Evaluation
Project Proposal
I believe that my project proposal was a success because of a range of reasons. one reason i took into account how long my tasks would take to be completed this meant i set my self realistic goals,i also prioritized my work, doing vital parts first and then lesser parts last this then meant that if i spent too much time on something it meant that there wasn’t much that would be left out that was key as i would have abandoned them to meet the deadline,if i didn’t complete anything i would then complete it at home, this meant that i would meet the deadline, i believe it was a good idea to consider these things as it meant i had a good time frame for my work.
i also believe that considering problems i would face and their solutions was effective as it meant that when i bumped into a problem i knew how to handle it, it also made sure that i evaded a few problems straight away when i started the tasks, like making multiple saves to prevent loss of work and because of this it meant i could save time later on.
I also considered the pro’s and cons of the software i would be using i believe this was effective, because i could consider any problems that the software may cause and the limitations they have so i knew what to do if problems happened as well as what to avoid.
Because i believe that my project Proposal was effective i do not believe there is anything i would change about it if i did something like this in the future.
Research & Idea Generation
My ideas developed a lot through out my work, as my ideas were changing due to a range of reasons, such as constructive feedback from Q/A, as well as Research changing the game idea and improving on it, also my ideas just generally changed while working on the game and i came up with an idea that would work well with the current thing i was trying to implement.
My ideas changed throughout the project when i bumped into a problem, or when i was told by feedback that i should leave something how it is,so sometimes that meant that i left something in its original form as it was liked more at that stage, or it meant that i would change something form feedback and make it better,
I Gathered research from the film series X-men i believe this part of my research was useful as it went into the theme of evolution and growth, as it talks about how the human species has evolved to adapt and become a more dominant species, this gave me ideas that would be added to the game such as power ups that make you more domenant then your enemies making you stronger then them.
I Gathered research from playing the game Evolve and i believe that it was useful as it directly tapped into the theme of Evolution and Growth, this gave me ideas that i would then go and put forward into the game we were creating, such as the player growing in size as they evolve.
I also gathered research from Feedback from people who played the game, this was one of the most crucial pieces of my research as it was coming straight from the players, which are who the game is targeted at, and that made it more useful then any research i could gather from a book, as it was directly telling me what people wanted to find within the game. all my research helped to develop my ideas and this made them very useful and crucial to my work, and my game wouldn’t have been the same without them.
Also i gathered Feedback from our Game Jolt page, as we did get followers of the game so it must have been liked also we did get a comment on the game saying that the game was good, but the game doesn’t have much views or plays, so i believe that we need to update the page in the future by doing things such as adding a HTML play to the game, and then more people would play it as its easier,also we didn’t put our game on a another free gaming website called itch.io and if we wanted even more feedback we should have gone on there too and these are things that i would do for future projects as they could help produce a lot more feedback that would be useful to us and is key for future work.
Another very crucial part of research was looking into tower defence games, as it gave me ideas of what mechanics we could have within the game and it was showing a lot of key things we could use from other games to expand upon our game and make it better.
The bit of my research that has inspired me the most i would say was player feedback, as i loved having people tell me exactly what they liked about the game and telling me what they would like to see in the future, and also while seeing them play the game and enjoy it, it made me only want to make the game better and better for them, also when i saw the enjoyment decrease when they found a bug within the game, it only made me want to change the game and get rid of it fast so they could go back to enjoying the game, and this is why i think it inspired me the most, as it made me change the game constantly and add things that could only improve on the game and make it loved by more and more people.
Also from my research into other blogs i have been making sure that our blog has been kept to a good standard and not left a mess of un-categorized work and being left un-posted upon and bare.
I believe that i could have done more research like looking into mechanics that were shared within Tower Defence Games and then i could compare which was the best with the mechanic and implement something like the best one into our game, this is something i will try to do in future assignments, however i did do a little bit of this within my mood boards as i did look at different versions of the things i was working into comparing each game.
Project Management
I believe that our Project management was effective, but it could have been more effective, as we could have done more that would have kept us more on track and make sure that we didn’t spend time on areas that we had spent too much time on compared with others, we used a Gantt chart to show our time spent on certain area’s but this wasn’t always followed as much as it should have been, but i still believe that we achieved our goals well, but i do believe that we could have made a check-list as well with our work, and then we could have compared it with our Gantt chart and it would help us edit the Gantt chart at a later date so we knew what we should change about our time distribution to get the most work out of the time we had.
If i would change anything about the way we managed the project it would be the way we handled our management of time, as we only entrusted our time to be managed by our Gantt chart and instead we should have had more measures in place to help us manage the time more effectively and not fall behind in certain areas.
Also with my weekly evaluations i believe that my time has been also handled well as that has followed my gantt chart but i still didnt have a checklist to compare with my gantt chart to make sure i did everything and spent time wisely but i believe my weekly evaluation has had input on how i have managed my time.
Use of Software and Materials
We decided we were adamant that we wanted to create a game as it would give us the most pride out of making, which would then in turn make us produce more work then if we did something we didn’t put as much love into, we decided that we would use Game Maker to produce the game, as we are experienced in Game Maker as we have used it before in past projects, and i have been using it in my own free time to create games and i have gained a great understanding of coding so i know how i can do things within Game Maker quickly and effectively and have them work perfectly for us ,
We also used Pen and Paper to create parts of our work such as Thumbnail Sketches, we did this because we thought it was a good way to get our ideas down, and it might be safer to do it on paper rather then on computer as on computer they could be lost easier, but if we did them on paper we could then scan them in online and then we had both a digital copy as well as a physical one, and also with having the pen and paper it meant that we could do more with it, as it was all free hand so it could be more detailed then the use of a mouse, which would have been less detailed.
