DEV LOG 4 POSTMORTEM

My solo game development project is called The Journey of Pippin. When I first had the idea for this game, I knew I wanted it to be inspired by a few pieces of media. The first piece was the game Hollow Knight. I had started playing Hollow Knight at the beginning of this quarter and really loved my time with it and wanted to incorporate the game into my project. The second piece was the animated cartoon Over the Garden Wall. I love the soundtrack and aesthetic of the show and knew from the beginning I wanted to add that vibe to my game. The last piece was 2.5D games like Octopath Traveler. I love 2.5D games and though that it would fit the theme and story of my game.

            The narrative of my game was very simple. You play as a boy named Pippin who was tasked with delivering a hot pie to his grandmother’s house. The boy would then have to traverse through a mystical forest where he would meet three sentient animal NPCs. Those characters would impart some knowledge to Pipin on his journey. The three animals Pippin would meet were a fox, owl, and frog. Initially I also thought Pippin would have to complete a task the animal had set for him. The task would relate to a fact that animal has in the real world. For example, the fox would hide and made sounds since the fox can make over 40 different sounds, the owl would play red light green light since an owl can rotate its head 180 degrees, and lastly the frog would have a hopping task since frogs can jump really far and high. Very little of this would make it into the actual game

            When development really started, I chose Unreal Engine since I was most familiar with how that engine works. I wanted to make all the assets from scratch. I also wanted to make the dialogue and soundtrack myself as well. This would end up biting me in the butt and causing me to hard pivot several times to new ideas. The first thing I did was make a prototype of the game. Truthfully, I liked this prototype and it was the most like the game I had envisioned out of the other versions I would make. I used tutorials to help where I didn’t know how to do something and got the camera and controls to feel nice. When I went of to make the art build, I started by trying to make trees in blender, it did not go well. I tried to use blender a total of 4-5 times throughout development and every time I had problems and couldn’t make something. The problem was I suck at 3D modeling. I had to resort to using an asset pack for my environment. I added a mountain the player had to climb and liked the idea of it. I also added depth to the map while keeping the 2.5D look. I did this to give the player the experience of walking down a winding path, to get them lost in the forest and the game. Then disaster struck.

            My game map got corrupted. I lost my map and had to remake it form scratch. I remade the made so many times and had no idea why the map kept getting deleted. I still do not know why that happened. During the class where we showed off our art builds, I was losing motivation to work on the game. I wasn’t quite happy with how it was turning out and thought that maybe I should pivot to a fully 2D game. I thought I should stay with what I have, but the idea was there. Then my game wouldn’t build for the beta test. I had no clue why. Turns out it was my asset pack; it was updated for Unreal 5.6 while I was using 5.4. So, with a quick update of the engine, the game packaged. Before learning that though, I spiraled and thought I couldn’t progress with my game and decided I would go full 2D. So that night I made half of the game in 2D. I was actually really happy with it and had a great time making it. The next day I wanted to show someone and somehow deleted all the files and lost everything. I was back to square one again.

Luckily the solution for why my game wouldn’t build was figured out and I was sort of back on track though I did lose a lot of time that could have been making progress. From there, I kept working on the game, now in a fully 3D third person view. What I was making was so different from my original idea at this point. I don’t think what I had was bad, but it wasn’t something I was super happy working on. As a designer I wanted to make the vision in my head come alive on the screen. I wanted people to play my game and feel what I felt when dreaming it up. The game does reflect my voice through the dialogue. I am very happy and proud of the dialogue that I wrote. I think it gives life and personality to the characters. I will say the map, and gameplay didn’t quite turn out as expected but I am not dissatisfied with the end result.

            Overall, looking back on my game I would for sure to things different. Firstly, I would stick with the 2.5D view I had when started. Second, I would have used an asset pack form the beginning and not try to 3D model anything. Thirdly I would have used the landscape tool differently. I learned a lot about Unreal and the tools I used and given another shot I could do so much better. Lastly, I would implement version control better so I didn’t have to remake and try to salvage parts which ended up wasting time.

Overall Score: 94/100