Unit 4:Project Design Implementation and Evaluation - Final Post

When compared to the initial plan, I would say that the project has definitely covered it's expectations. However, just like any development of a project, changes had to be made from the initial plan, and not every feature was included, either due to time constraints, or just because it had to happen in order to work or be fun.

For example, the initial plan portrayed more realistic gameplay, and this wasn't necessarily a feature, it was just something that was suggested through actual features which, combined would paint the picture of a game with more realistic gameplay.
This is not what ended up happening with the final product. I would say that the game is very arcade-like, and much more pointed towards the fun gameplay side. It happened for a range of reasons - 1. Features were cut from the game, more noticeably the complex movement mechanics; 2. It just happened. After hours and hours of play testing, changes were made so that the game adapted a more arcade-like nature.

My point is that the two main things that I learned from this experience are:

• Changes WILL happen; either because you don't have time, or because it's too ambitious, or because it has to flow with the rest of the game - it will happen.
• Game development is all a big fugazi - it's all smoke and mirrors. Throughout the years, I have been starting to look at games in a different way - with game dev eyes, instead of player eyes. When you start playing around differently and breaking a game, you can see all the cover up, and all the stuff devs have done in order to hide things like imperfections, bugs, clunkiness, spaghetti code, etc. This leads me to my next point.

Once I learned about the fugazi, I adapted it.

What better way to deal with clunkiness and imperfections than to hide it - that is if you can't fix it, obviously.

There are many bugs in my game. Not completely game-breaking bugs, but rather just nuisances - and some pretty ugly nuisances at that. 

I shall now demonstrate:

See something wrong in this picture?

Of course you do. It's the first time you are seeing it, even after playing the game yourself. I'll explain:

When looking down, or up, the legs rotate with the rest of the body, for whatever reason. See, when you look down or up, only the upper body is supposed to rotate, and everything below the waistline is supposed to stay as is. As you can observe, that is NOT what's happening whatsoever.

You are only seeing this now because I ejected the camera from the player. With the thirdperson camera, you cannot see this happen even if you try. The only way you can see it is by looking at the minimap.

I have spent weeks trying to figure out why this happens, even asking for help twice in the unreal engine forums - and nothing. The only "fix" was to hide it. This whole time, when looking up and down, your legs would be in the air, and you had no idea - it's all a big fugazi.

Here is a list of the remaining bugs/nuisances/imperfections in the game:

• Stamina bar regenerates faster when using multiple movement mechanics simultaneously;
• Grenade explosion radius is inconsistent;
• Hit detection is inconsistent;
• Wall hitboxes when it comes to stopping bullets and grenades are inconsistent;
• Loading the last clip in either weapon won't play the animation;
• Reload sound will play multiple times if you spam the Reload button;
• Moving entities such as barrels affected by physics WILL mess the player up;
• Performance is terrible at 1920x1080 resolution;
• General inconsistencies.

These are only the bugs that I have encountered myself, within my dozens of hours of play testing. Some of them are quite noticeable. Some of them I have no idea how to fix, due to my lack of experience. Some of them I have an idea of how to fix, but I either don't have time or am afraid to break something else. Some of them are so old, that they are essentially the foundation of the game.

Now here is a list of missing features from the initial plan:

• Another objective within the stage, such as rescuing hostages;
• More weapons;
• More levels;
• Bonus objectives;
• Friendly entities.

Some of these were not implemented because I simply ran out of time, or didn't have time to focus on them since I was working on something more crucial to the game. Some of them were no longer suitable as development progressed.

The point is that the game isn't perfect, by any means. This doesn't mean that it is bad, or that I failed the plan. This also does NOT mean that I adapted plan B. - Yes content was cut, BUT new content was also added, for instance the minimap feature.

I do believe that the project was a little too ambitious and optimistic. This is for two reasons:

• Amount of content desired within the amount of time provided

Back when planning the game, I had the vision. The problem was that I underestimated the amount of time actually needed to pull it off. I didn't take into account other assignments, or anything else in my life really.

• Quality of content desired with available skills

I also overestimated my abilities as a programmer and aspiring game developer. Even though I did have some experience with Unreal Engine, the amount of quality that I expected to be felt in the game was unrealistic.

So with all that out of the way...

Q:What would I do differently? & What could I further improve?

The easy answer to this would be to fix the bugs and current constraints, as well as to add more content that was initially planned to be in the game. But in reality, this is not the correct answer.

Like I mentioned above, I didn't add some features for a reason. While part of it actually WAS because of time constraints, for instance the amount of maps, the other part was because these features just wouldn't fit.

If I had followed the plan from start to end very strictly, we would have more realistic gameplay. Since I didn't it has more arcade-style gameplay. But fundamentally, the whole game is kind of a mix of both.

This leads me to believe that the answer to 'What would I do differently?' would be:

A: I would have changed my vision from the start.

And the answer to 'What could I further improve?' would be:

A: Add more arcade-type features to morph the game into this nature instead.

If I was to start again, my vision would be to adapt a vision where the game would be more arcade instead of realistic, and my action in order to improve the overall project would be to stick to vision and actually make an arcade game.

Not only would this save me time from unsuitable features, it would better the overall quality of the game.

In conclusion...

I am very proud of TargetTime (this is the name of the game by the way), I have learned so much from this experience, not just in terms of programming skills but also when it comes to time management and what project/game development is really like.

I believe that I definitely achieved my goals of creating a compact product, with fun and functional content, and I look forward to do another project.

Lastly, I will leave you with some gameplay.