P2

Coder:

A) Key Functions of the roles within the production team

The game 'Super meat Boy' is an indie developed game created by two men. Tommy Refenes, the games programmer and Edmund McMillen who's the games designer and composer.
Tommy created a new game engine to allow him more control over the game, he was the only coder so creating his own engine that he could understand easier would make fixing errors to code a lot easier for him.

B) Equipment used
Super Meat Boy used their own game engine and tools as well as Flash Exporter tools, in-game level editor and a scripting software and PC's

C) Skills needed to carry out the roles.
To be a programmer you need to be able to understand a variety of different software's like game engines, tools and compilers as well as having a good knowledge into different coding languages like, JavaScript, C# and the language most commonly used for games C++.
You will need to be good at solving problems because you are guaranteed into them with coding. Organisation is also very important to help you remember where you are and other areas of code you will need to go back to, being organised will also help you with time management so you can spend less time looking for one bit of problem code because you will know where it is. Time efficiency is also important, Tommy was very good at working under pressure, being the only programmer he had to work hard to produce a good functioning game and keep on schedule.

D) Production Process

Pre-Production:
During this time Tommy had the job of planning how the game mechanics would work and coming with a prototype using the concept ideas created by Edmund

Production:
Tommy was responsible for coding all aspects of the game. This included; character interactions and movements, environment interactions, menus and health, AI interactions. He also had to do bug fixes and code testing throughout the whole production process.

Post Production:
They then sent the game to be tested by test players so they could get feedback for improvements on visuals and glitches and any other extra added details they felt were needed to better the game, this was then to be sent back to  Tommy and Edmund who would make these changes before release.
Once the game was released it was Tommy's job to fix any bugs or issues in patch updates to the game.






Game Designer:

A) Key Functions of the role within the production team

Edmund McMillens role in Super Meat Boy was the designer of the game, he created the visuals and concepts that you can see in the game. His job was to further produce the concept material made by himself and Tommy. Further producing the characters, visuals, levels, animations, story narrative and mechanics and developing them more and more as the production process went on to make sure that the game flowed nicely in terms of playability and story.

B) Equipment used

Edmund's work would have started out on pencil and paper with characters, props and level sketches. These would later be re-developed onto a digital drawing medium using a drawing tablet and software (For example, Photoshop).

 C) Skills needed to carry out the role

to be a games designer you need to have the ability to create 2D and 3D objects and characters. designers should be well educated with digital creative software's such as 2D software's like Photoshop and 3D ones like Maya, Blender or Cinema 4D. You need to be a creative person and have the ability to take someones ideas and create them visually. You also need to have a good understanding of storytelling and narrative development to help make your game better. You need to be good at teamwork as you will be working closely with other team members from the production company. Being able to take criticism well and working off of the criticisms are very important for the job as well, as you will spend a lot of time re-designing your work to meet the specifications of what the team wants.

D) Production Process:

Pre-Production
This is where the games designer takes the ideas for the games and creates them into concept illustrations to help flesh out the games story and design and help pick a deign that would best suit the games narrative.

Production
Edmund's role in this process was to take the concept ideas and further develop them into finals designs that would be used in the game.

Post-Production
Edmund had to send the game to be tested as well as make promotional material to advertise the game before its release.


Merit Criteria:

Being the only two working on the game, Tommy and Edmund held equal levels of responsibility for the production.

Tommy was the sole programmer of the game whilst Edmund was both the artist and designer. They both had to communicate with each other online due to living in different areas of the country, this made communication very important as they constantly needed to keep each other updated on any programming and design changes. 

Without Tommy the idea for the game would never have been made, he had to bring all the assets together to create a functioning game for others to play. Without Edmund the game would not have existed, he was the one who came up with the idea as well as creating it visually. Both of these aspects are vital to creating a good fully functioning game.