If i would change anything about the way we managed the project it would be the way we handled our management of time, as we only entrusted our time to be managed by our Gantt chart and instead we should have had more measures in place to help us manage the time more effectively and not fall behind in certain areas.
Also with my weekly evaluations i believe that my time has been also handled well as that has followed my gantt chart but i still didnt have a checklist to compare with my gantt chart to make sure i did everything and spent time wisely but i believe my weekly evaluation has had input on how i have managed my time.
The Game
The Game that we created suited the genre Evolution and Growth really well, the game works perfectly without much to any bugs at all, the game is fun for the creators and those who have been trying it after every update and have been giving us constructive feedback.
What Went Well
The game has been constantly kept up to date and has never fallen behind in our work, it has been kept a very key part of our work.
Working as a team worked really well as it meant that we could distribute our works, also it meant that i could spend my time in one area and not have to worry about others area’s such as art, as the art was in better hands, and this meant that i could add more updates to the game more often and make playing it a better experience.
The mechanics that i made worked well within the game and were liked by everyone, and the only things that i had to remove were bugs, and not any mechanic i added.
The mechanics i added worked nice and easily, and if they didn’t work, a solution soon arise that didn’t cause any if not little amount of problems.
The game stuck very close to our research as the mechanics we made were made from our research and this made the game a lot better as it had aspects of other working games, as well as our own ideas unique to our game.
Our mass numbers of saves worked well as it meant we had something to reflect on so we knew how to change the game in the future and it also worked extremely well at protecting the game.
Also with how we were constantly asking players what they thought about the game it meant that we didn’t face problems like having to remove content from the game, also in our project proposal we talked about what problems we could face later and that helped us avoid a lot of the problems we could come across.
What Didn’t Go Well
A few mechanics that i did try to make work never actually ended up into the game, such as a mute button, but i will attempt to fix this in future.
We had problems with Game Maker at times as sometimes it wouldn’t work, and that made a pause in our working, but we got it fixed a little while later by our tutor.
When trying to make the game work online, we did face a problem where it corrupted the Game Maker File, but with the constant saving we had been producing we were only set back 5 minutes worth of code.
Final Thoughts
The elements i love most about our game is the Originality of the idea as its not a game that you will find and think ours is just a clone as the game is completely unique and if you want a game to play that is like this one it will be our game, i also like the evolution within our game, as it is something that changes the game dramatically as each level gets a lot harder and requires you to evolve you tactics while playing the game, as well as actually evolving the character and enemies and i believe that it adds a lot of replay-able aspects to the game, also i love the turret that we added to the game, as it is a permanent upgrade that works well and it is something we had been trying to add to the game for a while so the game is also evolving your surroundings to use for your advantage so i liked that we could do that effectively, and i also love the upgrade to the turret as it is a very helpful piece of code for the game.
The elements i don’t like about our game is that there are not many levels within the game making it a lot shorter then i would actually like it to be and that means that it is way to quick to complete and that means when you’ve played it once there isn’t much more to do, but later on it would get harder and you would have to try hard to complete the game and that means if you die you would play again so the game would be played for longer, also i would love to add more bosses or more boss mechanics as then the game would have more varieties, also i would love to code the shop in a different way as if anything else was added to the game it had to be ran through the shop first and that made everything a bother to add.
I am happy with The game we created as a team over all, i believe that we all helped contribute to the game and i believe we were all vital to the making of the game, and it wouldnt have been the same without one of our members, i believe that it is a game that is great to play and i would absolutely love to play and upgrade the game in the future, because it helped advance my skills in game maker, and in teamwork, and i gained a good experience of what it is like to work in a team and i know that it works well being able to distribute your work out with the team so it isnt all on one member, and i think that this will be useful information for future topics.
Blog Posts
we have had experience with blog posts as our last assignment required us to work on a blog, so we felt like doing it again wouldn’t be hard and it would be a very nice way of displaying our work, also it meant that we could display our work to the public and help us gain feedback for the game, as we added a link to our game jolt page so this meant that people could easily go from our blog to try out our game.
I believe our development blog worked effectively as it helped us show our progression from what we started with to what we ended with, the only problem we had with the blog was we didn’t update it regularly enough to show everything as time went on but other then that i believe that the blog worked very effectively, as people did view our game through it and they liked the posts we made showing they had an interest in it, and it did display our game over time so i believe it was successful.
Outcomes
I believe that we successfully stuck to the theme we selected and it can be visibly be seen within our game as you can see that the game is set in evolving to survive and the player is growing as time progresses and becoming stronger and having to face tougher stronger opponents, just like how evolution actually works.
Also from my questions and answers i have posted i can tell that the players do like the game as i had hoped to be an outcome.
I believe that the blog has been a success as it documents the game through time and it has been viewed and liked by others.
I believe that i could have done more work, however i did achieve everything i had planned within my project proposal, so what i would have been adding would have been stuff that just made the game more fun for those who have been playing it, and i do believe i will be working on the game within my free time as it is a game i have grown to love through its development and i believe it can only go forward, so i plan to add more to the game.
What i Would Change If We Did It Again, Or For Future Projects
There are a few things i would change in the future, these are things such as before i try to do a piece of code that will take a lot of time, i would research into the mechanic and see if it is doable as then i wouldn’t have been wasting my time on something that wont actually work in the end.
Also i would research into how to get game maker files to work online first, before attempting it first and corrupting the save, as i would much rather avoid this in the future.
Evolution of Defence 