Final Evaluation

When creating my game the development process for me was influenced in a way that changed the way I thought about creating my game. For example when I was conceptualising my idea I really thought about the kinds of people I wanted to play my game, so throughout the creation of project I constantly thought about how I can create my game with a more focused design. Another way my research into work flow affected the creation my game was how much of a focus there is in the prototyping phase of a project. I have found that as a programmer this is the most important phase of the project as it allows me to have time to work through the mechanics of my game idea and filter out any bugs that may happen.

During my project I had considered some contemporary influences such as the social issues that currently plague the games industry like the issues raised with violence in video games and what there real life affects could be on people. When I was coming up with the idea for my game I thought about if I wanted to include humans as the enemies in my game or not and this was because I wanted my game to have small elements of violence as it is a 3rd person shooter of sorts but by having the enemy not be human it makes it more acceptable to have levels of violence against them. I also felt as though if I was able to artistically represent the world I was trying to imagine I would of had to dial back on some of the details that are present in the dystopian near future of a game with the genre of cyberpunk.

During this project I created a cyberpunk hoard type game and a twist I wanted to make on this genre was rather than having a the player control a character with a gun as you fight to survive, I wanted the player to be controlling a hover car as they race around city streets trying to fight off a hoard of rogue AI. I wanted to have the inclusion of the hover car in the game as I think it gives a fresh view on the genre with new mechanics to contend with. Creating the hover car has given me some new skills in terms of how vehicle mechanics work within UE4 as well as working with suspension to create a realistic hover feel. One of the biggest things I learnt on this project however was how AI is utilised within UE4 through behavior trees, I hadn’t before this got to grips with the AI mechanics in UE4 but I quickly found that the system is quite self explanatory and easy to get to grips with though this doesn’t mean it is simple and the range of things you can create with it are endless.

Going through this project I really begun to understand the value of better time management, I feel as though I was able to show this through my dev log as I continued every week to set myself a manageable work load and then was able to achieve all of my desired tasks within this time frame. I think it’s so important to have good time management skills as you need to know what you’re capable of within a time frame so that you can plan a project idea that is attainable whilst also being a polished piece of work. I also during this project begun to use 3rd party assets within my game and I got to realise how vital it is to research what kinds of assets you are looking for as it saves you so much time in the future when you come to identify what assets you want to include within your game.

I think in this project the hover mechanic I created work amazingly well as I think it is able to convey a realistic representation of a vehicle hovering as it glides over surfaces whilst also reacting to them, moving the car up and down as it goes over bumps in the road. I was really happy with this mechanic during the prototyping stage of my project and fell as though hit translated very well into the final product. Another thing I think went well in this project was the AI I was able to create using behavior trees as I hadn’t tried it before but after I created the mechanic it work incredibly well in my game, although it was quite a simple AI mechnic it could achieve everything I needed from it. My game however was not without flaws, I think the actual driving of the car felt like a hover car however I think it lacked a kind of control ability which made it quite difficult to navigate my games level. I think this is the biggest thing hindering my game but I was unable to find a better way of creating the movement without delving into C++.

The tutor feedback I received during this project was invaluable, as at each interim and throughout the project I was able to receive input from my tutors to help me improve my game whether this was recommendations on how I should approach a problem that occurred in my game or if it was how I could better improve my researching techniques to help save me time. The peer feedback I got much like the tutor feedback was greatly important to me to be able to keep my work at a standard of work that I wanted to achieve as it gave me the opportunity to gauge whilst assessing other peoples work, what sort of level I was working at myself. The input I received from my peers also helped me keep on track with my project making sure I was working at a good pace to finish my project on time and have it up to standard.

I learnt a great deal throughout the development of this project. Firstly I was able to greatly improve my understanding of blueprints in UE4 as well as there use within industry. for example I was able to create a realistic hover mechanic within my game that really feels like the car is being suspended in the air and not just floating. this was something that I was able to fully create through blueprints, this helped show me that blueprints would be very useful in industry to prototype and almost blockout and test mechanics for a game that could then be later refined and tweaked within C++ scripts. I also feel as though I have learnt some better time management skills through researching other peoples work flow in industry, as it has given me an insight into how things could run when working on a game for a company and a big thing a lot of people talked about was having a clean plan on how you want to achieve your goal with simple steps set out to get there. So I think I was able to do this myself in this project and hope to improve on these skills as I progress.