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Evaluation

I’ve expanded upon my skills and understanding of 2D game design, I came across multiple problems and challenges that I was able to overcome by researching and problem solving that will now move on with me into future projects. I’ve learnt how to use advance rotation mechanics inside of Unreal Engine, using rebounds, inverts and set rotations to control the movement of the enemies in my project.  I’ve made the game difficult but addicting, the kind of style I was going for as to be an arcade game, quick enough so your not sat there for too long playing it, by it being difficult you don’t last too long for you not to need to play again, but also with the difficulty the addiction to try and get a better score to make the player want to play again, as if it was a game in an arcade you would want the player to fuel in as much money as possible, by having this addiction to the game they are more likely to do so. I’ve utilized Unreal Engines blueprints and features to debug and test final features that were added to my project, things such as line trace by object to create an enemy that creates a laser and circles the room with it, I used line trace by object as it had a debug laser that I could see in the game before expanding upon it. This saved a lot of time and could of saved me from multiple errors if I was to not debug and test before implementing. Debugging, researching and testing were required in large amounts to make sure that my project was what I wanted it to be, It needed to be constantly tested to make sure that every outcome of the came was random, that it was hard byt addicting and to make sure that the game was not too easy or too hard so that the player would simply not want to play it because it was either impossible to play or too easy to play that it became boring. I used Unreal Engine 5 instead of 4, the new updated version of Unreal comes with a lot of new features, updated to old ones and the removal of few, this took a week or so to get use to which set a drawback on time when developing my project, but it was nothing major as I already knew the layout of unreal 4 and it was not massively different, I also had the option to change back to unreal engine 4 layout if I wanted to, but as industry will be using the new Unreal I decided to learn Unreal 5. I also used Photoshop for my character and enemy designs, I was already familiar with photoshop as I have used it in the past so it was the most sensible option to use as I did not have to learn anything new, I did however animate my enemies which I never really have done before, this has given me a new skill that I can use in the future with other projects although I can only animate simple pixel art something is better then nothing. The idea was to make a quick but addicting arcade game that took massive inspiration from disc room, it had to be hard but not too hard that it was annoying, just hard enough that it makes it addicting to see a higher score each time you play, which made the player want to play more, and after getting feedback and hearing exactly that, it’s hard but its also very addicting, it felt good to know that I reached exactly that. Although my project probably would not have made it as a released game as it is familiar to the game I took inspiration from (Disc room) it could have entered it’s game jam if it was to be open this year instead of last year, as that was my aim to create something that could have been in a little game show or jam and not a full released game I feel like I reached that goal to a good level. My project related to the brief of randomization that we was given, as each time you play the game it is different in the way of what enemies will spawn for you to avoid and what direction they will fire out and rebound at, therefore I’m quite happy with the way my project turned out as it reached most if not all the goals I was aiming to achieve. If I had to improve on something it would be my animation, if I had a bit more time to learn more in-depth animation I think my project would feel a lot better to play and look at, although it isn't bad to play or look at I just feel it would be a bit more immersive and would get you moving in your seat trying to avoid the enemies more if they were better animated. For my next project I will work more on one element of a project such as code, to further develop my understanding and improve my skill at the chosen element, this way I can increase the complexity of what I’m doing and dig in deeper to my chosen field.

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Creating Materials

To add color to my assets and to my game I had to create my own materiel in Unreal, just like any blueprint or anything you make in unreal, you right click in the content browser to create a materiel, you are then given a blueprint graph, like the event graph from blueprints but for materials. Where the material node is already there for you to plug stuff into it.

To make a simple color which was what I needed you can simply use a constant3Vector, this will use 3 values of RGB so that you can create a color.

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Removing blood

Before having my character design be a ghost, it was a non human like creature, so every time that it was hit by one of the blades I would spawn a squished down cylinder, that was previously colored red that would represent being hit and represent blood, this would despawn 5 seconds after being hit to not inflict confusion on the player. I’ve since removed this mechanic as it does not make any sense for a ghost to bleed therefore ended up being removed.

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Room blueprint (grouped)

When creating my room I put all the components into one blueprint, as I orginally planned for there to be multiple rooms, so making a room blueprint I could then call upon when spawning it in would have been a better method when spawning rooms in.

I made the room blueprint by using wall blueprints merged with the floor (Plane) and the doors that were never used but had plans for, to then make one blueprint. This way I could update the wall blueprint and it would update the whole room blueprint and all the walls inside it.

