Conclusions and Further Development

In conclusion there are a few things I can take away from this project:

On the positive side, I managed to get a playable prototype which satisfies my original plan of creating a scrolling beat em up.
I feel like in the parts where I created the graphics myself, I nailed the aesthetics pretty closely and I feel they had consistent art direction.
I have a fully rigged and animated character from scratch implemented as the main character in the game. I feel this is a great achievement, as character modelling, rigging and animating are considered the most difficult aspects of game development on the art side.

On the negative side, I feel the project had a very challenging time frame of a few months, which limited what could be achieved.
I feel like, even when knowing this limited time frame, my plan has been over-ambitious in several areas, including attempting to implement more than one custom characters.
Being a solo developer on this project meant having to be a jack of all trades, for modelling, animating and programming. While I believe it is beneficial to have all of these skills, due to the time frame I think several developers with different skillsets concentrating on specific areas would have had more success.

For further development of the project, it would be beneficial to replace the asset store placeholders with custom assets in the correct art style. The implementation of the originally intended extra characters would certainly be nice to see, and character customisations would be a nice addition. Enemy characters would benefit from custom models, and more variety in enemy types with different skills. The levels the player plays on could benefit from being more structured, with a set layout or have more variety with extra platforms. The procedural version could be used as a survival infinite mode.

To market the game it would be worth considering social media to spread the word and create excitement. Steam could be used to sell the game, or create an early access beta version to get people interested. If there's enough interest, the game could be crowdfunded on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. To create more interest, demos or video trailers could be made, and preview versions given to games journalists.

Week 14 14/06/18

Final look of the game

I am quite pleased with how the final look of the game has turned out and how the gameplay works, especially with how tight the timeframe was near the end.

Some screenshots of the game playing are below.

Final look of the Main Menu

I am happy with how the main menu turned out in the end. There have been several iterations over time with some pretty crazy colour implementations and some over-saturated colour, but that has been solved for the final version.

I feel the colour scheme and overall aesthetic has been nailed and I am happy with the result.

In-game and Menu Music

I researched for some time for some music that would fit with the aesthetic, theme and styling of the game, that could also loop indefinitely.

I searched for Cyberpunk and Synthwave type music and found this track: Arctic Moon - Cyberpunk

https://soundcloud.com/fsoe-recordings/arctic-moon-cyberpunk

I will be using this as placeholder music for educational purposes as I do not have permission to use the music commercially.

There are parts of the song which I don't think fit with my theme, but there are two particular parts of interest.

There is a fast drum section at the start, which I will create a loop out of and use as the in-game soundtrack.

There is also a slow floaty part near the middle which will serve as the main menu music.

I cut the loops using the free software Audacity and imported them into my game.

Scan-line effect Optimisation

I feel I have optimised my scan-line effect as much as I can, and I will implement this method in all of the materials which use the effect. This should be more efficient and cause less over-saturation.

Week 13 7/06/18