Throughout this project, I have created a game based around my Unit 12 essay’s topic, being character design, whilst also testing my skills that I have learnt over the course of this project. Aside from the criteria of tying it to our Unit 12, we had no other restrictions on our game (As long as it didn’t violate the learning agreement). To accomplish this task, I had to go through numerous subsequent tasks, such as research, analysis, testing, and applying previous knowledge on the subject matter, such as unity skills, drawing software, and sound design.

The first thing I did for the project was technically my Unit 12 essay and the accompanying research portfolio, which I spent a lot of time on, as I did not know that the essay itself was all that we got marked on for the project. However, this was useful in the end and for my benefit, as I did a great deal of research into many different character design theories, such as narrative, colour and shape theories. This research really helped further my character designs when creating them at the end of this project, so I am glad I did it, and it should hopefully help me in the future when I go onto making my own projects, and in university starting September, where I will also be studying game design further, as it is a subject I thoroughly enjoy. The unit 12 essay was also a partial factor in why I started late on my FMP, as I had to go back and fix any errors with the essay.

Going back to the current project, I started by developing my ideas by doing my initial research and drafting up some ideas on paper for potential games that could feature character design as an important aspect. I settled on incorporating character design into the project in the form of creating somewhat detailed concept art for every character design I create for the game, which themselves would be formed from feedback on multiple iterations of the designs prior. When doing my initial research, I researched the influences for my project, and looked at what was inspiring about those games to me and analysed how I could incorporate/replicate those same ideas and processes in my own game. As for ideas development, I drafted out some ideas on paper in the form of character designs and potential game ideas, as that is what I find to be the most efficient way of getting my ideas out on paper. I came up with three game ideas. The first was a game where the character designs were based on shapes, and the protagonist had to find pickups scattered around the world map based on clues you could get by interacting with the NPC’s using a text-based system. The second idea I had was the idea I went with, being the sequel to my Year 1 FMP, which was initially going to be a 3D remake of my first game, with redesigned characters and some new content, but this idea was turned down due to the lack of new ideas, meaning I wouldn’t have things to research into, and just being unoriginal in terms of ideas, so it was later adapted into entirely new content with a single character redesign from the first game, which I think worked out for the better, as it gave me a lot to look into, and gave me a lot of inspiration for new character designs, and opened the door to make many new iterations of said character designs. The final idea I had was a visual novel game, which would put the character designs front and center, I called it “Quinn the Apparition hunter”, and it would follow an apparition hunter named Quinn, and would feature lots of artwork. However, I gave up on this idea after realising that I’d have to make a visual novel, and that requires a lot of writing, which is not my strongest suit. Overall, I think this first phase of my production went quite well. As I applied my developed ideas quite well, and the same goes for my research.

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From here, I went ahead and made a prototype, as I wanted to get it done early, I made a basic platformer player script, that gave the player the ability to walk and jump. I then developed this player controller to add scripts that allowed the player to sprint, crouch, and shoot. I did also try to add other mechanics such as wall-running and advanced shooting, but this didn’t work out as intended, and it messed with the other scripts in ways I did not want it to, so I scrapped these scripts. This was a good idea, as shortly after I finished this prototype, I encountered the biggest and most consistent problem I had throughout this project, being an extreme case of burnout.

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Usually, I am mostly fine with producing college work if I have passion for the project, which I did for this project. However, I think it was simply just me becoming worn out from drawing a lot of art in my spare time as well as the stress of the previous two projects I had been working on, paired with some personal issues I’d been having at the time, that caused me to feel incredibly burnt out and demotivated. Around two to three weeks passed, and I did not get much work done during this time, if at all outside of concept art for my survey. Speaking of surveys, around halfway through, I conducted some audience research in the form of an initial survey. This survey successfully got a lot of information out of my audience, and really finalised my idea in terms of helping me decide the direction I wanted to take the game in, making me decide that the game was going to be more chaotic, meaning I would research into much more varied kinds of folklore, as opposed to researching folklore from specific areas only, and incorporating those designs into my final project. If I were to do the survey again, I’d probably ask more questions about character designs so I could get much more specific information out of them. Around this time, I also did my GDD as per usual, there isn’t much to say about it, other than I’ve gotten used to creating GDD’s over the course of this project, and that there isn’t much I’d improve about my GDD.

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Once I had conducted this survey and got out of my burnout slightly, I began working hard again, researching into, and creating concept art for each of the creatures from the folklore. I created 3 draft designs for each folklore, and put them in another survey, basing them off of the previously mentioned research in their own ways. I asked for the audience to pick their favourite of each design and give feedback on what they liked about each design and how they’d improve it. This did prove very useful for finalising each of the designs when it came to it, but it could’ve been a lot more useful, as a lot of responses I received either must’ve misread the question or disregarded it, filling some questions with either joke responses, or missing either positive or negative feedback. That aside, what I did get was useful, so that’s all that matters in the end. If I were to do it again though, I would try and get a lot more survey responses by sending it to more people and communities and filter out any responses overly full of jokes. After this, I used these responses to create reference sheets for each of the characters, which was one of, if not the main aspect of this project, as it was one of the few ways I could incorporate character designs into this project - aside from putting them in the game of course.

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Once all the designs were finalised, I reluctantly moved back into production of my game with just over a week left until the deadline - which was my fault for falling into the whole burnout situation. I showed off my first prototype, and asked for some feedback, which I got from my peers in class. I responded to this feedback, and made my second prototype, which came out quite nicely for what it was and was quite close to the final product, only really changing in terms of assets implemented in the final game. These prototypes were very useful for feedback and allowed me to get vital feedback for the final game, though they weren’t as high quality as I wanted them to be, due to both starting the project late due to the essay and my burnout. If I were to do it again, it would hopefully be under better circumstances, and I’d be able to accomplish everything I put forward as an idea in my GDD. Though, for what I did settle for, I think it came out quite nicely, and fits the title of a demo of my game.

 

Overall, I think most of this project went well, but could’ve gone a lot better had certain circumstances such as the burnout and the late start were not factors. Everything came out as I intended it to, though not what I wished it to. My time management in this project was dreadful for a large portion of the start/middle of the project, but once I picked the pace back up, I worked harder than I have in any other project to get everything finished to the standard necessary. I feel this project can be taken as a good lesson for time management, though it was also useful for the application of my skills, and gave me lots of work that I can put on my portfolio, which in the long term is useful, as I now have a lot of character designs I can show off that display my knowledge on the subject of character design. This is one large step towards my “dream goal” of being able to create my own video games to a high standard, though I don’t imagine I’d be able to create something super high quality until I refine my skills a lot more, and finish university, giving me more time to produce said games, as well as getting some experience in the industry.

 

In summary, this project went well despite my terrible time management, and is useful to my final goal, and as this is my last project, I’d like to thank both my tutors for helping me throughout these projects throughout the past two years, as it’s been a pleasure to work through the course, and I’m glad I took it, as I have learnt a lot. So thank you.

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And that, hopefully, is the end of this project.