Evaluation and Reflection

Weekly Logs

Week 1

Week 1 was definitely a bit rough but overall really good, but the rough part is definitely expected, especially at the start of the project. I started the week by creating the project itself, and creating some test sprites and then creating a character who can move around the world.
I also started trying to work on the inventory system, which could've been the toughest part of the game to work on, but the most important, as I'd like to include items in the game which can be used for puzzles across maps.

Week 2

Starting week 2, kind of wasn't great, I got sick but I wanted to continue progress on the game, so I did just that, started off the week by making some tilesets, they might end up being redone later but they're alright for now. I also decided to start working on some music for the game to get a better idea at what I wanted the game to feel like. I decided that for some areas I wanted to try doing dynamic audio, which means that music would be seperated into layers, causing the music to become more intense depending on circumstances. Besides this nothing much else was done this week.

Week 3

I started week 3 by creating a new player sprite, something closer to what I'd like the final sprite to be, I also talked about some inspirations for the character sprite. a new room and adding room transitions in Godot. I ran into tons of issues with making the room transitions so I kind of just gave up for now as I wanted to make some movement animations for the player, Additionally I moved the eyes on the player down after some feedback. This week went relatively well in my opinion, and I was definitely on the right track according to my plan, if not a bit further ahead than I had thought I'd be.

Week 4

Week 4 definitely started with a big pivot to the way I wanted the game to go, I realised that I could try using 3D Pre-rendered backgrounds which act as part of levels, and honestly I prefered this idea a lot more, it seemed much more interesting for level design and would allow me to make things look a lot cooler in the long run... but, this kind of didn't work, so I decided to make the game 3D first person! which is a very big switch, however I think it's going to improve the way the game works drastically.

I ended up completely changing the tank controls from that after realising that the gravity basically didn't work.

Week 5

I started this week by essentially just continuing work on the level from before, although after some time I really wanted to turn the game into a shooter game, similar to ULTRAKILL or Quake, so I did just that. Adding more movement and giving the player easier control over their camera definitely helped give it that movement shooter feel.

Week 6

Week 6 started with basically just continuing work on the third map, although I'm definitely going to fix the way the gun works at some point soon due to the fact that it's very broken right now, as I'd rather have it be a hitscan system rather than a projectile system as I feel like it'd work better.

Week 7

This week began with me starting to work on proper UI. I wanted the enemies to be able to kill the player, so for this I needed health, so I wanted to display the health for the player. Additionally I also added a timer.

Week 8

I started this week by getting a better idea of how I wanted the games direction to go, I realised that I had a big issue with figuring out the actual goal of the game, so I wanted to give the game a proper goal, so I decided to look into a few games that I'm inspired by for this project, the analysis that I did on each can be found here.

Week 9 + 10 - Easter Break

Week 9 was definitely a lot to take in, I've started to lose track of writing up so it's becoming a bit more difficult to properly log what I've done, this may be due to the fact that I'm not in college due to the easter holidays, meaning that it's difficult for me to stay focused on college work, as I'm a very impulsive person and will switch from task to task, but I believe the trello board I created during the planning section of this project has helped me a lot with knowing what tasks I need to do, meaning that I'm still making quite a lot of progress.

The main big thing I did this week was totally scrap Map 01, Map 03 and Map 04, This sounds like I'm throwing away a lot of work, and I really am, but it's worth it in my opinion, those levels don't neccessarily fit the style that I want for the game, and this gives me more of a chance to expand the main 2 levels that are going to be playable, Map 02 and Map 05, After these changes I got 2 of my friends to playtest the 2 levels and I got some very valuable feedback from the both of them, which I put into a trello board so that I could keep track of the feedback I've changed.

Week 11

This week started with me working on upgrading enemy and puzzle mechanics, and responding to the playtesters feedback. As far as I'm concerned the project is in a good state and I'm on track to completing it before the deadline. I'm hoping that things go a bit smoother this week as I have a better idea of what I need to be doing and where I need to go according to my plan. I also created an itch.io page as I feel like it'd be easier to share the game this way, and I'll have it ready for when I need it

Week 12

Week 12 went relatively well, I added a lot more feedback for players so it's more obvious when specific things happen, overall I'm happy with the state the game is in and I believe it's going to plan, although I am very aware of the deadline, so I've split up things that need to be done before and after the deadline, such as leaderboards which are more important for the open day rather than the base game itself. I also wrote my final evaluation as we're nearing the end of the project.

