Game Jam Development

                                              

                                   Game Jam Participation 

Introduction

For this project, in small groups, we each participated in the game jam which is a non competitive project where we were asked to make a videogame within just a week and this game had to be based on a specific topic, our game had to be a nuts and bolts themed game and we only had a couple of days to come up with our final idea for the game. Me and my partner spent some time discussing different ideas and making notes on what type of game we should make. We had to make sure it was very small scale and contained since we only had a limited amount of time to make the game. 

Theme of game

Our first idea involved robots. There would've been two clans of robots, one called nuts and the other clan called bolts. These two teams of robots would have to fight each other using different weapons or vehicles that the player could create using the nuts and bolts they created. Another idea we had involved the player being a magical user who can utilize metal magic to create Nuts and Bolts which could be used to either create projectiles or to build weapons/ fix weapons. The enemies would be robots the player would have to defeat using the weapons you create, and the more nuts and bolts you collect the more weapons you could create. After further discussing these ideas, we both realized that they would have been to big of a game and it would've took a lot longer than the time we were given to make the game. At the beginning of the week right before we started making the game, we both came up with our final idea which was much more of a condensed idea compared to our previous ones. We came up with a game where the player would move a round a small map, interacting with buildings. While going around the map, the player must defeat enemies (robots) which are destroying the buildings. After defeating the enemies, the player can then interact with the buildings to fix them. The player uses nuts which can be fired at the enemies to damage them, a few nuts need to be used to take them out. When an enemy is defeated, you gain score and nuts/bots which can be used to create upgrades. 

Role and contributions within the team

Before starting on the game, we discussed our strengths and weaknesses for Games Dev so we knew what roles we would contribute in when making the game. My main strengths included designing videogame assets like characters and environments whereas Daniel was more confident with coding and creating blueprints for the game mechanics in unreal.  Once we finalized our idea, Daniel started designing the mechanics in Unreal while I spent time designing other assets like a health bar, a score bar, a main menu and buttons to put in the game, using photoshop. We decided to make the game 3D and in first person since both me and Daniel were both better at designing 3D games than 2D. Making it first person gave us an advantage as we didn't need to worry about spending time designing the playable character, so we could just move straight onto the gameplay mechanics. Daniel started with adding the nut projectiles, so the player could fire them at the enemies to defeat them. Another task I had for this game was finding different sound effects to use for different mechanics such as for when the player fires the nuts, recharging, moving etc. For this part, I used a website called 'Mixkit', which includes a variety of different videogame sound effects which can be downloaded to be put in the game. I wanted the sound effects to fit the theme and tone of the game so I picked the sound effects that sounded mechanical. For example, I found one sound effect for robots moving as it had a very mechanical, robotic sound which fits the enemies of our game very well. I also picked some music to play over the level which sounds a lot like music from older, classic videogames. After that, Daniel gave me a list of items I needed to design on Photoshop for the game which included: a main menu screen, health bar, buttons to show how may nuts and bolts the player has and buttons for the main menu and options screen. For the health bar, instead of using a regular red heart which would be used in a lot of games, I designed a health bar that looked more mechanical to fit the theme of nuts and bolts/robots more. The enemies would be able to damage the player when they get close and hit the player, however the health bar would fill up again  overtime so the player would regenerate a few moments after they get hit. The nuts and bolts buttons shows how many nuts/bolts the player has and would decrease the more the player uses them, but you can gain them back by defeating the enemies. For the menu screen in the game, I designed a simple cogs and gears background using images from google and filled the background with nuts and bolts so its clear what the theme of the game is about. I also think the simple background works as it shows players they should expect the gameplay to be quite simple. Daniel also made the buildings in Unreal that the player has to repair once they've defeated the enemies. To repair these buildings, the player has to right click to interact with the building, then blocks will be placed and then the building will start repairing itself.      

Reflection on the learning process 

While working on this game project, I think its helped with contributing to my growth as a game developer. One reason for this is because it helps further improve my skills with working in a group as a load of projects I worked on during the last couple of years have been independent, so this helped with getting back into the gist of working on these projects in a group. Also, it is a great way to improve skills on different softwares like Unreal or photoshop. I feel like I've now gotten used to using these softwares again since I hadn't been using them recently during our break, and I get more confident with using these softwares with the more projects I work on.

Suggestions for improvements 

For future game jams, if we do another group game jam in the future, I would like to do some of the game making on Unreal myself as the majority of the time, it was mainly Daniel who did all of the work on Unreal whereas I helped by designing everything on photoshop and creating other assets for the game. So I would like to switch roles for a future game jam so I could see what I would be able to create in Unreal during a limited amount of time. 

Conclusion

Overall, I think that the game jam was a fun experience as it was interesting to see what kind of game we could make with the limited amount of time we were given, since I have worked on developing games before but we got a lot more time to develop on those projects. This has impacted my interest in game development as I want to carry on developing other game projects using Unreal Engine and develop them further.