Scrum Master
Technical Designer
Team Size
8
Time Frame
10 Weeks
Engine
Unity 3D
What is High Maintaince?
Jump into an underground metro system to defend the city from rogue janitorial equipment! High Maintenance is a fast-paced mashup of classic arcade games with modern action gameplay.
Ubisoft University Contest
This game was made for the 2023 Ubisoft University Contest hosted by Ubisoft. We had 10 weeks to make a game with the theme of Arcade as well as additional mandates like an online leaderboard, creation and destruction mechanics, and a gravity manipulation mechanic. There were a total of 19 teams competing for 9 awards. High Maintenance was nominated for Best Technical Challenge and Innovation as well as Best Creativity and Theme Integration and won the Best User Experience award!
What I Worked On
My Role
As Scrum Master
My 2 primary roles on the team were Scrum Master and Technical Designer. As the scrum master, I prepared, organized, and ran meetings with all team members, ran retrospectives tailored to the needs of the team at any given time, and worked with our Product Owner and every team member to ensure the scope of the project remains reasonable. A key piece of scrum that I learned from this project was the importance of retrospectives for addressing problems during development. There were times where the plan for the game ballooned out of scope and so I ran retrospectives to dial in what is truly important to the player experience and what pieces we can cut. This was vital in making sure our game was complete by the tight deadline of the competition.
As Technical Designer
As for my role as Technical Designer, I was able to help various disciplines with oddjob tasks to make sure everything gets into the build when it needs to be. During the project, our AI Programmer was having trouble tracking down a bug in his 3D A* pathfinding. I was able to step in and work with him to solve the issue. There was also a time when our environment artist had too much to do with not enough time and I was able to take some things off her plate by handling the Low Polys and UVs of some assets. As one last example, We had issues with the collision throughout our levels so I helped our level designer by creating and placing collision boxes that we could see in engine but not in the build. This way we could fine tune our collision to be exactly how we wanted it.
What I learned
I am really happy with the results of our team and what we accomplished during the competition. As mentioned above, we were nominated for three awards and won one of those. However, there was a lot of room for growth for me as a developer and worker. I ended up wearing too many hats and burnt myself out several times through development. I learned to respect myself and my time just as much as anyone else on the team. Now I ensure to communicate to my whole team exactly what I can and can not do and make my promises carefully to make sure I am not taking on more than what I can deliver.