In this evaluation I will go over everything I did in my project and say what I think went well and the things that I could have done better. I will identify any problems that I faced and how I overcame them and whether or not these problems hindered my progress through the project. I will start by going over my sound, visual, interactivity, and nautical research and how it helped with my project specific research and how it informed the development of my final idea. I will also explain how I referred back to some of my workshop sessions to help with any problems I had. I will go over my work with sound, my designing process for assets and how effectively I created graphics for my level. I will also go over how effective my programming and UI design were and show any things that I could to improve it. I will also reflect on how helpful my project management was and how I kept track of my progress throughout the project, going over how helpful it was for me to know what I needed to do through the project. I will reflect on things that I have learnt during this project and how peer and tutor feedback helped me with my progress. I will finish with my overall thoughts on how I think everything went, going over whether or not I liked my idea in the end and any things that I could have done better.
In this project I took the art pathway. My research for sound helped me in my project as I learnt what diagetic and non-diagetic sound meant. I utilized this to help identify what kind of sounds I needed in my game. The mind map that I did
gave me a much broader range of ideas for sounds that I could add into my game. I didn’t really research in enough detail for sounds in games. I only went over the evolution of theme music in games. Ranging from 8-bit music to full orchestral music. This was helpful as it gave more of an idea of what kind of music I could make for my level. I also researched how the music playing during gameplay can really effect the experience for the player. I think that I should have looked into sound effects like gunfire, melee sounds, pickup sounds and dialogue. If I did this I would have had a lot more ideas for sound that I could have used in my game. As a result of the little research that I did I only had a few sounds in my finished product. In my visual production research my mind map
was helpful for me to use to identify the types of visual art that I could produce for my project. I used this mind map to create mood boards in my specific nautical research. Again, in my visual production research I think that I could have done more mood boards as the only board that I did was a mood board on concept art:
In my interactivity research, I did some more extensive research. I made I mind map
on the different things that the player can interact with in games. This mind map helped me with the kind of interactivity I could implement into my game. I also researched the use of game mechanics in games to convey story, I looked at how a stealth section in Call of Duty Black Ops 2 fits in well with the part of the story that it happens in. I also explained how the mechanics in a game are what make the game more exciting. I made some mechanics cycles based on the video I found of call of duty and also some of my own. This activity was helpful as I learnt that creating mechanics cycles is a really quick and simple way of generating ideas. In my nautical research I made a really extensive mind map
that helped me get more ideas of the things that I could do in my project. I used this mind map to create a series of mood boards on different characters and locations that linked with the theme Nautical. I also did some research on some different genres so that I could settle on the genre for my level. In my initial ideas, I came up with 4 different proposals for what my project could be, after I did that I went through them and picked the one that I liked the most. I then took this proposal and recreated it in more detail. Going over the specific assets and sounds that I would need to create for my game.
Creating this proposal really helped me in preparing for my project. As I had the art style planned out with lists of the things that I needed. This gave me a good idea of where to start in my specific nautical research. I started my specific research by mind mapping all of my ideas for assets so that I could pick out the ones that I liked the most.
I used this mind map to help me create mood boards for my research.
In this mood board I got a series of screenshots from games with a grey scale art style like LIMBO and Monochroma. This board really helped get more ideas for the kind of assets I could make for my level.
I made this mood board to link the art style with the theme so that I could get an idea of how I could make the water look more realistic. After looking at this, I settled on having a dark to light grey gradient with white waves. I think that this mood board was also helpful to see what kind of level design I could use for underwater sections.
Then I did a character board and found an ambient horror track for inspiration for a background theme for my level. Overall though, I feel that my specific research could have been a lot more detailed, as my research didn’t really cover everything that I needed to create for my prototype. That meant that there were a lot of things where I had no research and had to research before I did them. This meant that I got less things done. In future projects I will make sure to do a lot more research so that all of my ideas would be planned. I think that my visual ideas and tests went well. As I made several designs of most of my assets and I think that it is clear how I progressed through my designs to the final looks. I think that my explanations of how I got to any final designs could have been a bit more detailed though, as i didn’t really explain fully how I got from the start to the finish of my design processes. The flow charts and mechanics cycles were really helpful as they gave me an idea of how the level and menus would work and what mechanics I would need to implicate into my level. The things that I should have done more of is the UML class diagrams and psuedocode for my scripts as there was a lot of trial and error and it is what caused most of my problems. I think that I showed my progress clearly in the production log, showing exactly where I picked up from my ideas generation and where I went from there. Some problems that I ran into were trying to implement a jump mechanic for the player, I had this problem because I didn’t do any psuedocode in my ideas generation which meant that I didn’t have anything planned. I overcame this problem by getting help from peers and teachers, I also looked it up on the Unity Documentation. As I didn’t have the time to finish the prototype I skipped the health and time and animations and went straight to finishing the level so then I would have a somewhat complete prototype. My Project management helped me a lot as it gave me an idea of what I needed to improve on each week. I think that I presented my final product clearly, explaining what I wanted it to be and what I ended up creating.
Overall, I think that my project mostly went well. I managed to create a full level with functionality for the player to win and lose. I got the menus working nicely with sounds for the buttons being pressed and a background track for the main menu. I added a few animations like a water animation and a spinning coin animation, I did these animations really late into the project as I was running out of time and had a lot to do. I did have an options menu that worked for the music volume but I had to remove it as I didn’t have the time to add anymore functionality to it. The things that I didn’t add was the functionality for the in-game UI like the health system and the timer for the player to complete the level. Also sounds for the level. I think that I should have managed my time better as I would have got a lot more things done. But I got most of my prototype done and I’m happy with how it turned out. I found my peer feedback and feedback from deadlines helpful as it helped me know what I had to get done and what I had to improve on each week.
Level 3 Games Development 1st Year 