Devlog 2: Postmortem

Successes

Overall, the group was very satisfied with the look and feel of the project. The amount of mechanics that could be implemented into a 2D platformer could be endless, for there are so many different ways to make the game great. Even with the short amount of time given, we were very proud of what we could do during this time. Each person on our team brought such a great asset to the table, and made the development of Ninja vs Robots smooth and enjoyable. The greatest success however, was our ability to fix many of the suggestions given by our classmates. Specifically, we were very proud of the fact that our game had all original art, interesting and (to our current knowledge) bug free levels, little puzzles, a UI to track mechanics and our ability to work with one another. 

Challenges

Over the course of the project, the group faced a few challenges, both together and individually. For example, Kevin had once attempted falling/moving platforms and Juliana attempted to use a tile map. Both of these techniques had to be abandoned, but it ended up having little to no effect on the end product. In the beginning it was also a bit challenging to come up with the theme. We wanted an original concept, however with so many 2D platformers already being out there, we were sure that there was going to be overlap with our theme. But, to be honest, the most challenging part of the project was to not over do it. The team really enjoyed working on this game, and as the lecture progressed we had to make some tough decisions on which mechanics to implement. We knew that the potential for Ninja vs Robots was endless, and we could even see it becoming a fully fledged game in the future. The major challenge was to be realistic on what our team had the time for, as well as the ability to implement in such a short amount of time. 

What you learned

While working together on the project, we learned and successfully followed that communicating with each other about git commit and the tasks we each needed to complete was a crucial part of the project’s success as we avoided git conflicts. We also found that edge cases needed to be accounted for early on in the development process such as collider edge cases with the fireball hitting and getting stuck on the platform. From this experience, we found that designing an attractive UI is extremely important during playtesting for the user to give their feedback on how it feels as well as adding in animations can improve the feel of the game. Playtesting is also an important lesson because it helped us improve our game and fix bugs after hearing the unbiased feedback from our classmates. While developing the platformer game, we should have tested rigorously for every possible flaw each step of the way as we created new features and designs because bugs can appear frequently in random places that we did not expect and can build up.

Possible future revisions

One major stretch goal was creating interesting and detailed backgrounds for the game, as well as parallax graphics with the foreground, ground and background. With the amount of time that we had to complete it, as well as the list of bugs that were found during playtesting, this goal could not be completed before the due date. We also really like the idea of having a boss fight. With the concept “Ninja vs Robots” it makes a lot of sense for the ninja to have some type of ultimate battle at the end of the game for the player to feel a sensation of satisfaction. One thing that we did try to implement was falling/breaking platforms and moving ones as well as a tilemap. This would have made it a lot easier to build more interesting and longer levels. Another revision would be to create more assets in order to differentiate which walls were “wall jumpable” and which ones were placed to keep the player on the map.