FinalReport

Summary

The presentation is now over, the games are finished, and it's time to summarize what has been done and what are our feelings!

First, we can say that we are proud having more or less completed the highest target we planned! Of course, we do not have a complete game, but it wasn't really what we expected. An adventure game, with a complete story, takes way too much time in the scope of the course, most especially to create the narration and the level design. The aim was more to have something playable, with some levels to have an idea, as a "proof of concept", rather than a complete game (as it was stated in the "extras" of the proposal).

Then, a player will probably be frustrating playing the game in this current version, as it is really short. The current story is just a beginning, from level 1 to 3, to get introduced with the mechanism of the game, the characters and the controls. The levels 4 to 6 are just "almost-infinite" maps with random enemies (the level 6 being something like a "hell-mode"), only to have fun trying to kill as many enemies as possible.

However, in a technical point of view, we have as planned:

• different levels, even if they are not really "complex" because of a changement of game design, to have a better ambiancy
• the basic game logic as the startup menu, the crystal collect, and going from one level to another
• personal non-spheres-or-cubes modeled characters
• the basic important actions we needed for the concept of the game: move, jump, switch, Black and white attacks
• two enemies, with a simple AI
• a post-processing shader to create a nice ambiancy
• a performant and customizable particle effect
• a infinite background consisting in several layers of 2D drawed trees.
• consistent transitions between animations, as well as the interactions between Llams and Egral.
• Sounds self-recorded and composed

What we finally don't have:

• The hate bar, that we finally replaced by simply losing life, to prevent the player always being "fusionned"
• Maybe better graphics, as better textures, shadows, but nothing specific was in our mind first, thinking it's better to first implement something working, and then to see what effect could improve the game expierience. We found out that improving these graphics aspects wasn't the most important
• a save and load feature

What we have that wasn't planned:

• a level importer
• a startup menu better than expected, with random movement of balls with 2D particles
• some narrative aspects improving the game experience, such as the narrative guy, and the "bubbles" when characters are talking
• a random trees/stones generation, to avoid placing them manually
• and of course... a useless flying bird!

Finally, the general design of the game is quite similar to what we have in mind after the final proposal, and we manage to stick pretty much to the timeline, with of course some exceptions, when we decided to go for a better idea.

Questionnaire

What was the biggest technical difficulty during the project?

The biggest technical difficulty during the project was to have good FPS's on the Xbox. It was a huge challenge to increase the speed of the game by handling the garbage collector, the physic engine and culling techniques. The import-export from Maya to Xna was a bit difficult too. Furthermore it was very time consuming to find and create appropiate sounds that suit the game well.

What was your impression of working with the theme?

It was much more difficult than we thought at the beginning to find a game idea that suits the theme. But nevertheless the theme "large vs small" was very good! It didn't restrict the ideas too much and still let enough room for creativity.

Do you think the theme enhanced your game, or would you have been happier with total freedom?

Yes, the theme enhanced the game, because it channelized the ideas well and therefore enforced the ideas to work together harmonically. It was very interesting to see the different ideas of all groups for the same theme, wich lead to even more creativity by stealing small ideas from the other groups wich we didn't think of before. Even thought we were thinking of being happier with total freedom at the beginning, we can now state that it is a tremendous positive thing to work with a theme!

What would you do differently in your next game project?

In our next game project, we definitely would focuse more on the gameplay. Even thought we had very nice artworks, a fantastic story and good ideas, the gameplay was suffering and should have been made better. Plus, in the next game, we would prefer to do a very small game wich can be finished completely. It is much better to complete a game in only a few weeks and then spending the rest of the time by polishing it and making it perfect.

It's much better to do one thing very well than to do two things only half-way.

What was your greatest success during the project?

I think every teammember had a greatest success on his own. I (Marco) had several greatest successes wich made me proud: seeing my first shader, an easy to use particle system and the self recorded sounds and self composed music coming together alive. As for me (Boris), maybe what I'm the most proud of is the visual result of the 2D particles I made for the startup menu, because I implemented them really quickly (3-5h) and they matched exactly what I had in mind since the first try, just after compilation. Of course, I'm really happy with the final design, modeling, animations and interactions of Llams and Egral, but this was the result of a lot of work and refinements, then the "wooow" effect wasn't as strong.

Are you happy with the final result of your project?

By looking at the several difficulties we had technically and in the group, we can say that we are happy with the final result and that we did everything humanly possible to create a good game.

Do you consider the project a success?

This question depends on the point of view. From our perspective, it is a success, since we reached more or less all our targets. From a players perspective, the project is not a success, because playing the game becomes borring extremely fast.

To what extend did you meet your project plan and milestones (not at all, partly, mostly, always)?

We did meet our project plan mostly. We left out a few things like co-op playing, but on the other hand we also implemented some additional things that haven't been in the project plan.

What improvements would you suggest for the course organization? (perhaps in D1 evaluation)?

We strongly suggest that the alpha release should be much, much earlier! This would enforce the students to go for a small game idea, concentrate on gameplay, enlarge the chance to have a finished game and removing the frustrating time pressure at the end. If the game is finished early, it makes much more fun to use the rest of the time to create additional widgets wich leads to a much more professional looking and polished game.

Did you like the XNA framework?

We had some kind of love-hate relationship with XNA. All in all it was very nice to programm with XNA, especially C# was much more pleasant than we thought before. But as we worked with the newest version of XNA and most of the tutorials in the internet are for the older version wich is sometimes very different, we also got a lot of headaches from XNA.

Screenshots