Project Evaluation
It is the end of the final major project, and now, I will do a full exhaustive evaluation of what I have achieved, accomplished, struggled with, and any other notable events that have occurred over the course of my Final Major Project (FMP).
Intro
Firstly, my aim for Unit 8 was to develop a game. More specifically, a story-based, top down, adventure puzzle game. In which I needed to cultivate my very limited skills of drawing, animating, narrative/story writing, concepting, coding, and game designing. And from learning to hone my abilities, not only did I utilise them to help with my current Final Major Project. This helps with expanding my skill sets in future endeavours, where I wouldn't need to learn the skill from scratch, or ask others for help.
Making a game was something I already knew how to do, but I wanted to challenge myself and dive deep into new territory, by making a story heavy game, with some light puzzle solving. This isn't entirely new territory, as I have done a few game prototypes where the camera perspective is top down. But the whole story focused approach is new ground for me, and as a result, I would need to most importantly sharpen my skills in storytelling.
Incipit Conceptum.
The game from concept to final build, has actually maintained a lot of its gameplay identity. But the themes and world building slowly grew in scope, and deep into development had to be cut down in increments, and then gradually.
The game play concept for my game was a time-loop based game, where you have to perfect your route with slowly escalating gameplay. And an overarching narrative in which the character you play as, slowly reveals themselves to be not whom they say they are.
I did not execute the overarching narrative at all, as I might have shot myself in the foot a bit, by having the story for the game be very ambitious and sort of large in scale. I was inspired by the film, “Edge of Tomorrow”, and wanted to replicate that movie in game and story. As I delved deep into the broken character of Major William Cage, and how he went from a scrawny little man, who hid from the war he was selling, into a glorious hero, who sacrificed himself for humanity.
I still kept the character’s journey in mind, as I went out and spent some of my pre production time, researching ways to figure out how to effectively write a hero’s journey arc. Making a narrative-based game was still the goal, so knowing how to make a successful struggle for the character to be challenged in and then grow from, was a personal goal for me as an aspiring script writer. But instead of having the world be grounded in more “realistic” mythology, I slowly added more “cartoon-y” characters to my world. Starting with the only odd NPC being the “Unirat”, which was just a doodle, but I loved how it fit with the world I built up so far.
Challenges conquered and Skills obtained.
Throughout the entire production timeline, I have utilised various programs, and a multitude of skills, from audio, writing, coding, and drawing.
Art and Cutscenes.
First I will state that drawing, by far, was the most difficult skill that I had to overcome throughout the project. Art in terms of practical skills, is the weakest of my skill sets. It is quite cumbersome and a bit tedious for me to draw competently, as I struggled with drawing more complex pieces of drawings. In which perspective, lighting and composition mattered a lot.
I utilised Aseprite, a paid pixel-based art program, that is mostly used for making animations. But can be used for also making pixel images, however I only used it to make cutscenes for the game. Anyways, this single shot right here took the longest out of any of the shots I drew for the cutscenes. As I had help from 2 classmates on how the anatomy, structure, and body perspective, and how the head is meant to be positioned on the bed itself. It was an almost painful experience trying to repeatedly get the "pose" right. As I was utilising a mouse to draw basically everything that appears in the game.
But slowly, the more I drew, and iterated upon, I slowly got the hang of things. I would have certainly made more "neat" and more "appeasing" drawings with a pen and drawing tablet. But I didn't due to time, and how easy it was just whip out a doodle with a mouse.
Colour was going to play a big role in the game, where the player starts in grey scale. But as soon as he goes through a portal, he is still grey, but the world is beaming in colour and life. In which he slowly gains his colours over the course of the game. And this would have different gameplay reactions, as attacks that would have taken longer, are now quicker. Dialogue with previous NPCs would now be happier or at least less gloomy.
The biggest development in my project was settling for a defining artstyle. And I did not want to make anything too ambitious, so I settled for the artstyle more in tone with games like “Omori”. And this is when I became a bit more practical with what I can complete and finish in a sensible time manner. Rather than chasing impossible or egregious goals that are unsustainable for the project. But I did not always keep the “plausibility” of certain features and design challenges, as that is one part I have struggled with, and more examples of that will be made quite known in other aspects of my project.
Audio
In terms of soundscapes, I used Fruity Loops Studio to make the game’s music. I am already comfortable with using this program, as I had made a couple tracks for my previous game project. So I would think it would be a piece of cake. However, I didn’t know how difficult it would be to make a single track that embodies the game’s very sombre tone and feel. As making “sadder” music was not the difficult part, but having the music feel like it is fighting and escaping its blue world that it caused itself.
A lot of things were ambitious with this game, so that’s why I only made one track that I split into three separate pieces of music tracks that can be used. One where it plays on loop, the second where it is just the drums playing, and another with just the bass and chords. As my poor prioritisation of tasks in other fields, affected heavily towards making any audio for my game.
Coding
Now with the main big part of the game. I think I overvalued my coding skills a bit, as I went head in, and started messing around with all sorts of systems. But I still had a goal in mind, on making a top down, sort of turn based, time-loop game. In which, a lot of effort and time went into making it “feel” good to play. As I prioritised “game-feel” alongside telling a story, both fell at the same time.
The biggest hurdle I faced was trying to implement gamepad support. That “small” feature I underestimated took over a week of constant headaches, but I still persisted. The analog stick completely butchered with how the player moves, and because I was so focused on this part, that when working on other parts of the game, it greatly reduced my ability to produce content quickly as I got so caught up on fixing this part of the game. However, generally, I liked adding and fixing lines of codes, as it felt almost therapeutic. As thankfully, other parts of the game’s code were sort of easy to fix or implement quickly. Just that, this bug was driving me up a wall.