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Death screen sequence

To get the death screen to appear when the player dies I simply detect when the player has been hit, then check their life total, if it is 0 or below it will display he death screen widget and set the camera location in the middle of the room so that it has a view from the middle of the room whilst the death screen is up.

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Laser Design

As i’ve created a laser enemy for my project, I need an actual laser for the enemy to have instead of the line trace by object debug line, this way it'll make the game feel more alive and arcade like.

When reseraching lasers I found that the designs are either just laser bullets,  where there will be a couple of pixels in a line with different gradients of a color then a space between them, or different gradients of a color in a line in a pattern from going dark to light to dark.

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Main Menu

For my project, it needed a main menu to simply start and exit the game, to fit the rest of the style of the project, I used the same color scheme and font that the rest of my UI’s use. 

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Difficulty Settings

To make the game fun for everyone I could implement difficulty settings, this way if the player enjoys a more relaxed experience they can go play an easier difficulty of the game with less enemies spawned and with a greater cooldown between enemies spawning, then for the harder difficulty’s for players that want a challenge, more amount of enemies spawned and shorter cooldown between them spawning. Implementing this feature would make my game more accessible, and expands the target audience to pretty much everyone, as maybe a child would find it much easier and more fun to play the easier difficulty where as someone a bit older would prefer the challenge of the harder difficulty.

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Playtest - Feedback

I playtested my project to other class members, a lot of things said was that the game was too difficult, it was fun and addictive but also difficult, I’ve come up with a solution to that by going to attempt to add difficulty, this way I can use the settings I have now as the hard difficulty and decrease the difficulty by making the game easier as I go down the scale. This way the game can be more enjoyable for everyone no matter their skill level.

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Death Screen - Remade

I removed the background from the death screen so that you can see the game continuing after you have died, I also converted the font over so that it matched the style i was going for. In letting the player see how the game continues on it lets them watch and see how the different enemy types behave giving them a better chance at their next run.

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Font

The font I’m using for my UI and Death screen is FIpps, I got it from dafont.com and choose this font because it really fitted wel with the design of my game as well as the font text working really well with black and white color schemes, therefore it fits perfectly with my design and therefore I chose to use it.

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Laser Blade

I’ve made a laser blade that will sit in the middle of the room and have a laser come out of it and spin around the room that the player has to avoid, this will eventually get its own design and laser design but for now as I’m only using the line trace by object, I’m simply using the debug one frame for it to show the line, and to test that the line will hit the player and take away a life.

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Aim Blade

When this enemy collides with a wall it will be stopped for a second then will be given its speed back to then rebound of the wall how it would until it hits another wall and repeats itself, I believe with a few adjustments this blade will be in the final product, if I got the angle that it rotates off to be completely random within a range instead of being inverted like the normal bounces of the other enemies, this way it would make it hard to predict where the blade is going to rebound to.

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Speed Blade

The speed blade has a really high set speed that will dash around the map that the player will have to try their best and avoid as much as they can, to make this fair and not just  a sped up version of the normal blade it will delete itself after a certain amount of time (at current 5 seconds) so it makes the game a bit more fun to play and not as frustrating when there a few blades that zoom around the map making it harder to dodge and focus on other blades.

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Spin Blade

The spin blade will either tilt a little to the left or right when travellig, indicated by the blue spikes so that the player knows that the blade will tilt either left or right when it is spawned into the game, this idea will most likely stay as I believe it is a good idea and makes the rebound of the enemies much harder to predict as then it is not only inverted but is changed as this enemy moves around and changes its angle.

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Animating different enemy type designs

To clearly indicate the different enemy types, I color the spikes a different color based on the enemy type, this way it is very clear what type of enemy it is just by looking at it so that the player can easily try to predict the movement of the enemy.  I then just have to do what I did with the basic blade, which is to use the 4 same frames I used for the basic one to then turn into a flipbook so it is animated in the game, as it appears to be spinning inside the game.

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Multiple enemy types

To make the game interesting, I’m adding multiple different types of enemies, such as enemys that will be at different speeds, some that will rebound off the walls differently and blades that don’t event act like a blade but instead will shoot projectiles and lasers etc. By doing this it makes the game a lot more fun and way less predictable, as the spawn chances of the enemies are completely randomized, meaning you could have 2 basic enemies and 1 fast enemy then the next spawn of 3 could be all 3 being speed or all 2 speed and one basic etc, mixed with them always being fired off at random angles it will make sure that no game is ever the same.