#DevelopmentPricing

[hornetdynamics]

Actual Cost of Laravel Website Development in India

Look into our article to understand the essential factors that impact Laravel website development costs in India and how to plan your project.

[hereinahammock]

A Post Mortem and a Development Log #1

Introduction

This post mortem will follow the development of Override. I will look at the pitfalls that were encountered during its development as well as the lessons that I have learned throughout the process. Additionally, this will serve as the beginning of a development blog regarding continued work on the project as I take it beyond its beta stage to full release. 

What is Override

Override is a continuation of a student project that was begun in the spring of 2021. The project has been developed as part of an independent study program with the intent to build out a full game. Throughout the process I have had two teacher mentors who have overseen my progress and provided feedback. The focus on the project was taking the kernel of a game that I had developed for a class during the spring 2021 semester and evolving that prototype into a full game. Then I would release this finished game.

The game itself is intended to be a dark atmospheric puzzle platformer. In it, the player controls a sentient blob which can move through the level and solve physics based puzzles. The game was planned to be a relatively short experience which would be built around uncovering mysteries about what the true nature of this blob really is. This narrative mystery with puzzle elements style is inspired by games like limbo and inside. The project is both meant to be a personal project but was also specifically chosen for its ability to be expanded upon. I also pitched a game prototype that I had been developing over the summer break. It was a very stylistically different game, one focused on idle mechanics and a grid based interface based around growing a garden. After discussing this with my mentors, we decided that the puzzle platformer was a much more feasible subject of development.

Development

Pre-production

Initially the plan was to make a full release by the end of the semester, this goal was unfortunately not met. During the development process I encountered pitfalls that complicated development. However, in this process I learned a lot of valuable game dev lessons. 

The creation of the concept began during the start of the spring semester. Students were supplied with a basic 2d platformer tool kit in unity with which to design levels. Wanting to try to innovate within the bounds of the limitations provided by this kit, I found that if one were to duplicate the player avatar, this would not cause any glitches to occur. Furthermore, when multiple avatars interacted, they possessed an almost fluidlike quality.

Goals of the project.

10 level game with a simple narrative.

Physics based puzzle design.

unique character control scheme focused on creating the illusion of controlling a blob.

Development would take about two thirds of the semester (roughly 2 months) with the end of the semester dedicated to releasing the game.

The level structure would be riffed upon to upend the player’s expectations.

Production

Work during the fall semester got off to a bit of a bumpy start from the beginning. We jumped into the project slightly after the start of the semester due to clerical issues surrounding setting up the independent study. When we did, I was still unsure of exactly what direction I wanted to take the game. I had, over the summer since working on the project, track of what initially drew me to the concept, and wanted to refine the control scheme that the blob player character used to move around. This was perhaps the biggest issue during the development process.

Though it was a good idea to start with a smaller game concept, this was undermined by a loose focus. I spent a good deal of time, the first month and a half, prototyping the movement system. I tried many different experiments, changing the way that the player would control the blob and that the blob interacted with the environment. For context on the blob’s basic structure; The character consists of a variable number of avatars which when controlled in unison appear as one, amorphous, entity. While this idea is simple in concept, there were many routes which I tried to take in order to fully realize my concept for this. 

Blob controlled by all avatars finding a median position between them and pulling in towards it.

A primary blob avatar which attracts the rest of them to it.

The ability to toggle the attraction effect on and off in a number of different ways.

The ability to hold different directional keys to effect the form of the blob (up stretches upwards, down flattens out.)

Suspending the primary blob within the center to appear like a nucleus which all of the other blobs are pulled towards.

The most difficult part of this process was that much of the code written at this time ended up being completely unused or totally reworked. While much of the movement code ended up being false starts which led nowhere, I learned that it can sometimes be better to stick with the usable version you have which might not perfectly fit your concept, rather than to try to force the system to do what you want it to. 

This prototyping phase ate up far more time in development than was intended. The intended focus of the independent study was to aim for a full release but as development time ballooned, that goal became further and further away. A little over half way through October, I had a meeting with my two mentors. Together we all agreed that, though developing the movement system was teaching me a lot, it would perhaps be better to re-explore the original movement system that was in the kit that I had used. I replayed the original prototype and brought its control scheme into the current project. There was still a good deal of refactoring required to make it work more efficiently, but it was instantly more playable. I worked with one of my two mentors over the course of the next two weeks to optimize and implement the code in the project. Unfortunately, by the time I had finished with the process of streamlining the code the semester was nearing completion. 

Throughout this process I was also developing other elements which would be required in the final build, including a number of physics objects and containers which could hold and release different actors depending on how they were set and managers for the systems at play. This meant that the extended prototype phase did at least yield things which I could use. 

Still though, as the end of the semester rapidly drew to a close, I only had a vertical slice, which I attempted to polish as much as possible, to illustrate the final concept. This was a five level long playtest build. I have set up a steam store page but the playtest demo will be accessible on Itch.io. I was unable to move to the playtesting phase. I had only managed to do one playtest over the semester, that being one I did during early movement development.

Conclusion and Moving Forward

Though this development process was messy and did not lead to a finished game by the end of the semester. It still taught me a lot about time management and how to kill my babies when it comes to developing ideas or continuing to rework them. Additionally, I learned a lot over the semester about how to optimize a system. The issue that plagued a number of my prototypes was one of slowdown. My unfamiliarity with coding has been something that I have been slowly working to overcome as I learn more about more advanced aspects of it. I hope that with the knowledge that I have gained over the course of this semester I can make future projects, and this one, better and faster.

Which leads me to the final part of this postmortem. It will also serve as the beginning of a development log. Over the course of the winter, spring and summer, I am going to be further developing this game with a set release date of next fall. The goal is to take what would have been, even under the best circumstances, a very quickly produced and small game, and turn it into something more. The primary focus will be upon creating a full structural game as soon as possible now that I have moved past the early development phase. With the elements I have created, designing puzzles in the game is actually quite fast. I am optimistic about the future of Override and, though I did not achieve my intended goals, this semester taught me a lot about the reality of making a full game.

[ibtimesuk]

£5m funding for Ethiopia's 'Spice Girls' from British taxpayer scapped

Announcement was made after Tories criticised the UK's foreign aid budget. http://dlvr.it/N3SPJf