Tile-Based Game

Project Postmortem: Tile-Based Game

In Project and Portfolio II: Game Design, I was tasked to create new mechanics for this tile-based game. The first mechanic was inspired by Adventures of Lolo, and the second one needed to be a mechanic used by someone else to implement it as a secondary mechanic. Right now, I'm gonna talk about what went right and wrong during this project.

What went right:

1. Collect piece - This was the name I used for the mechanic I used for my first presentation.

2. Concept - The concept of it brought my attention because I thought it would be easier for me to do compared to other people's mechanics since I felt like I wasn't in that kind of level yet.

3. Inspiration - The mechanic's inspiration (Adventures of Lolo) made me believe that it would the simplest mechanic to make. 

4. Secondary Mechanic - Choosing it was very tough until I found someone's mechanic to be so similar to mine. 

5. Feedbacks - Its like listening to your community, this helped me realize that for my secondary mechanic project, I needed to make all of my levels different and not repetitive. 

The most important thing that went right was the feedbacks because it really helped me improve on my coding experience with Unreal Engine 5, and I realized that looking up for YouTube tutorials about it also made my coding work with my mechanics especially for my navigator presentation project.

What went wrong: 

1. Adding sounds - At first I thought this was a good idea, but then I decided not to do it because I didn't think it was necessary. I remember adding sounds in a previous class, but I also couldn't think of how the sound should be. In the future, I can look for some free sounds or make one on my own if I am tasked to add sounds.

2. Bug reported - For my first project, I did playtests but never noticed a bug reported in it. This bug allowed me to collect a piece even if its destroyed. I later fixed it by adding a Boolean variable and a branch that connects that variable to its condition. Moving forward, I will make sure there are no reported bugs properly because this is so important to prevent your game from failing.

3. Door animation - I wanted my door to have a timeline animation of opening to the right, but it didn't worked and instead had to use destroy component for it to disappear once I collect the key. I can improve with this by getting some assistance since I knew how to make it go up and down, but not for left and right. 

4. Blocked areas - Sometimes my level would have an area were the player cannot enter even if "can enter" is marked true on the details panel. I had to add like a wall or something to make sure the player doesn't enter there. I will report this issue to my teacher in the future. 

5. Key design - While designing the look of the key, I originally made it look like a key but I couldn't group all the shapes together so that when I step on it, the player collects it all. Instead, it was collecting one part of the key and I decided to make the key look like an oval shape to prevent that from happening again. Even though I grouped them, I think there was another way to do it. 

In conclusion, I think that its normal to have things that went right and wrong because its all part of life and things we all learn from. Making a mistake can be frustrating that could lead people to be worried or even overthink a lot, but its normal because that's how we learn how to improve moving forward!