Final Evaluation & Post-Mortem
At the very start of this Final Major Project I went into the project with various ideas for outcomes and they all varied in content, theme and genre, however after carrying out several idea generation sessions I finally settled on a Horror themed, puzzle survival game. After completing all of these context stages I stuck with my horror themed game because I have always been interested in the horror and survival genre and they are one of my go to game types, so the reason I chose to stick with the this genre is because I wanted the challenge of creating a good and well presented survival puzzle game. In addition, I stuck with a highly ambitious project because I wanted to prove to myself that I could achieve the outcome at the end of the project. Furthermore, I wanted to grow as a game designer and most importantly I wanted to focus on my art skills as well as overall design skills.
Context
The first stages that opened the project were the context stages, these stages included a large variety of tasks ranging from idea generation to research into the development cycle of creating a video game. I carried out a process research report and also research into different threats that could affect the development workflow of this project. Looking at the context stage, I firstly carried out a SWOT analysis this SWOT analysis allowed me to look at all my weaknesses, strengths and also threats that could occur throughout my FMP, I feel that this SWOT analysis was extremely useful at setting up my project and also allowing me to see what areas I can improve upon through the project to ensure that it ran as smoothly as possible. I think that my SWOT analysis has helped me significantly throughout my project because I have been able to work upon my weaknesses thanks to my extensive research and also experimentation, for example I said that my weakest attribute going into the FMP was art and art design.
However, as I was able to pick up on this weakest attribute I was able to see that I needed to carry out a larger array of research and experimentation to be able to overcome my weaknesses and apply my new understanding to my FMP and go forward into my next year of college projects. Furthermore, the SWOT analysis allowed me to identify that I had an array of different threats could have negatively impacted my project, but by identifying the threats I was able to come up with a plan in my planning stages to complete as much planning as possible to ensure that my time was spent evenly across the project to ensure that the final deadline and the mini-deadlines were met. The threat that I identified in particular was not being able to meet the final deadline because of the ambitious outcome that I wanted to create, however, I reflected back upon this analysis and came to the conclusion that I should plan on carrying out extensive research, experimentation and planning in order to be able to meet the deadline and avoid the threat that I could face.
In conclusion, was able to look back upon this in my later stages and consistently throughout my project in order to ensure that the threat did not arise, thanks to all of my preparation work following this task I was able to continue on with the project without any of these major threats having an impact on my workflow and this is thanks to the extensive research that I completed.
The next stages in my context phase was to carry out idea generation, idea generation came in two parts and I was able to create four detailed ideas that I could have possibly created for this FMP. Reflecting back upon my idea generation I feel that these stages were extremely important at aiding my development process because without the idea generation I would not have been able to come to a conclusion in what type of outcome I wanted to create, but thanks to the extensive idea generation I was able to settle on my idea and work off from my initial idea to create my final outcome that stands today. However, looking back at the idea generation I feel that my ideas lack in detail and quality because I had not planned all of the features that would be available in the game if I was to continue with it. I feel that my ideas all have a varying level of detail, for example one of my ideas was fully fleshed out with links to various videos of mechanics, art designs and also environment designs, but most of the other ideas just showed colour palettes and character designs but no in depth detail was given, this significantly impacted my workflow because I had already made my mind up on my game idea from the first week and that is extremely clear in the idea generation.
This negatively impacted my work because I feel that if I was to carry out my detailed idea generation then I would have had more ideas to choose from and also I would have had more detail to base my game off of going into the later stages of the project such as research, experimentation and practical application, I feel that I could have improved this level of detail in my idea generation just to simply ease the pressure going into the later stages leading to a smoother workflow and less need for larger levels of research.
So going forward I will ensure that I apply these improvements stated here to my next projects because the detailed idea generation will significantly reduce my workload and allow me to have a smoother development process. This will significantly benefit me going into my next FMP because I will be working with a new game engine and also I will be graded on more areas, so consistency throughout my work will be greatly needed going forward.
The last stage that ended the context phase was a process research report that looked at the areas of the development process and how each stage is carried out in a professional environment. Reflecting back on the Process research report I feel as if the report was created in immense detail because I considered many processes throughout the development cycle, looked and compared these processes and came up with an educated decision on what methodology I wanted to continue with. I feel that the report was my first taste of the level of detail that I needed in my later reports because I was expected to look at an array of sources both primary and secondary, I feel that one major area that could have been improved and I have stated this many times throughout my journals and that is my primary research, I feel that my primary research created minimal conclusions because I was only able to gather one response even after contacting more than six primary sources. With more primary sources I would have expanded my factual knowledge and would have been able to compare this to my secondary sources, but I was unable to gather a larger pool of primary sources and I feel that if I had contacted more primary sources I would have been able to gather more responses and hence more research sources that could have expanded my knowledge pool.
