Introduction
To start with i would like to say that, even though we had a fair few disruptions and the team only started to properly function in the last few weeks; i think the game still came out very well when compared to how we wanted it. I spent almost 3 hours + each day apart from days out to work on this game, playtesting and implementing new features even to the point of ignoring my other modules due to me being the only one working on it for a month ( as seen by the git hub commits ).
Coding
What went well
When it comes to coding i think i excelled at what i was put up to. I made the movement, Vacuum gun, enemy and friendly ai and everything in between. All the widgets and their code was done by me and i think i did good and made it expandable. Meaning i felt like i made it to the point where most things i had made was able to be developed on to make more. For example i was able to create brand new AI classes by changing a few values in their blueprint due to most things were in the master AI blueprint class.
What went wrong
However with timing restrictions i couldn’t do this to all my blueprints, meaning i had to cut corners in some aspects. Nothing too bad but it still means it’s not fully expandable. The things i couldn’t get done was the automatic text and price of the upgrade screen to make making upgrades super easy. I had to manually put in the prices and names of the upgrades and link them to the Game Instance where as it could be done automatically with enough time and effort.
Visuals
What went well
I feel like the visual style of the game turned out well and makes the game look unique. The stylisation really sets it apart from other games. The pixel look with the cell shading looks really nice in my opinion. Everyone on board agreed on this final look and said it looks nice and looks like what we wanted the game to look in Unreal Engine.
What went wrong
When we had other players other than the team they said we could work on the visual style a bit more. This means adding more things like pixel art such as trees in distance and other things like that. I think that it might of beneficial for the original vision of game engine was used by using Unity to develop the game. as a 2D version would probably suit the style of game we wanted to make better and it would have meant we could develop more things for the game.
What i would change?
Instead of just using hard edges and 3d models i would implement billboards with 2D assets. I would also delve into the style more and have a more unique UI design that suits the visual style. However i wasn’t in charge of that piece of the game.
Gameplay
What went well
In my opinion and the majority of people i have spoke to that have played the game have said that the movement of the character feels nice and it gives a nice balance of floaty and controllability. I deliberately made the player a bit more floaty than other games but made sure that you could still control the player with a high amount of precision.
I feel like the way the player stops the enemy’s by slowing them down feels nice to use and is satisfying to slow them down as they are about to get to you.
What went wrong
The sucking in of the objects feels a little bit clunky and sometimes it doesn’t always go to the right spot making the object fly past you. It makes it great fun in enclosed maps as you get to fling the objects around the map and the collect them later but for people just playing to have fun by the actual gameplay it makes it not a good thing to have. I have no clue on how i would change this but i could have made it more similar to the coin pathing as it just goes to the player in a path, instead of using forces to control where the object goes. But that severely limits how much freedom you have sucking it towards you.
What i would change?
I would personally change how floaty the character feels ever so slightly just so when it comes to making it up places you can land in spots more accurately and precisely so that the player doesn’t get frustrated as this game is meant more as a relaxing game.
I would also change how the enemy AI works, i would like the enemy not to only target you but every now and then go for an animal and have them get corrupted such as in slime rancher.
Finally, i would attempt to make the whole sucking objects in slightly better and more expandable between different objects.
What have i learned
I need to make sure that all the mechanics work together fluidly so it is less disjointed between the different pieces. This means i playtest with all the mechanics in one place and go through each one and see how well they would suit pairing up. Such as the Enemy Ai going for friendly Ai in this game.
Teamwork
What went well
Me and Kacper was able to put together something that vaguely looks like the style he was going for in his prototype even though it was made in a different engine. We were both chuffed to bits about how it was coming together. He knew what looked best but our other teammate i don’t think knew how the style would look as much. Kacper was able to bring about 2 levels in 2 days due to an unforeseen circumstance were our teammate left the group due to leaving university. His levels came out amazingly and i was able to fit them into the game and fill them with the AI and some extra points for secret paths to rarer animals to collect.
Syzmon was able to produce some good UI for the game, although it didn’t fully fit the theme they still worked for what we had and i implemented it into the game and it worked flawlessly. Syzmon was able to put together a good base of the vacuum gun but since it didn’t fully match the style we all decided that i my model that i made based off of his vision would work best as it suited the art style vision a bit better.
Szymons version that i based mine off.
My version of the gun
What went wrong
Unfortunately, one of our teammates who was in charge of a big portion of the game (Level Design) decided around 2 weeks before the deadline that they were leaving university. This meant that someone had to take the load of work that was not done by this person. This person was Kacper, he did a great job with the work but i can imagine this put a lot of stress among the team and especially him. Also the lack of work ethic and medical issues caused barley any progress apart from me for the 1st month of work.
What i would change?
I would have made sure each member put forward at least one piece of work each week and if they did not we would call them out on it to make sure the work is distributed evenly. I would have also made sure the scope didn’t get so big so i could help out more with other areas of the game such as the 3D models or sound design. As we are missing sound design due to me not having enough time/sound design person’s github not working meaning i would have to implement it all.
I would also make sure we all showed up to one meeting every two weeks as an in person meeting to show off the progress.
Time Management
What went well
For the first few weeks i made excellent progress, i even had enough time to start development on a personal project. But as time went on my free time got less and less but i still made sure i had enough time to work on other modules and have a social life. Towards the end most people put in enough effort so that i wasn’t just me working on the game.
What went wrong
People only really started work on the game to a proper degree towards the end around 3-2 weeks before the deadline, meaning that my time management went out the window a bit. The Trello board was also forgotten meaning i had no clue what people had been up to unless they put it into the discord server.
At some points i got very stressed due to the time constraint and it got a lot worse when a teammate left the group 2weeks before the deadline.
Conclusion
I feel like overall the game ended up in a decent state, but i would have desired the amount of ethic everyone had at the end, doing all their planned work earlier on. Meaning i could develop based on levels and designs put forward before to implement new features instead of trying some of my ideas and realising it wont work in the future and having to scrap them (Shrinking enemy’s down so they disappear).
I just feel like people only started working last minute and it disrupted how it should have been made as it just turned into a crunch game that people leave to last minute and it does kind of feel like it at some points.
However, with some extra polish and extra levels it could become a proper game that we could sell to people.
I have learnt that sometime you need to push people to do work, otherwise they will procrastinate on the work until the last few weeks over a 12 week period. I need to make sure the team is energised and focused on a weekly basis and if people don’t feel up to it we need to discuss it; as i feel like the main reason for the lack of work until the end was due to the lack of reward. Some people only do stuff to get the bare minimum so if i can invigorate people to do more work consistently and to a good standard iw ill be happy in future projects.