Within this reflection of my work I will be critically looking back on everything was able to create as well as any obstacles that I faced when attempting to create a game during my summer referral time frame. I majority of this work I greatly struggled with, along with outside circumstances affecting my productivity, which I will go into greater detail about later on in this reflection.
Procreate and Asset Creation
Early on in this module to get myself started, all of my work I created on an application I am very familiar with: Procreate.
This is a drawing application used mostly on tablets like my own iPad to draw and animate in various forms. With a few years of experience in digital art using this application prior to this work, I knew it was a strength of mine, so much of my work became focused on it.
With design work being a strength of mine, I knew I could create completely original assets and art for the entirety of my game, and so that was the first task I set out to do. This included the playable characters, backgrounds, tiling assets (such as platforms as I was making a platformer game) and so on.
All the assets I created for my game were consistent with good quality and a matching style, with a very clear colour palette and artistic features. I would frequently pull newer assets into the first original drawing of a background I did, being sure everything was cohesive. With visuals being one of the most important parts of a game, I think this aspect of my game creation was quite successful.
However, I had a very clear vision of what I wanted the visuals of my game to be that I never deviated from, which isn’t usually how design work in the actual gaming industry is done. I could have improved on this work by doing far more early-stage design work such as sketches or I could have created multiple versions of the same asset with slight differences. This could've broadened my horizons to ideas I hadn’t originally thought of and so added more interest to the game’s visuals.
Challenges faced with programming
Moving forward with the project into the more programming side of development is where I faced the most obstacles and challenges within my work. Before even attempting to make anything functional, I was fully aware from past experience that working with the actual engine was not my strong suit. Despite this, I still first attempted to work with Unreal Engine.
As I completed this work over the summer, and I work far better with face-to-face support, I struggled significantly in teaching myself the methods of programming in Unreal. I worked primarily off YouTube tutorials, many of which did not satisfy any questions I would’ve had. I was able to learn some basic setting manipulation and file management tips, however, beyond that my inexperience and confusion facing this engine brought any progress I could’ve made to a halt for a significant period of time.
Reflecting back on this, I likely could’ve managed my time much better, as well as reached out for other help digitally to assist in my confusion with programming.
After struggling so much with Unreal Engine and realising I was getting nowhere, I took the initiative to do some research for a better alternative which might work better with my workflow and methods. Based on that research, I had planned to move my work to the Unity Engine. Unity seemed much more popular among indie developers, as well as developers making a 2D art-based game like I was.
Even so, with plans to better move forward, I still greatly struggled with Unity and my computer was starting to struggle with handling these large engines. The use of Unity heavily relied on drag-and-drop features, however, I discovered my computer system just does not have this feature. I am unable to drag and drop any files when moving them around folders within my storage. Because of this lacking feature, I was unable to run Unity the way that was required for my project.
Once again had to return to researching alternatives. This is when I discovered Game Maker Studio, which became my saving grace for this entire project.
Game Maker Studio
The UI of Game Maker Studio is very simple and easy to navigate within this last program, as it was made for beginners in programming and game design. Unlike the previous engines I had interacted with both with their communities and the actual visuals of the application itself, there were no assumptions that you had any experience previously with the program or anything similar. So it gave a far better opportunity to improve your skills from the ground up.
There was also a somewhat well-established community around this application with a large selection of tutorials that could be found online to assist me through any guidance on processes I needed to have anything functioning or answer any questions I had. Through these tutorials, I learnt some very basic coding, collusion mechanics and sprite and object management as I finally got something working featuring all the artwork I had created earlier in the project.
This application was also heavily based around making your own assets and bringing in your own work to the game which I think worked best with my workflow. Many different engines use presets that the game developer usually works off to make their product, however, Game Maker was a blank slate where I brought in my own artwork and then added the game logic onto it. While this may be an option with the more well-known game engines, it usually makes the development much more difficult and requires far more steps. In this aspect of development, I find Game Maker Studio is more intuitive where there are few steps to programming in-game rules to 2D drawn objects.
Feedback
Although I did not have much for my final product, I still presented it to a couple of friends for any feedback they could think of that may assist me in future development. While there was not as much to say as what would’ve been ideal, considering the scale of my project, they still made a few comments I found quite insightful. First was that, despite the “half-finished” feel of the project, which was not entirely inaccurate, the visuals were described to be pleasing and cohesive. The background was said to be well put together with a very distinct style and feel throughout the entire scene. The visuals apparently felt “moody”, which was the initial aim of the art style I had decided upon. As suspected earlier in the project, the visual and artistic aspects of the project were my strong suit and so made my product look and feel like a much higher quality than it truly was. This advocates for the fact that visuals are one of the most important aspects of media like games as it is what first grabs a viewer's attention.
The other criticism that seemed to be generally agreed upon was the controls of the game. While the spacebar is often used for jump mechanics, the arrow keys on a keyboard are very rarely used now as most games are far more family with the “WASD” keyboard set up. Since my controls were not using the usual keys gamers are so familiar with, criticism claimed that the game may be difficult to control for some or confusing when first starting out the game.
Conclusion
Overall, despite all the difficulties I faced with the coding and programming side of development, I believe my determination and perseverance to find solutions and alternatives to match my workflow and methods carried me through this project. Despite my frustration at times, I still achieved a product I am quite happy with and, according to my feedback, reflects the feel and mood of the game that I was aiming for. Even if the product itself may be slightly lacking in functions and actual substance. I believe with more time and guidance I would’ve been able to further grow this concept with more pleasing results.
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