Going forward into the next year, I need to significantly look into contacting more primary sources in order to have a greater understanding of the techniques and processes that I want to gather information on and also I would have a greater chance of being graded a higher grade, because comprehensive understanding and knowledge of subject context is needed to a distinction. However, I was able to produce a large understanding of the areas that I researched into and going from the report I had a greater understanding of the development cycle and this significantly helped my development process throughout this FMP because I was able to follow the guidelines in the report to give me a baseline for the stages throughout the project. This improved my workflow because I had a clear understanding of the processes and this reduced confusion as to what I needed to carry out in the later stages of the FMP.
In conclusion, the Context stage was extremely beneficial at helping me to be able to run a smoother development process and going from this I believe that I work grade my work at a Merit level in the context stage because I have a good understanding of subject context and I was also able to articulate ambitious judgments whilst also clarifying purpose to each judgement, I do not feel that I met the Distinction grade because I feel extra comprehensive understanding is needed to reach this grade.
Research
Moving into the research stages I carried out a detailed planning into the techniques I want to research with and also the sources that I intended to use throughout the research phase. I also completed a contextual research report that looked at various techniques both practical and digital that I wanted to apply going into the experimentation stage. Looking back upon my contextual research report planner, I feel that this task had significantly aided the execution of my research report because I had planned out all of the techniques that I wanted to look into ranging from art skills, that I desperately needed in order to avoid the threat that I identified in the SWOT analysis and pre-mortem in the context stage, to Construct 3 techniques and mechanics.
This planner was created with such detail that reduced the confusion and workload going into the research report because I had already had a brief look into the sources and also techniques that I intended to use and research further into. I feel that the only area that could have been improved throughout this research planner was if I continued to update it throughout the project, because I carried out extended research in my outcomes stage in order to fully understand the art and shading techniques that I researched into, so by updating the planner I would have been able to plan out my sources and ultimately allowed me more time to experiment with the art techniques. But, I feel this is the only improvement or negative point about the planner because this planner helped me going into the report because I was able to see all of the techniques that I needed to research into in my report.
Moving to the contextual research report, I feel that this report was one of the best written reports that I have produced throughout this project and this is mainly because I was able had independently identified, thorough and sustained research and carried out extensive investigation into a range of relevant sources that I used to create insightful interpretations on the varying methods that would help me in the development of my outcome in the practical stage of my project. I was able to support and develop my ideas and this significantly allowed me to produce high quality research that would go on to support the experimentation that followed. I believe that being able to produce such detailed research and thanks to the extensive primary sources I was able to go onto produce supported decisions that would help aid my workflow going into the experimentation phase.
I feel that upon reflection, little areas stood out to me that needed improvement, this is likely because of my extended planning in context stages, by carrying out idea generation I was able to see the sort of mechanics and features that I wanted to include in my outcome and this in turn allowed me to see what mechanics I wanted to research into further. In addition to this, I believe that my research planner helped me to carry out this successful report because I was able to compile all of the planning in the context stage into the planner and in turn allowed me to produce a smooth, detailed and successful report.
In conclusion, I do not feel that any improvements could have been made in the research report because as I have said I found that all of my previous work in context and also the planner helped me to produce such a detailed report and also my primary research had definitely improved from the first report and I learned from my mistakes there by contacting more people and in return I gathered a larger range of responses when compared to my first report. Moving into the next year, I will need to look at this evaluation and will take on all of my areas for improvement throughout this project and ensure that I work on these areas for a more detailed level of work next year. Reflecting on the research stages I would grade myself at a distinction level because I was able to create thorough and sustained research that I independently crafted and also I was able to investigate an extensive catalogue of relevant sources in order to construct insightful interpretations.
Planning
