of pride, within our college portfolios.

For those interested in viewing our brief  'project pitch' & 'wrapping up' presentations from the academic quarter, here's the links for them!

Project Pitch: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LZEpJu8JK-5JUI1uR-W0651rnGZ9qcFVESj_GI8G...

WrappingUp Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10iBQhQsxeHvi_gNyK8LTXKrUOdDdzJOQz-Hncb8O...