Reflective Analysis

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Description – What happened?

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To summarise, I set out to create a 3rd person adventure game influenced by Crash Bandicoot, Sonic, Max and The Cave in Epic's UE4. With nearly no experience in the engine I wanted to focus my learning development there. 

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In my Industry Research module I briefly looked at how games are developed, also utilising Shotgun project management platform as a way of planning and tracking progress throughout my project.

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I created a primary research study to find out what my prospective audience liked about the games that influenced my ideas, doing player testing with children was a little more challenging than I had expected at first. This was made easier when I studied the GDC talks of Mia Consalvo and Gareth Griffiths.

 

The majority of my time was spent learning about the Unreal 4 engine, this being the first time I’d used the software or created a game level since high school. Using the blueprints visual based coding system took up most of my time inside the software, it took some time to understand how to use all the different elements involved.

 

I completed my prototype using a procedural environment pack sourced from Epic’s Marketplace.

 

Feelings –

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I felt a vast range of emotions throughout this project and it’s only looking back on it now that I realise how I struggled throughout. I started out excited about this project and although a little apprehensive about completing such an open project alone, I’d alienated myself at the beginning of my final year and this was exacerbate by the difficulty I was having in getting in to college safely. As mentioned at the beginning of this project I have a habit of over complicating things, all with good intentions of creating something bigger and better than I originally plan too, this works well when working as part of a team and inspiring others to stretch and achieve more. When working alone this tends to have me spiralling stretching too far in too many directions, I felt this was the case at several points during this project. The times I was able to get in to college helped massively, being around like minded people who were willing to help me out and I could do the same for them in return. This is like a hot bath though, needs to be repeated regularly to have a lasting effect.

 

On the whole I’m happy with what I’ve achieved, it was difficult but I didn’t give up and kept working little and often. I feel that I could have done better under better circumstances but unfortunately there is little I could have done to change my physical condition in the short term, I was very worried that this was going to impact my ability to seek employment. Again I feel much better now about my position going forwards into the industry and this project shows how I can work well on my own, the level of information I collect to assist my work has helped others along the way.

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Evaluation & Analysis –

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There are many good elements achieved from this project, normally it’s not advisable to start with new software towards the end of a course but due to all students in years 2 and 3 using the software there was a lot of communication through the FDA Facebook group. This helped us all source better information faster.

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Showing what I can achieve under my own determination, the first time creating anything with new software is going to take the longest. There are many elements of the UE4 software that I now have knowledge to use for different projects, such as product demos, VR product experiences, arch viz for example.

 

The understanding of UE4 has given me the opportunity to bring this software to other studios in our industry that normally wouldn’t have come across it.

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The bad parts of this project were due in large to the circumstances I had to face, unfortunately I’ve no idea how my condition will develop under different situations. Yes it’s very stressful not always knowing if I can commute to college, with that said I attended a pain management course that talked about techniques for alleviating stress where ever possible, this helped me a lot and I feel that those skills were put to very good use during this project.

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It would have been nice to complete the prototype of my game, I’ve shown how the project developed and my understanding of the processes involved. Demonstrating the ability to utilise different sources, strategies and software to create a productive workflow.

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Conclusion –

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In conclusion I could have approached others about my idea and stated in my proposal that I would like to produce this project as part of a team. This would have helped with the workload, direction of ideas and ability to move forward quicker.

 

Revisiting my action plan regularly would have saved valuable time wasted going off in a different direction. This statement, although true, isn’t something we do in reality, going off on a tangent usually reveals useful resources, information, methods, etc. Looking at this situation logically it makes sense to stay on track and that is why we use a Gantt chart where we allocate the amount of time allowed for each section. So I guess the more accurate statement should be, keep to the Gantt charts allocated time for each section of the project.

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Action Plan –

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Should I find myself taking on a similar project in the future I would only do so as part of a team. There is much to be said about learning on the job and gaining experience from being part of a team before leading a project, let alone taking on this kind of project solo.

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