Looking at the planning stages of this FMP, I feel that I was able to produce a large and detailed range of planning documents and also the planning experimentation that I carried out following on from my process research report allowed me to experiment with a range of documents and assess their benefit for my workflow. Looking in depth at my planning experimentation, I feel that this experimentation significantly allowed me to improve the detail in my planning documents because I was able to look at the documents and see how I could utilise the documents to improve the preparation going into the practical stages of my project. Looking back, I feel that this experimentation could have been expanded more because I only looked into basic planning documents and did not experiment with different methodologies, by experimenting with different methodologies I would have been able to gather more information on different workflows that could have significantly improved the development of my work, so next time I carry out experimentation and research such as this I will ensure that look into a wider range of planning documents to set me up with a better understanding moving forward to the creation of my documents and also the application of such documents in my practical application.
Moving into the creation of the planning documents, I was able to produce a wide variety of documents that I had researched into in my process research report and this report helped me to understand all of the documents that I would be needing in this stage of the project, in addition, the experimentation that I had carried out allowed me to have an even more greater understanding of how to produce the documents and how to apply such documents to the practical stages of my work. Upon reflection, I feel that these planning documents helped me to build a base for my game and this greatly benefited me in the next stage because I had planned out all of the assets, mechanics and features that I would include in my versions of my outcome. I feel that the most used document that I produced was the Gantt Chart, this Gantt Chart I had used continuously throughout the project and it allowed me to track every small detail of the project progression right up until this stage. The chart was significant in aiding me to keep on track and I feel that without this chart I would not have been able to understand and keep up with the tasks that I had to complete, so going forward I will continue to create such documents in order for me to keep track of my development and also help me in the later stages of the project when the development of my outcome really increases.
However, I feel that many areas in this stage could have been improved, for example I feel that the Game Design Document that I completed needed more detail in order for me to completely portray and plan my game backstory and when it came to implementing this story into my game I had a large task of figuring out how I was going to implement it, in the end I was able to come to the conclusion of using dialogue boxes thanks to the playtesting that I carried out in my research stages and also in my context stage. Furthermore, I feel that I could have continued to update my documents as the project evolved, I did continue to update my Gantt Chart but I did not update my sound list or asset list and I feel that I could have expanded these documents to better reflect my final outcome, but I feel that this also shows the progress that I have made throughout the project. In conclusion, when it comes to planning my next projects I will need to ensure that I look into experimenting with a larger range of documents and methodologies in order to construct a more educated decision and also I need to ensure that I update my planning documents to show progress.
Practical Skills - Experimentation
Looking at the practical stages of development, in particular my experimentation and extended research, I feel that I was able to produce a large amount of experimentation that was aided significantly by the research reports that looked at the different techniques and methods that I wanted to utilise in my final outcome. I believe that the experimentation that I carried out covered all of the relevant areas that I wanted to use in my final outcome and thanks to my extensive experimentation and also research I was able to create a well polished final outcome, fuelled by the knowledge that I had gathered throughout the previous stages of this project. Furthermore, my research and experimentation into different inventory systems significantly improved my understanding of applying this knowledge to my game and I believe that without this experimentation I would not have been able to carry out an inventory systems as smoothly as I was able to, and this helped me in being able to spend more time on the other areas of my project such as the art and also the lighting effects.
My point that I am trying to convey is that without this key stage of my practical work I would not be in the position that I am today and that is having a completed project that has been created and developed at an extremely high standard. Furthermore, I feel that my extended research into different pixel art shading techniques was greatly needed to improve my confidence on pixel art as following the contextual research report I felt that more experimentation and research into the techniques that I was presented with by my primary sources was needed in order to achieve the exceptional quality pixel art that I wanted to include in my outcome. Going from this, I feel extremely happy that I decided to carry out this extended research because I was, in the end, able to improve upon my previous art and achieve the standard that I had been striving for throughout my projects and in particular the FMP.
Whilst looking at the experimentation and extended research stage of the practical skills element of this project I would like to showcase how I applied my research and experimentation in my final outcome and this is mostly because I want to see all the areas that I included from my research and experimentation in my final outcome. This will also help at evidencing that I have made relevant and in-depth understanding of a varying practical skills that I have applied to develop creative solutions. Firstly, looking back to my contextual research report I researched into four different techniques that could be applied in to my outcome and most importantly leading into the experimentation I continued to experiment with the same four techniques that I researched into, this shows that I had in depth understanding and aesthetic awareness because I was able to compare and contrast techniques to create an educated and research fuelled decision as to what method of implementing the different techniques I would adopt.
