#assignment3postmortem

14 Weeks.... I can’t believe we’ve made it so far so quickly. This final prototype has come so far compared to the first prototype I built all those weeks ago. And accross all aspects too, its graphics are WAY better, its got a premise, the functionalities are ten times more engaging and complicated and .... its actually fun.

The thing that really seperated this game from the other prototypes I’ve built so far though was the completeness of it. The polish and the consistent theme throughout the game. Having two extra people working alongside me, allowed us to split up tasks and achieve jobs which we would normally have deemed non-essential. The final game is a beautiful asteroider where players fly a spaceship through an asteroid field, collecting gems from destroyed asteroids and fighting off space pirates.

If I could improve a part of my process, I would have had playtesting done on the original prototype before we started planning on improvements. I think that it wasn’t until after the first playtest that I realised there was more importance to sprites and animations then I first thought. In the first version the sprites were just used to display an object, it was actually originally just simple geometry shapes, and I thought my task of redesigning sprites would involve just making it look better. However I realised after the first playtest that it was also important to use sprites to convey more information about the state of the game, or the use of items. I made an animation for the ship that showed it was damaged when shields went down. This was useful for players who were so involved that they hadn’t taken their eyes off the ship to see their shield bars. I also made the powerups more enticing and obvious about what they did. If I were to change one thing about the prototype it would be the way that the levels change. Currently it operates on a level up kind of model. Once a certain score is reached a congratulations screen is displayed then the next level loads. And you start from scratch, I’d like to change it to a continous mode, where the level doesn’t reload everything. I’d also like to implement a lives feature, because I feel like when you are really involved in a game this gives you an opportunity to stay invested and play for longer.