My Onesheet and GDD show extensive planning for difficult mechanics which I did attempt using a tutorial I found online for (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoaPTPkpWh8). I came across several problems while working on this project such as certain mechanics not working as intended or not working at all. I tried combatting this by not only attempting to bug fix myself, and even contacting the creator of the tutorial. He couldn.t understand either why my code was not working, and offered many different solutions, which had the same outcome as the original work. I also visited gamemaker forums, to which I got no helpful response. my concept of hiding in cupboards is still the same and works well, but it doesn’t work fluidly with the sight mechanic my guards were meant to have. I decided to simplify the guards movement to follow a set route instead. I utilised the cupboard mechanic by making it important to use them to surpass guards paths. The sound I originally planned for my game was mostly all the same to what I had in mind, despite having one problem with the player’s footsteps not looping properly. To make up for this, I added a backing track instead to make the game more interesting.
When I bugfixed and re-playtested my game, I added enemies who followed a set path and I used collision and tight pathfinding to keep my game difficult and interesting. I finally added the keycards proper sprites, I also added a new level after the tutorial level. I also implemented a start/end screen due to my playtest feedback saying it would make my game more cohesive and professional looking. I found this simple and fast to do before the final export of my game.
My proposal for my graphic novel script over almost exactly the same in my final draft of the script, apart from changing one line to aid character development, and adding sound, meaning I could portray onomatopia in my graphic novel, making a more immersive and understandable.
I originally planned to have full, shaded colour, but this created a very busy and distracting colour palette . Saturating the background colours surrounding my main characters created a focus and a less cluttered page. In my graphic novel, I had the entire story written to make my script more cohesive and have a more definitive narrative. However, in my final product I found that this task would mean that my work would have been produced and drawn at a lesser quality than I would’ve been happy with, so rather than attempting the entire plot, was to instead draw up a select few panels which introduces two characters and some of the plot. I chose this first lot of panels as it shows my main characters personalities and insecurities without adding confusing and more complex parts if the story. This scene also means that with this, the animation, and the game still makes sense without having the full intended features.
I also originally planned to have a two minute long animation transition between my graphic novel and my game, however I underestimated how long it would take to learn the software and produce an entire animation. I decided to scale down my animation to the end montage which transitions into my game. I chose this as it is the easiest to produce with my skillset and the time frame I had available. I also believed this animation worked better as it still shows the panic and elapsing of time that I wanted in the atmosphere of my original plan.