The first technique that I looked at was Lighting Effects in Construct 3, I was able to successfully carry out research into to methods of implementing this feature in my game, I then moved to the experimentation where I practically carried out both methods in order to come to a conclusion on what method I would like to utilise. In the end I settled with the Xanderwood method, in terms of utilising this in my outcome, I used the feature throughout the game and it is present in most of the levels that I created, for example, the light feature can be seen here in both the first and second levels, each level utilises the feature in very different ways. The first level uses the feature by having stationary light emitters whereas the second level uses the feature as a torch that follows the player as they navigate through the sewer. I believe that I was able to independently implement this feature in order to develop creative solutions.
The second feature that I experimented with and researched into was the two methods of implementing an Inventory system into my game, the experimentation of this feature was very lengthy and I believe that I should have not spent too much time on experimenting with this feature because my time could have been spent in more time worthy places throughout the development of the game for example implementing my puzzle mechanics into the game. However, the experimentation with this feature was vital because I was able to clearly see that the second method of implementing inventory systems was extremely difficult and lengthy to produce, I stated at the start of the project that I would like a challenge however I felt that the implementation of this inventory system would have taken around two to three days and this would have taken time away from actually developing my game and I wanted a consistent outcome that did not feel as if it was lacking in gameplay, so I decided to carry forward the simpler method of inventory systems into my game. The first method was extremely simple and only relied on variables and booleans, so this method allowed me more time to work on other areas of development. I use the inventory throughout all of the levels of my game and also I use this technique to display the health packs that the player can pick up and use to restore health. In conclusion, I believe that experimentation into inventory systems was imperative for me to produce an evenly weighted outcome because I really wanted a level of interactivity within my game and I believe that I achieved this by choosing a more graphical user interface for my inventory.
Looking forward to my third practical technique, I researched water reflections and shadows and ultimately I ended up experimenting with this technique in order to fully understand the technique before moving into development. I really wanted to include a feature such as this to give a level of immersion because I found a source in my research report that emotions and immersion can greatly affect the horror experience because the player believes that they are the character experiencing all of the horrors that the character faces. In addition, I also wanted to include water reflections because my previous projects have been very bland and lifeless so I wanted to achieve a more detailed environment for the player and I believe that I achieved this because I received many comments from playtesters saying that they believe my outcome was detailed. So moving to the implementation of the water reflections and shadows I utilised the technique across the whole game, the reflections can be seen in the lobby / open world hub, level one and level two, I only included the feature in levels that utilised a water source because I wanted to keep my reflections consistent throughout. Moving forward into next year I will definitely try to keep this level of detail in my environments because I believe that half the gameplay experience comes from the environment that the player interacts with and if the environment is detailed then the player is more than likely going to have a positive gameplay experience, this links back to the launch stage in my process research report because you need to build a player base in order for your game to sell and if the level of detail in both the gameplay and the environments is high then you are more likely going to sell more copies of your game.
Looking at my final experimentation and extended research technique, I experimented with and researched deeper into the different shading techniques that I use in pixel art in order to produce detailed sprites and designs. I decided to carry out extended research into these techniques because I felt that my initial research was not enough to fully understand the techniques and also my primary sources suggested to me many sources that I could use for this extended research. So I carried out the extended research into pixel art techniques and I believe it was the most important research that I carried out because I was able to showcase my continuing research, which is needed for a high grade and also it allowed me to significantly improve my pixel art designs. I fully feel that this research and experimentation paid of because almost all of my playtesters mentioned my pixel art and the main picture that was painted was that they all said ‘I really like the pixel art’ and ‘I found the pixel art to be perfect’, so I believe that my research and experimentation has been successful in producing high quality art and this has really boosted my confidence in my art because reflecting back to the SWOT analysis I said that ‘I believe that my weakest attribute for this project would be art and other art involved areas to my game’. Looking at my progression now I believe that I have changed completely in terms of art and thanks to the motivation of the SWOT analysis and pre-mortem I have been able to make this successful progression. My use of pixel art can be found in every aspect of my game.
Practical Skills - Outcomes
