Individual Post-mortem and Unit reflection

Individual Post-mortem and Unit reflection

In my individual project I was tasked to make a 2D side-scroller that will engage an emotion of my choosing and engage that emotion within my game.

The things that I done well in this project is that it made me think about everything the game needed for it to engage the players emotion and I knew all the assets that needed to be implement for the game to engage the players emotion. The assets I created were done and completed and it was my first time doing proper animations since I was in yr 9 , I done well in learning how to use the unreal engine as the last time I used the program let alone blueprints was in tri 2 .

I think I adapted well to the program and I produced a game that was with no errors which I think is a good think since it was my first time handling blueprints and coding in UE4 I also had really good way of handling problems that occurred I asked my classmates and had a common tutorial to use as guidance as most of my class mates were using the same guy. I also managed to fix some coding issues by just using my general blueprint knowledge to fix my attack animation fully playing through the frames while firing my projectile.

I was able to make a working build for the exhibition to be played.

The things that I did wrong in this project is not give the project enough attention through the tri as I was more focused on the group assessment more than my individual as most of the things that are wrong with the project could have been fixed with just having more effort and time put into the project.

The animations I did even though they worked and I was happy they are a very poor quality as frames would erase parts of my sprite as I didn’t give my sprite room to move around when I changed it’s position of limbs and legs, the idle and walking animations are the only animations that I find with the best sprite sheets, The other things that went wrong is that my level design was lacking in good design and in making it fun for the player to enjoy this is because I left it for last minute implementation as I had little to no time left.

The game is very poorly constructed and the biggest flaw in my game is that it has no way of engaging the emotion I intended for it to do, I did put any voice acting in the project which is essential for the game to have anyway to engage the players emotion my game is just a side-scroller with no story or no clear objective there is no meaning behind the game and even if there was I have no clear way of showing the player what emotion I was trying to convey.

The art assets are quite average for my liking I didn’t spend any time on polish or juice for this project as I didn’t even have enough time to build the essential assets for the game. The character and the environment assets are very repetitive and have slight tiling gaps that can be seen in game the animations blur and are lacking in detail as the jump and don’t flow smoothly through the frames.

They ways I could of improved on this game which I would like to do in my spare time is add the voice acting into the game and create better environment assets so that the game can actually convey the emotions I wanted it to originally convey this will make my game have a clear story and purpose as to what I was trying to achieve in this project.

The other things that would need to be improved upon in this project is the animation assets are fixed without any cuts and look smoother and slicker than the ones currently so this will make it looked more polished than the current build. Some of the blueprints can be also improved upon to add more enemy animations and better fix the AI in the game so they aren’t so generic and predictable for the players to predict. I will also need to clearly improve the design of my map I made all the environmental assets too big for the character to jump over and take up to much camera space, I would also fix the camera as it is to close to the player and with the right play testing beforehand I could of improved on that as well.

Unit Reflection

In this unite I was able to learn new skills in how to generate ideas quickly to construct game ideas via brainstorms of seeing emotions and dissection of images to make a game that can engage emotion, I also learnt how to make my own character and how to design the properly by giving them a back story and how by relating there design with the emotions of the game will enhance the connection between the character and the player so they can relate to the character, I learnt the importance of this in this unit.

I Also have learnt in this unit I have furthered my skill in blueprinting in Unreal engine by making a 2d side-scroller, with animations and my own asset, I learnt how to better my asset creations in this unit as I was Lead asset designer for the group project that I was using Photoshop 24/7 which I have greatly improved the speed I can generate ok assets and how to further improve on those assets into a great assets. I was able to learn how to juggle 2 assessments throughout the trimester and complete both for submission and how to prioritise between the two even though my individual isn’t as good as the group project it was a learning experience that I have learned from to make sure to evenly dedicate time to both projects in order to deliver good games in both projects.

#GDS220