Game Art & Design

This quarter, I worked on making a video game called *Nightfall* using Unreal Engine. I focused on designing different levels and learning how to add cool features like puzzles, enemies, and sound effects. I learned a lot about how to use tools in Unreal Engine, like how to create landscapes, add lighting and particles, and use Blueprints to make enemies that can chase and attack the player. I also worked on making side levels like a cave with glowing crystals where players have to match a tune. Overall, I want to talk about the new skills I learned, the problems I faced, and how I got better at game design.

One important skill I learned was how to use Blueprints to program enemy behavior and game mechanics, which helped make the game more fun and challenging. I also learned how to build interesting environments by using things like plants, crystals, and glowing effects to make the levels look cool. One project that helped me understand this was the cave level where I had to make a puzzle using glowing crystals and sound. Sometimes I had problems, like the game crashing when I tried to respawn a boulder, but I fixed it by changing how I made the boulder appear again. Time was my biggest challenge because I had a lot to do and not enough time, so I worked extra hours at home to finish important parts of the game.

By the end of this quarter, I feel much more confident in using Unreal Engine and making games. I understand better how important it is to test the game and get feedback from people who play it. The playtesters said they liked the graphics and side levels the most, which made me proud. I also learned that balancing the difficulty is really important because some parts were too hard for players. Next quarter, I want to keep learning about AI and maybe add new features I didn’t have time for this time. Overall, this quarter helped me get better at making games and solving problems along the way.

A game postmortem is a document written after the game it finishes. It is very important since it helps you reflect on what you did right or wrong. I used google sheets to export some of my play testing data onto visual charts and make it easier to understand. My SWOT analysis helped me understand what people wanted in the game and what parts I did wrong. I learned what parts of game design I like and what parts I don't like. I used visual charts and a screenshot of my game to show some of the graphics I had in some parts of the game, this helped me show how I did for this game. I will use the time management skills I used for this project in future projects to make sure I don't run out of time when trying to work.

Data Link 

People definetely enjoyed the side levels the most, I can see why since those definitely have the best visuals and effects. Players definitely had a hard time figuring out the objectives for the game and where they were on the map, they also struggled a lot on the tombs level. People struggled to use the map since there wasn't a marker for the player on the map. The objectives were unclear to most players, it took a lot of time for them to figure out where they were supposed to be going to get the artifacts. Multiple people mentioned that they were able to walk off the map. Nobody really mentioned anything that I had not already thought of yet.

My vision matches pretty well with the ideas I had in the LDD and GDD, I had to change a few things but mostly got it right. The changes I made to fit the timeframe was: Removing the third and final level, Not having a day/night cycle, Not having enemies randomly spawned. Replacing the whitebox objects definitely added to the game significantly. It added to the game a lot, it really made it feel finished. My main challenge with mechanics were the enemy ais, unreal crashed immediately after I finished making the AI blueprint and I lost progress, overall it took awhile to make. My art style is very mixed, some of the art is fantasy, some is realistic, etc. I think the art added to the experience. If I had more time, I would polish the game and finish the final level. There were many ideas I had but couldn't implement in time. 

I acquired many assets to be used in the creation of my game.  I got many tree models to create the fantasy forest, such as, Artifacts to add to the desert, statues for the mountain, an axe I made to be the weapon, and a bunch of other objects to add to the map. I didn't find it that difficult to get all of these assets, I looked on many websites, mainly fab.com, and searched keywords to  find these models. I also used 3ds max to create an axe for the player.  My main challenge was  re learning some of my 3ds max knowledge from last year. Hopefully these models will add to the theme I am going for with this project.

I already had a good idea of what I wanted the level to be so it was not very hard to create, I did a great job of converting my ideas into a whitebox level. I already decided that I wanted everything to feel much bigger than the player so I started off by making the level small and then after everything was made, I adjusted the size until it felt right. The most difficult part of the level was creating the landscape, especially the mountain area. Landscaping is not something I am very good at but I still feel like I did a good job on this. Whiteboxing was very similar to the landscape project since it was not really coding and mostly just placing out objects in the right spots. I was able to use all of my previous skills in designing levels to create this island and the placeholder objects.

I went through many steps to make sure the LDD was in line with the GDD I made. I used the same color scheme and organization. I made sure to follow the same vision when creating this level, I already had the idea in my head when I was making the GDD so it wasn't too hard. An LDD is very important when creating a game because if you are working in a team, your team could look at it and understand your vision for the level. I used paper to create a simple sketch of my idea for the level, I included all of the points of interest on all of the islands sections.

I decided to use a contrasting color scheme and a good organization to make this document easier to understand. I think this is very important for a team of game designers, but the most important part is definetely the Vision. The mechanics, gameplay, and objectives are also extremely important. The hardest part of writing this was definetely coming up with a narrative to use for this game.