Moving swiftly to the all important outcome stage to my practical skills section on my project, I was able to independently apply all of my knowledge and understanding to my final outcome and overall I was able to plan, design and develop a high quality and detailed final outcome that met my expectations that I set out at the start of the project.
Throughout the creation of the final outcome I faced many challenges and most notably the larger challenges I faced were down to lack of experimentation for features that I planned would work and I understood but were not executed in a working manner. For example, looking back upon my weekly dev logs and also weekly journals, in the first week of development I faced an issue where the animations for my character sprite would not play at the correct times, this resulted in a mix of animations playing at the incorrect moment. After facing this issue I reviewed the code and noticed that I should use functions that trigger ‘walk’ or ‘Idle’ based on the users keyboard inputs, this fix was very effective and I do not know why I didn't spot this issue to start with as I have previously worked with functions in my previous projects.
Another large issue that I faced throughout development was that the controls for the player would not stop as intended when the player completed a level, this issue was yet again a very simple fix, all I had to do was add another line of code disabling the walk function all together, however, I found that this would leave the player confused because the character would stop without explanation on completion of a level. So, I decided to take a more creative route and that was to add dialogue boxes, these dialogue boxes I had not previously planned on adding however after playing the game I felt the story was not being portrayed so I paired the two features together and the text also pops up on completion of a level. Here I took an independent creative approach to resolving an issue and instead of choosing the easy option I decided to implement a new dialogue system that playtesters found to portray the story perfectly.
Moving onto actually evaluating my final outcome and final version of my game, I made an array of amendments to my outcome to get it into the polished build that it is now and thanks to the two feedback / peer review sessions I was able to address any issues with my game before developing my final build, and I was also able to edit the layout and design of my site based upon the feedback I found relevant in the peer-review.
Firstly, looking at my final build of my game I can see that I have improved significantly throughout the project and this is extremely clear because I am now able to create a fully functioning game without the need for help except from independent research and experimentation. Reflecting back upon my final build of my game I feel that the development process could not have been executed any smoother because as I have stated in my many weekly journals and dev log videos, this has been a journey and I have learnt from mistakes over the development process and ensured that I had not repeated the same mistakes and so with my improvements over the weeks I have been able to grow both creatively and also personally because looking forward to next year I will ensure that I do not make any of the same mistakes that I have overcome throughout the many weeks of this project.
The game itself I believe has been developed with quality and gameplay experience in mind because I have consistently carried out testing to ensure that all features work and I have overcome large amounts of bugs especially in terms of dialogue issues and also general level issues. For example, looking at the problem solving video of me amending the dialogue, I was unable to correctly make the dialogue trigger at the correct time and also render the correct line of dialogue. By looking back through the video, I managed to resolve the issue by creating a new layer on top of the game and having this solely for dialogue, I then had to create trigger blocks / sprites that act as triggers to begin the dialogue playthrough. All in all the fix to this problem took around 30 minutes, to ensure that large issues like this do not occur next year I need to carry out research and experimentation first before I then move into development because none of my research sources in my contextual research report could help me resolve this issue, but resilience and testing helped me to resolve this particular bug.
As I have mentioned above I carried out two playtest sessions, these playtest sessions I found to be extremely helpful at boosting the feedback that I could apply to my outcome and game and I believe that without these sessions most of the bugs within my game would have been unnoticed by me. During these sessions, the play testers suggested many areas for improvement and I will not be going through all of these because the full report is available under the Evaluations tab, but I want to highlight three key improvements that I made to both my game and website. The first major improvement that I added to my game was moving from an arrow movement system to a traditional WASD movement scheme. I was extremely pleased with the responses in terms of controls because I was able to amend many issues with the controls thanks to this feedback. So, I switched to a WASD movement in response to feedback and I found that this movement type functioned better than the previous movement controls. So moving forward, I will ensure that I stick to a traditional WASD movement type because I feel now that this is a more intuitive choice. Furthermore, upon review of the feedback an issue was brought to my attention and that was my shadows and water reflections were not always visible, as I had experimented with this feature I needed to ensure that it was present in my game to achieve a higher grade because my experimentation and researched needed to be relevant to my final outcome. So I implemented a fix for this issue and the problem was solved.
