Final Major Project:
Interactive Media and Games design 3
Jake Williams
Weekly dev Logs
Development Log 1:
During the first week of development I stuck to what I stated in my weekly journals and also my planning experimentation to continue to update and evolve my planning documents based on the progress that I had achieved during that week of production, this evolution of my planning documents, more specifically my Gantt Chart, continued throughout the week and also I will will continue to update it in the coming weeks. Overall, this week I moved onto developing my Alpha version of my final outcome and started to implement the mechanics and features that I experimented with during the experimentation phase.
In addition to this, the Alpha build will just consist of a fully functioning outcome but will not feature any final artwork or assets. I come to this conclusion for my Alpha build by reflecting back upon my first research report where I researched into the different stages of development and what each build entails, so I decided to stick that research methodology for my development and production stage. At the very start of the week I carried out experimentation, this experimentation followed on from my contextual research report and has allowed me to fully understand the different mechanics and features that I want to implement into my game as the weeks progress.
In terms of a day by day breakdown, the first week of development looked something like this:
Wednesday:
On Wednesday I began my experimentation following on from my research and started to apply the experimentation to the Alpha version of my game. The experimentation involved me looking at two methods of carrying out a practical method and then comparing and contrasting them, too decided what method I would like to apply going forward. This ran smoothly as I have already carried out various experimentation tasks in the past, however the main area that I felt could have been improved was the inventory system, one method that I experimented with involved me comparing .json files and saving and loading them based on a series of parameters and functions, this took a little over an hour to experiment with and I felt my time could have been utilised more in other areas of the development, so ultimately I decided to not use that method inventory systems, instead opting for the simpler version. Also during the first day of development, I started to build the UI menus and pages for my game by adding several pages such as main menu, settings, how to play and also a control scheme page. No functionality was present during the first day of development, however, the pages were designed and arranged.
Thursday:
Moving into Thursday, I started to add functionality to my pages that I started on Wednesday and then moved onto starting to add player movement and also enemy AI pathfinding. As I mention in my video below I chose to adopt a line of sight pathfinding behaviour instead of a post to post system because I wanted random enemy movement and this would not have been achievable if I was to use a post to post method that I had previously worked with in previous projects. Thursday was a very short day and I was simply finishing off Wednesdays work and moving onto developing towards my Alpha version.
Friday:
Friday was a long day compared to the previous two and I was able to achieve a lot of progress during this day of development, for example I finished animations for my player movement as well as fully developing the world map and also the first draft version of the first level in-game. A major problem that I encountered on Friday was being able to trigger the correct animations at the correct time, as you will see in my video log that the walk and idle animations would not trigger when the player uses the directional arrows on the keyboard and the animation would continue to play even after releasing the key. I was eventually able to resolve this by using two functions that trigger depending on the player speed, this helped me to overcome this issue and now the animations sync with the keyboard input.
https://week1-dev.netlify.app/
Development Log 2:
During the second week of development I stuck to the daily targets that I set out at the start of the day and continued to work towards completing my Alpha build. I focused the majority of the week on finishing the first level, starting the second and also implementing light effects, water effects, combat AI and also water effects into my game.
In terms of a day to day breakdown, the second week of production looked something like this:
Wednesday:
On Wednesday I finished working on my first level to the point of completion, tested the first level and then fixed any bugs that occurred whilst playing. One major issue that I encountered whilst testing my fist level was that when the player interacted with a door the controls would not stop as intended ad then the player would not be teleported to the next level, this issue took a little while to resolve but in the end I managed to resolve it by implementing dialogue boxes, these dialogue boxes allowed for greater depth to the story and ultimately helped me to resolve the issue of controls and position problems, a video can be found below and also in the attached Google Drive folder. After completing the first level, I then went onto starting the basic design and layout for the second level, this level would take place in a sewer. As I was not physically adding a lot of the functionality on Wednesday, I encountered no problems when creating the basic layout for level 2.
Thursday:
Moving into Thursday, I reflected back upon my asset list and found that I planned for a pause menu, the pause menu would be a simple pop-up screen that would appear when the game is paused, form this page the player would be able to adjust volume, toggle hints and also return to the main menu. On Thursday, I added this pause menu to my game without the function of being able to return to the main menu, the page functioned correctly. One main problem that I encountered on Thursday was the pause menu not rendering when the pause button was pushed, this was a very simple issue and all I needed to do was move the menu to the viewport boundaries so it would be in view at all times. After this, the pause menu began to appear on screen every time the game was played, this was an issue as it blocked the players view and also the other menu items on screen. After reviewing the issue, I came up with a fix, and that was to use functions, the functions would trigger on and off when the pause button was interacted with, this in turn told the pause menu to open or close.
Friday:
As Friday was my longest day of development, I managed to achieve quite a lot during this session, firstly I added a new combat system that introduced three new weapons each with a cooldown to add balance to the game. This new weapon system allows the player to pick an appropriate weapon for their approach and the cooldown limits the amount of attacks in a certain timeframe to add balance to the combat mechanic. In addition to this, I improved the dialogue pop-ups and also started to add functionality to the second level of the game.
https://devlog-2build.netlify.app/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_WtHs6iX_M
Development Log 3:
During the third week of development I once again stuck to the daily targets that I set myself and was able to finish the Alpha build of my game, this included all four levels each with all functionality. I believe that this week has been a great jump from the previous two weeks.
In terms of a day to day breakdown, the third week of production looked something like this:
Wednesday:
On Wednesday, I focused solely on finishing the layouts to the remaining levels of my game, this included levels three and four. I also added dialogue and panning effects to interactive elements in my puzzles (see videos for panning effects in use). No key issue arose during Wednesday's development likely due to the fact that I had already completed two previous levels so I have applied all of my knowledge from those levels to finish the final two levels.
Thursday:
Moving into Thursday, I looked ahead into the future stages and updated my Gantt Chart according to the development that I had made. I saw that I had a playtest session planned and created a Google Form for my play testers to fill out so I can gather meaningful feedback that I can apply to the improvements of my game. Also, I added animations to my new weapons as they were using one single animation, this in turn allowed me to develop a bullet system for my new gun weapon. One issue that arose when developing my new gun weapon was that the bullet would keeping changing direction based upon the direction that the player was facing, I managed to resolve this issue by looking back at few of my other projects and implementing a line of code that updated the direction of the bullet only once and not continuously.
Friday:
Moving into Friday, I finished adding all of the interactive functionality to my game and completed the Alpha build. No significant problem occurred when finishing the Alpha build. After completing the Alpha Build I started to work on developing pixel art ready for the movement into the Beta Build.
https://devlog-3build.netlify.app/
Development Log 4:
During the final week of development I once again stuck to the daily targets that I set myself and was able to finish the Beta build of my game and also my Final Version, this included all of my game art assets and audio, so my game was complete at the end of the week.
In terms of a day to day breakdown, the final week of production looked something like this:
Wednesday:
On Wednesday, I focused solely on finishing the recording of my audio assets and also carried out a playtest session which took up the rest of my time on Wednesday. The playtest session ran smoothly and I was able to gather a lot of relevant and useful information, as well as improvements and bugs that the testers noticed.
Thursday:
Moving into Thursday, I was not in college on Thursday due to the college being closed for GCSE exams. However, at home I started to look through all of the feedback and create a review document of the feedback detailing what I would like to add or improve in my game.
Friday:
Moving into Friday, I finished adding all of the audio and pixel art assets and finished building my final build. After finishing the final build I started to evidence all of my work on my Wix website ready for the submission of this part of the FMP.
https://finalbuild-streetsofshadows.netlify.app/