Hello, everyone! Today, I'll be writing a post-mortem about my experience with creating my game jam project.
What went right
Well, first and foremost, I was able to actually make a game in general. It started as a simple mechanic, where the player can only lay down turrets to attack, and I was able to expand on it more. I was also able to get nearly everything I wanted to do into the game.
I also like how most of my models turned out when it came to creating all of them. From the turrets to the arena you use them in, I like how the game's models turned out.
What went wrong
Funny enough, I actually didn't get to submit my game because I didn't remember the game jam ended on Saturday, NOT Sunday. So, there's that...
Aside from that, I wasn't able to implement a few special features for the game which would make the game feel and play more actively. One was how the game would display creating a turret. I had the idea of having a small floating companion launch small pellets which would expand into the turrets you can use in the game. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to figure out showing the trajectory of the ball being launched from said companion. Another major feature not in the game right now is the ability to use another turret alongside the original Machine Gun turret the player is able to deploy right now.
I also wasn't able to implement another way to use the turrets, specifically in terms of aiming the turrets freely. It was a featured I thought of when playing the game. It felt a little odd to have to lead enemies into turrets for me, so I thought of the mechanic a while back. I'm not sure how it works with the idea of a game revolving around laying down turrets for enemies to run into, which leads me to my next point: I was sorely missing another voice to hear when it came to making the game.
Since I worked alone for this game jam, I was in charge of everything, including making up ideas for the game. The fact I was in controls of all of the ideas led to a natural feature creep and less spicing up the game. Basically, I spent a lot more time thinking up things to place in the game than I did adding those features and polishing the game as-is.
I also ran into some bugs that took much longer than intended to get working. One in particular was for the odd inability for my enemies to attack the main character. For about a day and a half, I spend time checking on what could be going on. Color me surprised when I finally found out I had not set up my enemies' guns to fire projectiles properly. I got that fixed in less than a minute, and everything was working fine from then on.
Given all of this trouble for this game jam, I want to look into what I did learn from this game jam.
What I learned
One of the most important things I learned from this game jam is how to properly implement enemy AI in games. It was something I had a general grasp of in terms of using Finite State Machines, but I was initially confused on when to have enemies go into different states. Another thing I learned about was using delegates properly in game code to allow for different scripts to talk to each other without a lot of code. Mainly, I learned how to use different coding structures to help do more in my scripts than before.
I also learned to use Mixamo, a service which allows for quickly animating and downloading 3D models for use in 3D projects, including in game development. I was able to get a game character running around and animating in a few minutes. It also turns out any model from Mixamo (especially the one I used in my game) is commercial-free and royalty-free, thus able to be use in any game without worry of paying for the model later. I'll be sure to at least use it for rigging up any humanoid characters I wish to use in my games from now on.
With all I've learned, I'd like to take the time to see what to do in the future.
What to do in the future
First and foremost, I want to try working with a team next time I get into a project or game jam. I'm not sure what role I'll be taking in that team, but I'd mainly like to be able to share ideas with other people and prototype ideas faster with more feedback on the game.
Another thing for me is to try and get better at animating and making music for games, as I don't want to always depend of commercial-free or Public Domain art and music for my games. I want to be able to have a consistent look-and-feel for my games, and I want to be able to have a personal say in the matter for those times when I may not be able to get another person on the project I'm working on.
Even though I didn't have a direct entry in the game, I have released the game on itch.io. Below is a link to the game if anyone wants to test it out. Until then, take care, and thanks for following the development of my game jam project.