Looking back to my game, I am extremely pleased with the interactive elements to my puzzles and levels because I had never previously used puzzle mechanics in one of my games before and from the get go I planned to include these features in my project and to see them come to life has brought me great joy, because I have been able achieve something that I could have only dreamed of before moving to this course. Furthermore, I am very happy with the overall design and feel to my game because I believe that I have captured a broken, zombie-infested and wasteland society perfectly thanks to my art choices, colour palette and also character design all of which I planned for in my idea generation and also proposal videos, so my research and experimentation had significantly helped me to produce this immersive environment. Yet again, my research into planning techniques and also the processes involved in game design and development had also positively impacted the quality of my game because if I was not following the processes as closely I would not have been able to understand what would have been needed in the next stages of development and also my planning documents helped me to stick to task, without them who knows what the quality of my outcome would have been. The point I am trying to convey is that all the stages throughout the project had been in there own way helpful and positively impactful to the development of my work and I do not believe that I would not have been able to produce this outcome if it was not for context, research, experimentation, playtest sessions, problem solving and most importantly my strong work ethic.
In terms of what grade I would give myself based on the practical skills element of the grading matrix I would grade myself at a distinction level because I have an in-depth understanding and aesthetic awareness. Imaginative and flexible processes, skills and knowledge applied in extensive enquiry to develop creative solutions. I would grade myself this grade on the matrix because I has shown throughout the application of my practical skills that I have a clear deep understanding of the practical skills that I applied to my game whether that be from research and experimentation or just purely from previous experience, and I also have a clear aesthetic awareness thanks to the extended research I carried out on pixel art shading techniques. Furthermore, I believe that I have applied flexible skills and knowledge to develop extensive creative solutions. I believe this because when I decided to implement the dialogue system this was not something that I had not originally intended and the only reason I implemented it was to resolve an issue that I found with the code, so I could have just fixed the code and left the game as is, but I creatively decided that dialogue pop-ups would work better to fix the issue, and they did.
Finally, progressing onto my website I feel that my website design and layout greatly portrays the themes and genre of my game perfectly, I know this also from my peer review responses. I have previously worked with websites in my Digital Interactive Technology GCSE course so I feel that my previous understanding of web design has carried across to my college course and I have been able to showcase a well constructed website that is easily accessible. During my peer review session I asked the reviewers a series of questions about my website and whether I should change or improve any areas, the feedback gathered was extremely positive and I was able to take away clear improvements that I applied to my website. However, looking back upon one of the responses they said that I should reconsider my whole website design to better suit that of the theme of my game, I partially agreed with them but I decided to not apply the improvements to this project because the other responses were all positive around the design choices that I had made. Moving forward into the next projects I will need to reflect upon this feedback and ensure that I consider my theme and implement the theme more thoroughly into my website design, this will be extremely key in my next FMP because I will be graded not only on my outcome but also the house style and design of my website.
If someone was to have said to me at the beginning of the project that I would be able to independently produce a full length project and outcome I would have disagreed with them, however, looking back now I am extremely proud of my work and the exceptional effort and quality that I have applied to the final outcome of this project. Moving forward, I will ensure that I do not put myself down and instead I will tell myself that I can achieve it and I can complete a high quality project.
Based on my outcomes I believe that my target audience for this project would be 14-18 year olds because my game includes an array of combat as well as dark themes such as kidnapping, horror and also survival, so I believe that this game would be more targeted towards a teenage audience. Furthermore, in terms of a Pegi Rating or ESRB rating I would say that my game would possibly be rated 12 or 16 by Pegi and also a Teen rating by ESRB if the game was to ship outside of the UK, this rating is mostly because games of this nature are more targeted towards a teenage audience and so a 12, 16 or Teen rating would better suit this game and also I have not included any adult themes or language so the game would definitely not be rated an 18 or Mature, so I believe that it would be rated at a 12 Pegi rating.
Lastly, if I was to launch my game I would definitely launch it onto a PC storefront, most likely Steam or Itch Io because the level of interactivity in my game would require a keyboard and mouse and so a controller would not be able to achieve the level of interactivity that a keyboard offers. In addition, I believe that PC storefronts are more easily accessible for smaller indie games so I believe that launching on PC would be a better choice for any indie game, furthermore, most horror games are more played on the PC so this would definitely be a better choice for me. In order to promote my game I would look back at the interactive platforms research that I carried out in the context phase of the project because there I said that promotion can be easily accessed on social media, so promotion of this game would for the most part take part of social media. In addition, if I was to promote my game on social media I would be able to interact directly with my target audience, so I would be able to understand and gather feedback from them about what they would like to see within my game.


