Week #6 – The Postmortem
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What is the end result and what have you learnt? A tough question to answer outright, but since so much has changed within the last ten weeks I hope I can outline what I have learnt and the end results of my first game project. I spent most of my time working on the project in tandem with learning Unity as we went along. Every problem we faced in the production phase was a new challenge for my fellow programmer and I to tackle as we delved into the complex world of coding games. With only two tutorials under our belt I struggled daily to figure out and create the features of our game that was required and desired by the team. My hope that all the time I spent gathering resources and learning from tutorials will cut down on the time I spend for future game projects, at least from a coding perspective. From working on Aetherial I finally learnt how to put MDA into practice, during the creative process my team and I always kept it in mind when making decisions and designing various parts of our game. I finally got to see how each individual part of MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetic) influenced and changed other parts. For example, whenever I changed the way the player ship moved mechanically, it would also slightly influence the dynamics of the game, thus changing the entire experience, if only slightly. It’s fun and interesting to experience first hand how what we learn in class transfers into the games we make.
The end result of the game left me with mixed feelings however. One part I really enjoyed watching what I had spent so long working to create finally come to life, I was also a little unsatisfied with our finished product. While the game itself was playable, it lacked in harmony. By that I mean that it is clearly visible that when we created the different components of our game that there wasn’t much thought into how it all worked together, but rather on how it worked as an individual piece of the game; It was almost like the game was made up of 6 puzzle pieces. But, our final product was a complete game, that is indisputable. We took many risks, made a ton of mistakes, and pulled our project to the finish line by its hair. While the game didn’t thrive in harmony it was certainly owned a certain uniqueness when compared to most of the other shoot em ups which is one thing our team thrived to accomplish (seeing as there were 3 other Aetherial games to compete with). All in all I am not satisfied with how the game turned out, but through all of it I am still proud of parts of it, and ecstatic to create better games in the future!   |
