Grenadiers was the project that I had the pleasure of working on while studying in Montreal. The project took place over the course of a semester was was developed by a team of six developers; three artists, two designers (one being me, the other acting as producer and level designer), and one programmer. With the crutch of having only one programmer, and with myself taking on the role of systems designer, I learned a lot of C# programming skills and Unity developer tool making while working on this project.

 

Our team had the honor of having a designer from Ubisoft Montreal as our production teacher / mentor for the project, and so we were able to gain a lot of guidance on what was and was not working well, and how everything we were working on would translate over in a larger studio. 
 

What I learned / my biggest take-aways:

• How to program an design UI for a split screen multiplayer environment. 

• How to design UI for an FPS game, where clarity and player focus play huge parts in the experience.

• C# Programming skills and refining that has allowed me to take on the role of single programmer on other projects.

• How to adapt screen space / menus to allow multiple users to use the space at once, without directly splitting the screen.

• How to balance different weapons in a game, and how to use QA testing to help with balancing and design.

• Taking user feedback on abilities and player statistics, and reflecting that feedback in future, iterative designs.

• The importance of SCOPE, how easy it is to get carried away with ideas in the conceptualizing phases, and how to scope down a design to include the most fundamental elements of gameplay.

• How to rocket jump using a grenade.