Evaluation

​My Final Product is incredibly original in every aspect of the word. From the character design to the animations, to the textures, backgrounds and code, the entirety of my work is original which I believe fits the brief quite well. The brief describes Originality as a state of being original, the ability to think or express oneself in an independent manner and as freshness of an idea, method or performance.

My Final Product is an original character design, code and textures. My game is a form of independent expression as it my own ideas I discovered via mind mapping, character deigning and thumbnails. The idea of a half silhouette and half ghost is my own idea, and I can’t think of any game that takes this idea and makes it the main inspiration of their character design.

 

For this brief, there is no limitations on what we could create as long as it was original. So, I set out to create a 2D platformer for the first-time using Unity and a programming language I had never seen before. My project has allowed me to research how others created their games and how I can use what I had learned to write my own code and how to start character designing, creative textures and how I can speed up when creating my animations. The brief says that it encourages innovation and I believe that creating a game from scratch in the style of vector art by using symbols in Adobe Animate to create my sprite sheets is innovative.

However, my requirements had less to do with the brief and more to do with the game itself, which is to say that I wanted a game that was playable and looked nice. What I mean by this, is that I wanted a game with a consistent style that fit with the character so that people were able to see my character and that people would like Echo in the first place and I think that I have succeeded in that. My game is playable, has a varied jump and I believe the background is in a similar style to my character in game. Therefore, I think I have succeeded in reaching my goals and the briefs requirements.

 

I think that I got through this project quite quickly when comparing it to my past projects. In fact, on day 2 of production I had most of my character animations finished and polished to the point that my feedback said so as well. As I knew I had never used Unity before I wanted to keep most of my time doing that, so I researched more efficient ways to animate and ended up on symbols which allowed me to colour and add detail once to my character once and then manipulate the limbs to keep that detail.

The biggest problem I had to overcome was the time restraints with an entire week of production becoming void. Other than that speedbump my main issue of the project was not understanding enough about Unity and how it works with a C# editor like Visual Studio Code. I needed to research more into the C# programming language and what variables Unity provides for you. The other big issue was not understanding how animators work in Unity and what the differences between them is e.g., bools etc. Next time, I am definitely researching more into how unity works instead of how to make a platformer. I will say that there wasn’t a single point during this project where I didn’t feel inspired to carry on working nor did I feel burnt out, which was a lovely change. This is probably because I could see where it was going, and I genuinely care about this character I have created. Learning new tools and media is always going to be challenging but that helped push me and my project further along.

In comparison to my planning, there are some major differences for example, I got rid of the idea of a power up as there wasn’t enough time to code or animate it, there is no longer a secret room as I didn’t see the point in adding a secret room with nothing of value. I also got rid of the interact feature because of time which also meant that I couldn’t add the boss fight as a finally, however looking back at my planning, that idea was too ambitious and unrealistic for the time frame. I also got rid of the health system and danger once again because of time. I also changed the setting from an eerie warehouse to a bright city as a background as it worked better with the map layout.

Despite all these changes and reductions, I still believe that the game is an incredible feat for only two weeks. I have learned that I need to be less ambitious with my ideas when it is in a medium, I have never used before.

 

Research has been a huge part of this project to the point where I could not have done this without researching. My research into symbols helped me to speed up my entire production line by getting 3 weeks’ worth of work if not more in the span of a few days. Even when researching topics to do with Unity have helped unbelievably much. For example, I wanted a better way to jump rather than the float/ flying like jump I had. So, I looked up other people’s method’s when coding jumping and learnt that I could code in a way to have the duration the space bar was held, determine how high you jump in game. Researching also helped with bug fixes for example my character would stick to walls if you ran into them mid jump, but it was a very simple fix for me as all I had to do was apply a physics object to the player asset. I would never have known that physics objects existed in Unity unless I researched how other people solved the same issue I was having.

The feedback I got helped me discover bugs and areas I hadn’t notice before, for example I forgot to add Box Collider2Ds to a corner of my level design which could have resulted in the character falling through space however I was able to fix this issue thanks to the feedback given to me. Some of my feedback also helped me focus on maintaining the art style I had for the character and putting that same style in my backgrounds.

The reflections helped me to decide what was important for the next day of production and what it was I needed to be focusing on and improving. For example, the last day of bug fixes and optimisation was based on the reflection from the previous day. Another example is that I wanted to know how backgrounds were imported into Unity so that I could have seamless backgrounds later in the project.

I developed many skills in this project from designing backgrounds to using symbols in Adobe Animate to the entirety of Unity and programming being a new skill under my belt. When it came to symbols, I developed my skill in them by solely using symbols to create the sprites / animations for any and all of the mechanics for my player character. When it comes to Background, I got to develop them a lot in this project with my first batch allowing me to practice with photoshop and its filter layers to get the best piece of art possible and then with my second batch of backgrounds I was able to develop my skill with gradients and colour value to create a sense of depth. But by far the biggest skill I have developed is my coding and Unity skills. I had little to no knowledge of Unity let alone how it worked so being able to create a game in two weeks is a huge success for me. There is still a lot to learn from components to animate controllers and transitions. However, I now know the very basics of unity from sprite application to rigid bodies and colliders where I am confident enough to use these to create a game. The same applies to programming in C# as it is a language I have never used before. With so much still to learn, I expect that this will become a new chapter of my life in which I can discover how to code health systems, enemies, and even boss fights in the future but for now, this project has. Helped me open the door to this new world and it has allowed me to start understanding the language enough to allow me to code player movement and jumping.

I want to develop my skills in Unity and coding in the future as I really enjoyed creating this game and I can only imagine the feats I can reach in the future when I fully understand the two simultaneously especially without a time limit. Instead of a level, my next game could include a menu screen and locked bonus levels. Only my imagination is the limit once I have mastered Unity and the C# programming language.

If it wasn’t clear already, I absolutely love my final product and the protagonist. However, I’m not narrow minded, there are very clear flaws in the game and definitely areas I would want to improve on next time. Just to name one, the scale was way out of proportion in comparison to Unity’s sprites which made it odd when adding jumping and more importantly the falling code as the number needed to be at least ten times bigger than what they needed to be. But for my first ever game, I can’t nit-pick it too much as your first attempt will always be a learning experience for you to improve next time.

The difference in my game and professional standards is that the big companies have years upon years for teams of people to work 24/7 to release a fully fledged game which even then usually isn’t polished and contains bugs whereas I have had two weeks to program and create a game / level that is free and playable to the public. Unless you want to compare my game to other indie developers who spend years on a game before releasing it. But the biggest difference between me and other developers is that they usually have teams of professionals whereas I only have me. So, no I don’t think it is as good as other games in its genre however it is reasonably good for the time limit, I had.

Let’s propose two scenarios, one where I was given more time and one where I did this project knowing what I know now.

Scenario one:

I would add a menu and if I had time a movement upgrade whether that be adding a double jump or adding a dash. I’d also add a more cohesive ending so that the player knows that the game in finished and that credits start to roll. So, instead of improving on what I have I’d rather make the player experience better. I also liked the idea of adding a parallax background so that the background had a bigger sense of depth to help the player feel more involved in the game.

Scenario Two:

Now in scenario two I get to restart my project with the knowledge I know now. Instantly I would spend less time on sprites and instead create more variety in those sprites. I also would create backgrounds accordingly so that the backgrounds fit the textures. I would also revamp the map so that it was much more linear however I would still split the sections based off the backgrounds. I would also want to add some form of power up like I mentioned before as I would know how to program the jump that I want first time around and thus I would have enough time to add some form of movement upgrade, most likely dash as the concept seems simple enough to code.

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