The Threats section of my SWOT analysis stating all the Threats that I could have possibly faced during the project
The weaknesses section of my SWOT analysis stating the major weak attributes that I possessed. In this case the main focus was my weak attribute of art.


Example of one of my more detailed idea generation reports. For example you can see the links and videos I talked about in the above paragraph.


Example of one of my less detailed idea generation reports. For example, I only explored colour palette and character design, whereas my previous idea generation had more depth. I looked at mechanics, environments and also included examples.

.jpg)


These are an array of images of the responses that I gathered from the one response that I gathered for the process research report.

Here is an overview of the stages that I researched into and a summary stating what processes I carried out in the FMP.

Reiteration of the importance of researching into new pixel art techniques in order to avoid the threat identified from occurring over the course of the project.


An example of my research planner and how I created a layout that was extremely simple for me to track the points that I went on to research into in my Contextual research report.




A visual example of just one of my responses that I gathered as part of my primary research. In comparison to my previous research report the responses that I gathered in this report were more detailed and I managed to gather more responses by contacting a larger group of people.


A visual example of the two areas that I researched into, notice that I did not research into methodologies instead opted for actual planning documents. This was a severe misstep because I feel now that I should have researched into different methodologies in order to adopt a smoother workflow.

A visual example of my Gantt Chart and how I utilised the document write up until the end of the project in order to keep track of time and tasks to overcome.


A visual example of my Game Design Document to show how I could have improved upon the bland and sparse text in order to improve the portrayal of my game.

A visual example of my experimentation into one method of implementing an inventory system into my game.

A visual example of my experimentation being put into action with a screenshot of my inventory system from the final build of Streets Of Shadows.


These images showcase parts of my extended research and experimentation, and includes visual examples of my experimentation as well as written text into each method.

Examples of my research and also the practical element of experimenting with the lighting effects.

Practical application of the lighting techniques in my game.

My reflection based upon the second method of implementing an inventory system.
Practical experimentation with the second method of inventory systems.

My reflection based upon experimentation with one method of implementing water reflections and effects into my outcome.

Practical application of water effects and reflections into my outcome.


Practical application of my pixel art, shading, dithering and hue shifting experimentation and research in my outcome.


Feedback received stating how the play testers found the dialogue pop-ups to be interesting and have the ability to portray the story clearly.

Example of dialogue pop-up.

Closing targets in my week 11 journal stating that I will continue to reflect upon my FMP and take all improvements and apply them to next years work.
Here are two buttons. The top button takes you too the video where I resolve the issue linked to the dialogue that I mentioned in the above paragraph, and the bottom takes you to all of the development videos that showcase my development and problem solving.


Feedback given to me in the peer review talking about changing and improving the player controls. Switching from arrow controls to WASD.
Player movement and code before making changes to the movement control scheme. Here you can see that the player is controlled using the arrow keys as seen in the 'Keyboard - On __ Pressed' actions.
Player movement and code after making changes to the movement control scheme. Here you can see that the player is controlled using the WASD keys as seen in the 'Keyboard - On W/A/S/D Pressed' actions.
Feedback given to me in the peer review talking about how my use of the experimentation of shadows and water reflections is not clear within my game.

Image of the game before improving the shadows and water reflections. The only reflection present here is the one produced from the cut out code.

Image of the game after improving the shadows and water reflections. We can now see that the bin produces a reflection and also the source of the code reflection can be seen on the wall.

Image of the grading matrix, this is the distinction criteria for the practical skills section of the project.

Image of the feedback I received based on the design and layout of my website and what theme or genre the reviewers believed my project was based on. Here we can see that all of the reviewers but one were able to see the theme I adopted, the other reviewer (the bottom line) suggested that I should in future consider a more thematic design based on the theme of my game.




Feedback I gathered suggesting that I should change the size of my text boxes so text was larger, more visible and paragraphs were shorter in order for less scrolling down pages.
These two images show the website layout before implementing an improvement to resolve the feedback gathered.
These two images show the website layout after implementing an improvement to resolve the feedback gathered. Here you can see that the boxes occupy a larger space of the page allowing the text to be bigger whilst cutting down on paragraph size and also the amount of scrolling needed.

© 2017 PEGI, Pan European Game Information.
© 2024 itch corp
© 2024 Valve Corporation
