Hello everyone. Since this is my last blog post for this project, besides the usual round-up there will be some reflecting upon the project as a whole.

The Gunparent

I bought a cheap weapon pack to spice up the look (thanks Taylor Huff!) of the weapons. With these in hand, I could put what had been made with the weapon system up to the test.

The built Gunparent and its children worked exactly as planned. Besides deciding meshes, sounds and particle effects the other values that were needed for each weapon could be easily changed which allowed for quick testing to get a good feel for how it played.

Most if the time, I simply copied an existing weapon, ramped up one stat I wanted to be important and lowered a few others that made sense for those basic weapon types. Most of the time one or two stats felt of and it was just a matter of raising the rate-of-fire or lowering the accuracy.

So that part has been a complete success.

Now to the more important part, if it works as well for other designers.

The weapon system

During this week I’ll be putting the excel file and the Gunparent to the test. They’ll be tested by other designers, who’ll answer a questionnaire which will determine if this system is easy to use and if it offers help during the design process.

This has unfortunately become a very important part. The problem is not the important, but the very. Since we have divided our time between our own focus and the game I have not tested the system before this. This is a HUGE problem. This mean I will have little to no time to update the system after the critique, and if I had tested it early I could have determined if it had fundamental flaws.

Planning

Let’s talk planning. We had planned a game test early on the project, but I let us push it up because we had focused on other areas than the essentials of the game. After all, why have a game test if most of the critique will be that the enemies doesn’t take damage, or that you can run into your own bullets? In the meantime, we had gotten some AI, a multiplayer-lobby and a excel sheet.

I believe we all succeeded with engaging ourselves with areas we wanted to explore, but if we had waited with those areas a few weeks and instead started with the projects basics we could have had a greater game alongside that experience.

My take from this project and how it could have been better is this: Don’t be afraid to learn, but be careful with the means that you use to learn from. All of us will be fine, but it could have been much worse if we had spent a lot of money on this. Even this experience won’t be as useful, because our work isn’t expressed through a game but a half-done game.

As much as self-reflection is needed, I am still happy that we did this. It has been enjoyable to work with this group and the experience in Unreal is always useful. Good luck in your own projects, and look forward to our remaining posts.