HammerGirl Project: Week 4 - Tweaks and Critiques

 



We finally did it! We finished it!


Honestly, I've enjoyed this project a LOT, it's been a treat to really try and flex my muscles for design with asset limitations.


This week has been filled with illness and lethargy in the family home so I was thankful that I'd gotten myself ahead last week and that I only had a few tweaks to finalise to complete the work. I removed the remaining Print Strings to clean up the display while playing, this was purely an aesthetic issue but I felt this was around the time it should be implemented.


Once that was sorted I took a moment to reassess the text system as I claimed I would last week. This was an easy enough job to follow but it took a lot of tidying within my blueprints.

I tend not to post my blueprints within this blog as I feel like the overall look and effect of the mechanics is more important than the "how", especially with this project. But I'll provide a quick shot of how I have mine organised below.


Where I can I like to colour coordinate my comment boxes. Throughout my blueprints animation sections are blue, sections for setting up text are gradients of yellow, anything relating to successful quests/positive outcomes of major boolean branches are green and anything based on destructible meshes/collectables are red. This means I can easily access them within each blueprint.


After I had finished this I went over all text to check for spelling errors just to get it to a polished state and moved on to a few additional elements I wanted to feature.

I wanted a clear "end" to the level. Even though this was just a showcase and it didn't seem too necessary, I wanted to have a final point that players could reach for accomplishment. I did this at a chest I had created hidden behind the secret rock wall. I just added a particle effect and a bit of HUD text that displayed after the player had opened it. 



Overall I'm happy with the way the project ended up, I think I definitely honed some new skills as well as being able to highlight some of my stronger ones. I feel like there were elements I could have improved on, wandering around the village during the rock collecting stage felt a little directionless, and I could have added a few more interesting spots within the mine. But nevertheless, I like the end product!

Moving forward I definitely feel I need to work on making my levels have more verticality as well as adding some more direction for the players. The next project will definitely reflect that.



I have also recorded an overview and playthrough of the levels and uploaded it to YouTube for people to review. I'm excited for the feedback to be honest!








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