Final Evaluation

Research

For my research I looked into all the areas of my game, I looked into the art, the UI, mood board research, audio research, survey research to find out specific questions about my sort of game I was researching for, mind maps, fantasy creature research and last of all game mechanics. I looked into each of these things to see the things such as what sort of enemies would go into my game for my player to face or find. Each key bit of information such as the audio research as to what kind of audio I should put into the background for key reasons, for example I could have dramatic music in the background for my main game scene to get the player focused and ready to fight enemies as well as keep them immersed in the game, I could add less sound for things like the defeat screen with instead of music there could be a bit of thunder in the background so to the player it feels barren and lost.I could also even use audio for a little extra detail to make the game feel more polished by adding a little sound each time you click the play button or a button in general to go the control screen to make the game feel more polished.  Each bit of research also influenced the other parts when I was researching the art it was to see what kind would help make my game stick out from others as well as finding out what type of art I myself am more capable of doing for my game and once I figured that out it also affected what my enemies should be for my fantasy creatures as to what I was also researching into.

 

Before I even did any of these researching tasks I began with the first which was mood boarding which influenced every bit of research as to what I did for the project as when I I did this I put down each little detail which could inspire of give me some sort of idea as to what my project would be about exactly. For my mood boarding I put down things from what the theme should be, what the art style should be, what things in the movies and tv have I seen which can also influence me. After I did this I had a more clear understanding as what I wanted to do and began researching for things like the art style. From there though I not long after that point were I sent out a survey to research as to what people wanted in a game like mine of the idea which I had in mind, at the time it was either a tower defence game which I would make or a platform game which I would make in 2d but my research made me more convinced to go for a tower defence game as my research gave me a more clear idea as to what would happen in the content of the game as well as to how it would be made and from my survey research tower defence and platform games had a similar popularity rate that my other research overall influenced me into making a tower defence game. Overall in terms of time management for this area of my project I limited my time in each of the sectors so that I had a scheduled as to when it would be done and I think I achieved this well as before the end of the research schedule which I set my self I managed to finish off a little early to begin the design part of my project documentation.

Design

For the design part of my project I designed all the things of which I researched from the research section. I designed the UI, the art, the game play design, the character interaction design, level design and game prototype design and by the end of the design section as to what I scheduled myself I also got some feedback as to what they thought of my game exactly. The designing of my game again influenced each of the other parts of my game but not as much as at this point I had a much more clearer image as to what my game would have in it and knew what each part would have in a more clear detail each time I looked into it. The first one which I looked into was the UI design I found out from my research that for things such as the health bars and cool downs and for most of the valuable information in the main game the information was displayed in the corners of the screen so that the player can see into the game clearly and read as to what is going on at a glance of notice so I made mine simple and basic as to how I designed it. For the menu screens for defeat and victory I had both designed to be opposites of the other so that when you went into one it would have a different feeling to the other for when you completed the game one way or the other.

Here is one of my menu UI screens of what I designed for my game in its full detail.

My game overall has been designed so that I could focus on the coding more and using this project to grow my skills and understanding to c# so I designed my game to be capable of doing quickly in the art and UI so I could focus more to the code. An example as to how I have done this I made my character interaction design basic and simple as all the player is capable of doing  is looking around, aiming, shooting and being capable of destroying their enemies. For this part of my project overall in the time management side I believe I sorted the time out wisely as I manage to complete the design section of my project on time leaving plenty of capable time to start working on making my art and assets as well as code my game together overall.

Art

For my art I originally considered making it a whimsical theme to the art style but from my research I found that many tower defence games used a whimsical theme. Because I am more capable at doing pixel art as I found out through a bit of testing  and so that the game would stand out from competitors if I were to put this game on the market I decided to go and make the game using pixel art.

When making the art I used Photoshop to make it and used mostly my imagination as it was a fantasy type game so I did not want it to have a realistic look. I used a few reference images here and there from research to make my art to give me an idea or inspiration for when I needed it to make my assets for my game.

Using Photoshop I made many different types of assets, I made my enemies, background, foreground, character and animations for the game.

Here is a couple of examples of the creations of my art I have made using Photoshop of a goblin and my main menu.

Since they were pixel art I did not use anything like gesture drawing to make the creature posses as I could not be picky with how it looked with limited pixels instead I did it by a bit of trial and error seeing what worked well with what did not with the posses the colour scheme and the animations as a whole as to what I made.

Here is an example of a bad design which I then corrected later

Before, the reason why this is bad to the new version is because this version is trying to go for a 2d and 3d look at the same time as it is 2d but u can see it from a 3d perspective as you can see both legs when from a 2d standpoint you should only really be able to see one. This style could work but as all my other designs are presented in such a different manner it sticks out and all the proportions are uneven as well.

After in my new version I made it correctly proportioned with it all in the same dimension setting and I also added in a lighter colour pallet it was a suited my game better as my game was going for a bright and colourful design to it.

Overall for my art I feel that I have grown a better understanding and most of all what I think I have improved from this is that I have become quicker in being able to make these sprites and animations for my game and any future projects that I work on.

Coding

The coding part of my project was the most tricky part of the project to do as it was the least capable part of the project I felt confident on but wanted to use this project anyway to improve on it even though I was told to work to my strengths.

For my time management on my code because it was my weakest area in the project I sorted my time management to make sure that I had the most time dedicated to this part as I dedicated roughly of nearly half my time to it. My coding included my menu UI, my character interactions, moving from scene to scene, enemy ai and a score system, time system and a health system.

Each part of my code at first was tricky and confusing to understand but eventually as I moved into the project more and more learning and understanding I found it to be more understandable and straight forward to know and learn as I began to take the most basic of things to be confusing to eventually be able to not just understand it but to also re arrange an re use it in different samples and parts of the other different code. An example of this would being able to know how to use the code to change scenes using button pressing but I managed to take some of that code and use it so that when the tower’s health is depleted to less 1 in the code it will send the scene to the defeat screen and if the player keeps the health above 0 for one hundred and twenty seconds the scene would be taken to the victory screen showing the player that they have won.

It took trial and error to get my code right but I manage to figure out each parts of the code and understood how to do it. An example of this is that I had my character shooting with ray cast code when he is shooting a projectile. This caused a problem as when the character shot at the enemy the arrow would disappear way too soon before colliding with the enemy object. This turned out to be that ray cast code collides with the object instantly as this would be used for things like bullets which shoot and hit the target fast but with my code I need it so that it would shoot and hit after a certain amount of time and not instantaneously. To fix this I re write my code and instead of using ray cast code I instead used on trigger enter code which made it so that when the arrow collided with the object that is when it would be destroyed instead of immediately.

Overall for the code I think it was a good learning process as I managed to not only managed to get the code done but learnt a greater understanding and confidence to use it again in the future.

Overall

To summarise my project I would say that the time management of my project was one of my key strengths as I believe I sorted my time out wisely so that I could complete my project on time and set reasonable goals for the project so that I would not over reach or under reach with my project.

In terms of my skills I have grown a greater understanding of code and it does not confuse me as it once did and even look forward to using it more in my own future projects. I have am now also more capable