My main role in regards to coding on the team was working with the puzzle aspect of our game. The plan was for players to interact with a variety of different puzzle types to progress. However, after scaling back scope due to time, we only implemented pushing block puzzles of varying sizes. One of my biggest challenges with this was making sure that no matter the grid size of the puzzle, everything still worked correctly.
I think one of my largest takeaways was playtest with others. At times where I thought movement was smooth, testers struggled. I learned it was important to get people other than myself testing the puzzles as I tweaked box movements, to help get an overall better feeling. By giving the player more wiggle room, it eases the frustration of players who previously needed to line up exactly with a box in order to push it.
My other major roles had been mainly implementing animations, as well as bug fixing. Animations became especially helpful to give players visual cues to puzzle interactions, aiding game feel.
As mentioned about, one of my major roles on this project has been QA. Moving past alpha, much of my time went into finding and tracking bugs. I organized bugs into our sheet (pictured below), tracking status, getting updates, and organizing them based on priority. The heaviest priority bugs would be moved into our Trello board, so we could see and tackle the ones needing the most attention.
As a member of the programming team, I spent a lot of time fixing bugs as well!