Scheduling and Reflection Process
At first, I didn't think a meticulous schedule would have been needed, as I was originally going to use a simple time table, with very simple outlines of what each week was sort of going to entail. The same one that is on the Proposal page. But a couple weeks in, and I realised I *needed* to make a schedule that outlines, most of the work I would be doing in each week, and more specifically, what I will be focusing on in those days more specifically.
Week V was a very weak week for me, it wasn't very bleak, but my time management skills slowly started to leak, as I delayed production week to week VII. Perfectionism was definitely an issue here. As I wanted my contextual analysis and research to be as thorough as possible. Which bled into the next week, and a sort of snowball effect slowly occurred.
I would have rather made more concept art for my game project, than still doing secondary research. As I thought, only focusing on one aspect for my final major project would ramp up the pre-production process. But I work better when I am doing everything, in every part of the game's project all at once. I think I didn't do as effectively when I was pinpointed on one significant portion.
Week IX was indirectly affected by the one sided progress of Week V, but this was also a crucial point in the game's production timeline. So much Pre-production work was being produced at the same time as it was being made in the production process. This did not affect me a lot, as I enjoyed the process of making assets from scratch and immediately working on the more "finalised" work.
But this sort of was detrimental to the project's timeline, as I had the opposite effect from Week V, where I stretched myself too thin. And I slowly experienced burnout, trying to regain control and momentum of the game's project. By making an overwhelming amount of concept art and assets for the game.
Mon Reaction.
I am not happy with how the game turned out in the end. It is missing a lot of content that had to be scrapped for time. In which I did not effectively manage my time properly. And as a result, I had to remove and alter a majority of the game's content.
The positives, is how the game looks and feels, I nailed almost perfectly on what type of game I was going for. And the type of game I would actually play in my spare time. The “boiling” effect on every piece of animation gives off an “early 2000s animation era” look. Which not many games today I feel like are going for, as it is quite a time intensive technique that requires drawings to be basically drawn twice.
The negatives, is the actual content that is in the game. As after the tutorial, the game is quite barren, not much to do, other than to aimlessly move around and die after a hundred steps. In addition, I didn’t tell the story I wanted to with this game, as I wrote a fleshed out story with character arcs. For all of it to be in vain and essentially for nothing.
Bad Time management is the root of all of the negative elements that appear in my game. It is a quality that I couldn’t handle well, and if I managed more thoroughly, not only in terms of “do I have time for it?” but more in the lines of “Will the project suffer greatly if this was removed or added?”. I thought I would have more than enough time to execute my ambitious game idea.
The theme “Mythology”. I think I executed it as effectively as I could, by not directly taking the inspiration of the greek character, “Actaeon”, and literally putting him in the game. But by taking his traits and stories, and using it as a reference point to be put into the game. As the main character, and being the title’s name. The character in Greek mythos, is quite unlucky and is always in the wrong place at the wrong time. However I changed his personality a bit, he is quite clueless in the more charming way as to how he gets into trouble a lot. So instead of being clueless, I made him subtly sorrowful and miserable. Some classmates would be worried for me as to why I went with this direction. But I like when characters are in misery like Bojack Horseman.
Reaction(s).
When my classmates finally got to play everyone’s games, or watch the animations they made. The reactions I got towards my game was initially positive, as positive remarks towards the artstyle, music and dialogue. But as soon as they completed the tutorial, a bar with the character’s mana would appear, and actual fear and shock in the players would ensue, as they were scared to why, with each step the player would take, that the number goes down. This is what I wanted the players to feel, almost hopelessness and a struggle for control in the player.
But the negatives were that the game was shallow in content, and that after the tutorial and exploring the island a bit. That there was no content for the players to actually play and enjoy. I agree that there should be content for the players to have fun with, and that it shouldn’t be this empty. And quite a few bugs emerged with how the cutscenes worked, as I accidently let the player be able to skip them, but they would still keep playing the background and interfere with some of the dialogue code. This only happens if the player skips the cutscenes.
Ignoring the bug with the cutscenes, people enjoyed the simplistic, wordless, cinematics for the players to watch in between every major part of the short game. Some didn’t quite like the grey monotone palette, which I know that it isn’t something some people enjoy, as it could look lifeless at times when not executed properly and effectively. Overall, the game’s artstyle still resonated with most people for feeling like “Omori”.
The whole.
I wholeheartedly believe my FMP showcased my subpar management skills. But it did show what I need to learn next, which is being able to set manageable deadlines when working around a set timeframe, and schedule. My next steps, after completing this project, is to continue improving both my practical and soft skills. Practically I have improved, I like that I am slowly improving in drawing more complex pieces. But I still have a long long journey to go. Now I just need to continue challenging myself to become a proficient artist in not only drawing, but music/sound production, narrative writing, coding, and so on. Basically in a nutshell, this project greatly improved a lot of my soft and hard skills that I will need for the hereafter.
Overall, going forward, if I only had to keep one thing that I have learnt from this project. It is that I need to keep a consistent schedule in place for me to refer to. As most problems would have been outright eliminated if I had properly paced myself, rather than stretching myself too wide. I was by myself, and did not have the backing of team members that I could have utilised and shared some of the overwhelming burden I placed upon myself. Time is valuable, and moving forward, I need to make time by being level headed in my future projects and endeavours. I didn’t completely mismanage my schedule as I paint it as, but
And on a last note, would I do a project like this again? Yes, definitely. I loved the process of designing and making a world for players to immerse themselves in. But most importantly, it would be a game I would like to play. As the skills I have conjured up throughout the couple months of game development, I would excel greatly with being able to set realistic goals for not only the game, but myself and what I can achieve.
