Task 7 - Evaluation

For my evaluation I will be discussing the good and the bad things of my game, what I struggled with and what I found easy. I also want to compare what my game looks like now as to what I planned for it to look like. 

Firstly, I think there are plenty of good things about my game. The first being the weapon. I think my weapon is good because it looks very good and it also performs like an assault rifle would. Alot of coding went into the weapon which I am impressed with the fact I managed to pull it all together and get it to work. Another good thing about my game is the sprites. I think my player sprite looks very good, and a lot better than what I originally planned for it to look like. I also like the way the enemy soldier looks but due to the coding, I had to change the enemy again, this time being a zombie. I am impressed by the way the zombie ended up looking at the end and I think it looks slightly realistic. I also like how challenging my game ended up being in the end. The parkour section of my game is one of the most challenging in the game, and even the boss puts up a tough fight at the end with his ranged attack and the speed at which it runs towards the player. Furthermore, I like that in a very little amount of time, I managed to make a main menu & a controls screen, and code them to work as I wanted.I also like my tilesets, although there could be some improvements to the way they look, but they work well in the game anyway.

However, there were also plenty of bad things in my game. Firstly, the animations. I did not manage to get any animation for my player working, and the enemy animation is not as detailed and realistic as it should be. I wanted to have an animation for my player while it is moving, but it was not working properly and I was not sure how to fix it. Another bad thing is the background of my game. I originally planned for there to be detailed backgrounds such as a city in the background or just some buildings, but instead I just have a bright yellow background that is meant to look like the sun shining across the map. Furthermore, the tilesets could have been improved, or I could have made a bigger variety of tilesets to make my game look better, instead of having the same tileset over and over again. I also do not like that the player only has one weapon available, as opposed to my original plan to have a big arsenal of weapons. Having just one weapon makes the weapon less interesting as it feels like the player has collected everything there is to pick up, and will be dealing the same amount of damage over and over again. 

I struggled with plenty of things while developing my game. One of the most difficult and time consuming tasks in my game is coding my gun to pin to my player and stay there. When I originally tried to do this, the gun was floating around the player instead of staying in the players hand, which caused alot of issues. Another thing I struggled with is animating my player. I did not manage to animate my player in the end, which I was disappointed with. I wanted my player to have an animation instead of having him slide on the floor, but I could not get it to work properly. Another thing I struggled with is making suitable tilesets. This is because I am not very good at art, so I did not know what I wanted my tilesets to look like, and I did not make very detailed tilesets in the end aswell. Coding was one of the biggest problems for me, and I had to have alot of help from other people to help me with some of the coding, and I learnt alot from the helpers aswell.

Overall, my game looks nothing like what I wanted my game to look like originally, and is not as good as I thought it was going to be. I wanted to have a loadout screen for my game so the player could choose what weapons they want, but that was too difficult, especially coding just one weapon to work properly. I also wanted to have a very detailed background with lighting and multiple buildings, but I did not manage to make that at the end. Also, I wanted to have a few different weapons for my game instead of just the machine gun. I wanted to have a shotgun, pistol, a sniper and grenades, but I did not know how to code that to work properly, and I knew it would be hard so I decided not to add the weapons into my game. Furthermore, I also wanted to have plenty of different enemy types. I wanted to have machine gunners, shot gunners, grenadiers and a few more types of enemies, but I was not able to even code an enemy with a machine gun as it was also hard to get the gun on the enemy, so I decided to just have a zombie in the end, which I did not plan to do at the beginning. I also wanted to make the game a simple side scroller, where you have to run from one side to the other with enemies running towards you with different weapons, and when you reach the end there would be a boss fight and possibly a second level. However, for a final product I had to change the game completely, adding parkour to the game and a boss at the end, with no enemies between the player and the boss unfortunately.

To conclude, I am happy and unhappy with my game. I am happy with all the coding I managed to add into my game, the way some of the sprites look, and the final product. However, I am also unhappy with the game and final product because there is not as much detail in the game as I wanted there to do, and also not as many features as I would have wanted there to be. 


Peer Review 1:

This review is from a peer who tested my game and then game his review on my game. From this I have gathered that the peer somewhat enjoyed playing the game, however found that the boss was too hard, which is good as that is what I wanted it to be. The peer suggested that the game would have been better if there were more enemies, which I agree with, however due to the coding issues I could only make one enemy work. Overall the peer gave it a 7/10, which I am more than happy with as I know my game was not the best and could have done with improvements.