Retrospective

So...it's been a while since my last update, I apologize. Things here at Hi-Rez shifted into high gear after releasing Makoa. The studio was in full swing trying to get ready for Open Beta and that meant a lot of work. 

Ah where to begin?

After releasing Makoa we found a good cadence of doing a champion every other patch and for the in-between patches we would ship cosmetics as well as features and bug fixes. With that said, I undertook a big task on my personal time to retroactively get all of the previous champions that were done before I joined the studio up to par. This meant touching every single 1p, 3p, lobby, and weapon packages for all 17 champions. Going in and cleaning out the trees, adding functionality to the trees (like making sure that if you are standing still and you rotate you actually move your feet rather than sliding), optimizing the animsets, normalizing key nodes across the champions, and doing a massive blend pass, up to 56, for each champion, and some other tasks to make sure that the quality I now put out for future champions isn't overshadowed or lost as you go back in time to older champions.

On top of that, I was getting more buy in at the studio and people respected my insight. Since this wasn't my 1st rodeo working at a studio I did bring in some experience and know-how on how to get things on track which allowed me to better get my department up to snuff. Albeit, that meant lots of meetings and side conversations to make sure I had what I needed to keep the team, and the game for that matter, running smoothly while putting out a product we could be proud of.

So beyond a lot of process setup and maintenance there was also a culture shift at Hi-Rez. By that I mean the studio came up with a new way to manage multiple projects across an ever growing team. This meant that my previous associate, after having came in "green" and being trained up under me, was now moving onto another IP and I was getting a new associate to train up. It also meant that my lead was now transitioning into more of a managerial role across all projects so that left me as the principle tech artist on Paladins. I still report in to him but I'm the pseudo lead on the project which allows me to stretch my tech artist wings and while the responsibility increased, it's nothing new to me and I embrace it. I feel like I am very good at what I do and I can translate that down to other teams or even my new associate. Enough tooting my own horn. Back to the recap.

During this time we also started spinning up new features that we could monetize which meant creating new tech. Anyone that knows me knows I like new tech. So it was a fun time to dive in and get the functionality we needed to present our cosmetics. Though, this meant going back into all champion's trees again and adding the new hotness. I think I dove into all the 17 champion's trees and packages over the course of the last 4 months at least on 4 separate occasions. We would add something new, test it, and then give it the green light to be done on all other champions. There is no make a character and move on here mindset...they have to be constantly maintained and updated. 

With all the "tiny" details out of the way we also put out 2 new champions in this time frame as well as a ton of cosmetic content such as Star Slayer Ruckus. The first champion was Mal'Damba. I was responsible for getting his 3p stuff in as well as making sure his 1p was being done correctly by the associate.

Here's Mal'Damba's reveal trailer:

The 2nd champion we put out was Sha Lin. I was responsible for his 1p on this one and again making sure his 3p was being setup correctly by the associate.

Here's Sha Lin's reveal trailer:

During the production of these 2 champions and with the culture shift occurring at Hi-Rez there was quite a bit of a workload and there was a few long nights making sure everything will ship on time. Which brings me to my postmortem, I have a text message from myself that I remember writing just for this very moment.

All the P's!

Planning, processes, prototyping, production, pipeline, polish, perspective, playtesting, and (s)pine.

I must have thought about these topics more than anything during these last 4 months. Anyone who has been in gameDev knows that it can be very erratic and you have your ups and downs. For me, a big part of focusing on the P's was because of foresight. I have been told I am very keen at identifying a problem before it becomes an issue and I do that by relying on the information I currently have at hand to go off of.

If the planning is over-scoped or everything is not accounted for things fall apart fast.

If there is no processes in place to deal with a new feature, than we have to make them up as we go and it's slow.

If your fellow team members fail to prototype or account for issues then it can be a train wreck since everyone is working full speed on the hope that what has been dictated will in fact be what we put out.

If production has to slow the train down or if they aren't equipped to handle a task then something somewhere went wrong.

If your personal perspective is off then you will have a rough patch cycle.

If you only playtest once everything is final only to find out you have a cracked foundation it's a scramble to repair the crack.

And lastly, I know it doesn't start with a P, if you don't have the spine to say what you mean then you are not only letting your team down but you are doing a disservice to yourself. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with someone and having a conversation around it.

These were some of the things I thought about and experienced, either directly or indirectly, over the last 4 months and all the variations in between.

You have to love what you do.
-Ben