Postmortem / Future updates

What I learned:

This was my first Game Jam and my first time making a game with Unreal Engine 5, and it was definitely a learning experience. I learned how to get more efficient with the user interface, become familiar around Unreal Engine’s blueprint tools (basic functional enemies with Navmesh pathing), and learned about more tools to help the greyboxing process (Cubegrid, SuperGrid). 

Overall this Jam has taught me valuable skill sets and workflows much useful for future projects.

What went wrong:

While I was able to overcome some challenges that took a lot more time than expected away from level designing, such as troubleshooting (getting things to work/enemy a.i), the same challenges persists and I would need to make necessary adjustments to avoid these problems in the future.

• Time management
  • Underestimated the amount of time required to make a functional game
• Spent too long deciding what type of game to make
  • I was in the mix in between choosing a racing game or a platformer
• Troubleshooting
• Enemy A.I
• Player and enemy A.I Health points not registering; resulted in dysfunctional game
• Enemy Navmesh
• Enemies not moving in Navmesh boundaries, broken pathing
• No feedback
  • Failed to make room for player feedback and follow up adjustments  

Did I reach my goal?

Honestly my goal was to make a game that fits the "extreme" theme of Steve's Level Design Jam 9 and showcase Level Design work for my resume. If I were to give myself a grade it would be a C- of just barely hitting the mark of fitting the extreme theme, but a D grade for Level Design.  

My idea of 'extreme' was to ramp up the difficulty with the amount of enemies to work around towards the end. By having a level gradually increase in enemies as the player progresses, players would need to think twice before approaching the amount of displayed enemies.  I believe the execution of having 'waves' of enemies propose a threat to the player, and with being able to publish in a playable state is just acceptable for my end. However there is much improvement to be made.

For level design I personally failed to meet my ideal criteria of what I initially wanted for this Jam. But one level design aspect I was able to implement was a clear path to follow for the player (shown in the green line). 

I believe the player is able to successfully find their way through the level from beginning to end without feeling so lost. To help support the players point of view, I designed the level to be more clear and open to follow (Large structures such as trees more distant away from points of interests). An addition of colored stars (possible player resource ) is also an incentive to guide players into points of interests.

Strange Island future updates: 

I will continue to add on and apply necessary changes following feedback in future LD Jams. In order to follow my ideal Level Design route I initially wanted for the "Extreme" LD Jam, some changes I would like to make:

• Scale down the scope of "Survival" aspects and lean more towards 'Hack and Slash', linear gameplay.
  • Significant changes may vary depending on how much I'm able to get done and depending on future LD Jam themes
• Better Time Management
  • Spend more time with everything Level Design, less time with other 
    
• Meaningful Level Design
  • Obstacles
    • possible hazard levels
  • Player resources
    • items to add health
    • movement speed
  • Puzzles
• Menu screen
  • In-game menu
  • Pause/Restart

• Add checkpoints (possibly)
• Kit Bash with free assets