Fruits Of Labour

During my 3rd year at Abertay one of my modules was to create an entertainment product with free reign over what it was and the content within.
My team decided on creating a Tower Defence game with Fruit and Vegetable characters in the game and have it set in a kitchen.

The Team

• Alan Sambells - Producer
• Liam Campbell - Designer
• Derek Reid - Artist
• Jason Rees - Sound Engineer
• AJ Cerqueti - Lead Programmer
• JB - Programmer
• Steven Purdie - Programmer
• Graeme Haddow - Programmer

The Game

Fruits of Labour is a simple tower defence game but is in 3D. We decided that with a team of 8 we could create a full 3D games within 12 weeks of production (along with 12 weeks of Pre-Production).

The pre-production stage consisted of the whole team deciding on what our game would be and finally when we decided on our game we started to time table our production cycle.
The idea was to use SCRUM management, one of the unfamiliar Agile methodologies but in reality the strict rules of this methodology did not suit a University project.

In the pre-production cycle I created the Game Design Document for our game as well. Not as detailed as a full scale game obviously but it did have all the necessary information to follow and create our game.

Production

The production cycle got underway with good enthusiasm, we all pitched in and each week at the meetings I organised we discussed what had been done and what was our next goal. This is where most my experience was gained within a group. Eventually it became clear that managing a team is not an easy task and if the team doesn't work well together or become difficult to contact then the project can begin to slip.

The role of the producer in this stage seemed a but more involved than at the pre-production stage however my role couldn't function when the team lost the focus of staying in communication. My job was to keep the team together and converse between the artist and programmers and ease the whole process. I found I had to become almost threatening to make some people simply attend meetings or reply to emails. To have such a lack of effort just set the project off down a slope.

Luckily from the dire situation we got ourselves into it all became something to learn from. I couldn't be more disappointed with ending up without a finished piece to try and show to perspective employers. I did enjoy most of the process and at least our artist created some excellent artwork that I would have loved to see in a game. Our sound engineer also created some amazing sound effects which myself and Liam helped to record.

Fruits of Labour should have hit your nearest GAME store in June but we didn't finish it..........[This is a joke]