1st Game on Itch.io



Infection Dev' Log Postmortem: I. did. it.

Intro

Infection's development was mainly done over weekends working long hours and putting off homework. In the end I think it paid off big time because I learned about twice as much over the course of developing this game than I did over the six or so weeks of school I did it during.  Before I get into the "nitty gritty" of the specifics of my project I want to take a moment to talk about my overall love for video games as a medium. If you want to skip this part I totally get it so go on a head, but if you want to know what goes on in my head hang around. 

Games are amazing. I could tell you so many great memories I had with them, but, since so many people do that, I am just going to tell you why games (as a medium) are the better than movies, books, plays, and even augmented reality stuff and why they need more respect by the outside world than many give them. Games put you in the shoes of someone or something so better than any other medium because they often don't make decisions, YOU the player decides what happens. Do you give up on rescuing the princess? Do you solve the next puzzle? You complete all the quests? It is your choice and your choice alone. Games ask more from you from the get go. Good movies ask for your thoughts and emotions but games can ask for skill. It's harder understand  the pain Katniss Everdeen went through or feel the loss of friends in Harry Potter unless you have similar experiences, but with games these things are the foundation. You win and loose not Katniss or Harry. That is the magic of games. Video games have been around for a while now and every day we touch on these with great games they are often faced with ridicule and criticism instead of being appreciated for the art they really are. 

Thanks to those who read this. I could go on but this isn't even the true topic of this post so I better cut it off here and a small disclaimer before I proceed, by no means do I consider "Infection" to be one of the "Great Games" that should be acclaimed as much as a movie blockbuster movie or #1 New York Times Best Seller. Infection is a "training wheels" project that I intend to continue  to develop and grow off of but not to be acclaimed for.

Challenges and Luck

This game's biggest pitfall was the time it was given. I should have started developing it sooner because I planned to enter it into the 2018 Congressional App Challenge but instead of  doing that I started around five weeks away from the deadline. Having only learned GML (GameMaker Language) this summer I was a bit worried my project would never get off the ground. Luckily the internet is a great place full of tons upon tons of logic tutorials , game developing tips, and online resources, so with YouTube and lots of paper I began my project.

I needed my scope to be small. Something manageable but would have some kind of design element that I had never really dabbled with before. I knew from experience shooting to high will leave everyone sad, but I also didn't want my game to be a tiny infinite runner. I had numerous concepts, but the one I ended up sticking with (the recess classic twist on tag) was one that I already had some code for (Definitely not part of the reason I picked it😉). That was the top down code you see when you control your character. 

The art kind of was a given for me. Pixel art has always been my specialty. When it came to games I never had much luck with higher rez sprites. Still, I feel even now some of it could do with a little polish and refinement especially the enemy and human sprites.

Finally I come to the next biggest road block besides the games time limit, its complex AI. This was the "new design element" I referred to earlier. No matter how many state machine mach ups or action trees I would make the AI didn't work. Well at least not in the way I wanted it to. Every time I ran the project one enemy would act as planned, but the other for no other reason it seemed that it just wanted to would ram its fat head against the wall for eternity. This it seemed at the moment where the project would end. It had been a week and still no answers came. Finally I narrowed it down to two (or three if you count the code disobeys you on occasion): One, The entity was targeting me, but its motion was being (somehow) forced in the wrong direction and Two, The entity wasn't targeting me and it was going in the right direction and that is right (the default direction). I first say to myself: "and why again are you using the built in physics engine when you could probably just build one" and then I sigh and wonder why I am talking to myself instead of someone else. . . and then I ignore the problem. I coded the rest of the AI and the problem  solved itself. This felt wrong. I had some preconceived notion that game devs always found a solution to every problem they encounter and fix them with grace and elegance. I'm glad I learned the sad truth to that. After this I started to notice all around me where designers and developers got lazy or else couldn't figure  a problem out so they just built their game to ignore it. Its funny how clear cut something can seem on the outside.

After getting over that hump it was all much easier from then on. Most of it was bland menu design and a blur of making tons of sprites. I learned though when you polish to do so until it meets your expectations and don't just take a "basically" done project and call it quits to early. It'll come back to bite!

Closing Remarks

Ah! Another completed project and a sense of freedom and love of the world (that is untill the next) overall I had a TON of fun making this game and hope to bring it to a whole new level of polish in a few months. Until then fellow designers!

(Also check out my YouTube Channel I posted my game trailer on I don't know what of how often i'll upload on that but that's a thing!)

 

Files

Infection.zip 9 MB
Oct 10, 2018

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