Cycle 1 Final Week

Our first cycle is completed along with our game and I must say I can learn a lot from the past weeks. We ended up being able to implement all the key mechanics and features that we first set out to in the beginning. I was able to complete pretty much all the assets required by the end of last week, so I could focus my efforts into helping Kim with the game loop and anything else that was required to be done. One thing we seemed to not worry about until the last week were the sound effects. Thankfully, a friend of a mine introduced me to Bfxr, a free sound generator that is mostly used for 8-bit style SFX. It was very easy to learn, and I was able to create all the sound effects required in roughly an hour.

Because the game loop wasn’t quite complete until the beginning of this week, we weren’t to playtest nearly as much as we planned to. I believe that if we managed our time more efficiently, we would have been able to start playtesting earlier and obtaining more feedback. On the day of submission, we Kim and I were in the computer lab for the entire evening all the way until about an hour before campus closed in order to get the game in working order before the deadline. Although submitting something last minute isn’t something I’m not used to, it’s never beneficial for the game or its developers to be stressing themselves to the very end of production.

Overall, this project has allowed me to gain competence in a plethora of different skills. The 2D sprites that I made gave me insight into the process of creating a sense of depth in objects. My time spent testing with the tablet has taught me how to code mobile game functionality, which has allowed me to create a mobile port of a previous project I made. However, more importantly the small production timeline has helped me learn to adapt to new problems and scenarios. I look forward to the next project, and what challenges it brings.