Final Evaluation

Context

I feel as if the context was the second weakest section of the project as it is usually for me, I struggled quite a lot with doing the SWOT analysis, coming up with threats and opportunities were probably the most difficult part of them, but I think context went okay overall, I'm happy with the Moodboard and Mindmap especially as I feel like they helped me gather a better understanding of both my games aesthetics and mechanics. I think I had a good understanding of the constraints for my project, knowing what could potentially alter the progression of my project, and dealing with those problems effectively. Despite my project going very differently to the original proposal, I still think the original proposal was okay. It definitely would've been better if I established more to do with gameplay and story rather than aesthetic, but I think the proposal still holds up on its own as it is.

Research

Research was definitely my weakest section, which is probably the worst possible section to be the weakest as research is incredibly important during game development and planning. I say this because a lot of my research was very swiftly and awkwardly done, whenever I'd find inspiration I didn't really write it down, in addition to this I could've written down a little more about how the characters that I did mention inspired me, like what specific parts and why I chose those characters. I feel like it would've been much better if I were to have properly written up more about my inspirations, potentially making it easier to develop my game during the development phase. I think my best part of research was my analysis on both ULTRAKILL and Neon White, being able to just write up about games I like definitely helped overall, but those parts of research allowed me to get a better understanding of the way I wanted my game to go, it almost felt like I was writing up my own gameplay proposal whilst writing up the research.

Problem Solving

I think my problem solving skills were enhanced drastically throughout the project, not just in terms of game development but just overall. I think that my contingency plan would've been better if I came up with more scenarios that had an even higher likelihood of happening. Regardless of this, I think my contingency plan is good. My record of problems has a lot of content in it, and although this may look good I'm kind of disappointed that I hadn't formatted it better, I feel as if that would've made the presentation much nicer, but I'm glad that I at least wrote down a lot about the problems I encountered, not just because it's a lot of writing but because it gives me a better view and understanding of how I actually fixed the problems, and it'll help me remember how to fix any further problems in the future. I also think that there was a severe lack of images on the problem solving section of the website, it would've been nice to have added more as evidence, I think it would've been much more effective if I were to have taken screenshots or recordings of the problems at the time, so that if I wrote down about them I could include more images.

Planning

My planning was okay, there isn't really much to talk about as I feel like a lot of my planning was happening during the context / research, and honestly maybe that's the reason that I ended up pivoting options so quickly. In terms of what I did in the planning section, a majority of it was just Trello, which is a website that allows me to sort out tasks into different sections, so I know what I need to do. In addition to this I also made a GANTT chart but… I didn't really use it, especially after I ended up switching my game idea. Instead of following the GANTT Chart I just used Trello, my reasoning for this is because it's a lot easier to write what tasks I need to do, and split them up into smaller sections, furthermore I'm still able to add deadlines on trello.

Practical Skills

My skills have definitely improved during this project, not just in programming, but also problem solving and general numeracy skills. Similarly to the problem solving section, I definitely think I could've improved this section by adding more photos as evidence of my skills, however I think in this section it definitely isn't near as much of a problem as the problem solving section. Writing down about my skills has helped a lot, as it allows me to get a better look at what I've improved upon as a whole throughout the project.

Evaluation

I believe that my evaluation went well, I relatively consistently wrote down the weekly logs, and even when I wasn't I was still taking notes on a separate google doc so that I could add them to the site, meaning that I was never losing out on writing down information, and I feel like the technique of just quickly writing down notes on a google doc helped me write up so much more for the evaluations, and is something that I will continue doing in the future. I believe that it would've been better if I had maybe added some pictures alongside the evaluation to further prove what I had done, furthermore during the first few weeks of the project I ended up writing a bit too much for each individual weekly log, so if I were to re-do this project I think it'd be important to check word counts before writing up.

Presentation

Overall I think the presentation is okay, honestly I don't have the most amazing graphic design skills so I'd like to maybe do a bit more with the presentation before the actual open day happens which is when I'm going to be showing off the game, one of my main ideas for this is to make a booklet about the game, similar to those that would come in cases with console game disks, but besides that it's alright, I'm happy with how the itch.io page looks for the most part, but I believe it'd be a bit better if I were to choose different colours that match better, making the viewing experience of the page better, furthermore I'd like better screenshots on the itch.io page to make the game seem more enticing to my target audience.