Reflection - Ben Daniels

 1) What did you learn that most positively affected your progress in creating your software?

The single most positive thing I learned is that it is absolutely essential to debug and break your code up smartly and efficiently. The best code I made was made with some degree of readability in mind, and that let me totally fix every major bug by debugging in specific locations. It's difficult to convey exactly in words, but making sure that the names of your methods and variables can make your code read very well, and allowed me to determine the source of bugs super quickly compared to other years. Once example was creating an overlay for an ability, and using a specific prefab allowed me to finish coding that ability quickly. That remains one of the best made abilities in the game (Terrario upwards kick), due to the efficiency of the code that allowed me to simply refine the ability by changing one number. Another example is that I rewrote the scripts for all of the characters with super readable methods, and that made editing the characters super easy the rest of the year, and also allowed me to copy and paste methods for easy creation of new characters. 

2) If you could take a time machine and go back to the beginning of the year, what one thing would you tell yourself to do (or not to do) to help group make progress on this project?

I would tell myself some project-specific things we should do, specifically making one fist able to apply to both players, a process we undertook after realizing the fist system we were using wouldn't work. I would also tell myself to make things with generality in mind so that they could be used later (one example being using prefabs widely). We wasted a lot of time trying to generalize things we initially made specific. Finally, I would tell myself to organize my code from the start to avoid the later issues trying to reorganize files and code when bugs started appearing.  

3) What do you think about the final state of your project?

I am very happy with it. I think I put a lot of work in the right places, and I feel like the game is actually, totally complete in this minimal state. No bugs that ruin the game, feedback that was acted on, characters that are varied and generally fun to play, and funny moments that make it genuinely enjoyable. I don't really fault myself on any decisions or choices made, and I think our development went quite well in total. If I was to continue working on this project, I would try and work on LAN multiplayer and adding more characters. Overall, however, I think the project is really good for the time we had and the experience we have.