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Project Summary and Personal Reflection | Final Review of IGB120 Assessment Log Throughout the IGB120 semester, I participated in and produced several different types of game projects, including: The platform jumping game "Timer" Simple racing game Asteroids game based on classic gameplay The final project "Color Shift Clash" developed by the team, a platform jumping game centered around the color switching mechanism My favorite project is "Color Shift Clash" because I took on the main work of character design and art. This allowed me to combine my visual creativity with gameplay design, especially in the expression of the "color switching" mechanism, further strengthening the theme of the game through character appearance, animation and special effects.

Skill Improvement and Mechanism Achievements During the learning process of GDevelop, I have mastered many new skills, including: Using Object Group to unify the control of multiple targets and improve the efficiency of event logic Making dynamic mobile traps Realizing simple shooting and hit judgment mechanisms Learning how to build animation effects with rich visual feedback The mechanism I am most proud of is the visual performance around **"color conversion" and "paint effects": whether it is the design of the character, the animation of the paint burst when switching colors, or the feeling of liquid dispersion when being hit, these make me feel that "art can also be part of the mechanism expression".

The value of blog writing The entire blog writing process is of great significance to me. It helps me to constantly organize my thoughts, summarize progress, and reflect on problems. There is a log that I am particularly satisfied with, which is a reflection post about the Boss that I spent a lot of time designing but ultimately failed to implement due to time issues. It not only records my creative process, but also makes me realize the importance of task priority.

Theoretical connection - Fullerton's influence When reading the book "Game Design Workshop", what impressed me most was the importance of "player experience goals" and "design priorities" mentioned by Fullerton. In the process of reflecting on the failure of Boss, I truly understood why we should start from the player's perspective and ensure "playability first, art support function" instead of simply pursuing the completeness of the picture.

Achievements and future prospects I am currently most satisfied with the character design part, especially the visual style and detailed expression around the concept of color. But I also realized that next time I can try to add more differential design (such as expressions, actions, injury animations in different states of the character, etc.) to enhance the expressiveness.

In the future game development, I hope to continue to focus on the art design of characters and scenes, and gradually expand to the design of UI animation and visual feedback systems. I believe that an excellent visual system can not only convey information, but also become part of the gameplay experience.

#reflection

Lessons about art investment and task priority

In this group project, I was mainly responsible for the art part of the game. At first, I put a lot of energy into the design of the Boss character, from character modeling, color matching to style unification, I put a lot of effort into it, hoping to add an impactful final confrontation to the game.

But unfortunately, due to lack of time and some technical implementation limitations, this Boss was not finally implemented into the game, which means that a lot of my work was not used.

Looking back, I made an important assumption at the beginning: since the game already has some basic materials, I can focus on those "unfinished" contents, such as Boss design, character art detail optimization, etc. But the reality proves that this choice makes me ignore the more basic but critical elements in the game - such as the diversity of traps and enemies.

This problem appeared in the first round of testing. Players generally reported that the trap mechanism of the game was relatively monotonous and lacked variety. At this time, the project time was approaching the end, and it was no longer possible to design and replace a large number of traps or enemies from scratch.

So I turned my attention to the creative combination of map structure, trying to improve the richness of the level through different arrangements. Although it is not the most ideal solution, at least under limited conditions, I can still improve the player experience through design techniques.

What I learned: This experience made me understand that in team projects, task priority assessment is extremely important. Even the best design cannot really improve the quality of the game if it cannot be implemented. In the future, at the beginning of the project, I will make more rational judgments: What is the most influential part of the game playability? What content must be completed first?

Through this lesson, I will adopt a clearer task sorting mechanism in future projects. Make sure that within the time limit, every effort I put in can be effectively transformed into a part of the game experience, rather than staying in the conceptual stage of "if there is enough time, it can be realized"

#reflection

#gametest #gaming

To increase the difficulty, I replayed "Hollow Knight". As a difficult platform-jumping adventure game, there are many map designs that can be learned. After playing it, I greatly increased the difficulty of level 3. I put as much inspiration as possible from other games into the design of level 3.

#development #reflection

Another playtast told me that the maps were too simple. Indeed, it seemed that no one in our group had systematically studied the map design of platform jumping games, so the maps were all generated by AI. Therefore, the maps were easy to pass without any challenge.

#gametest #reflection

In my imagination, when the player is injured on different colored floors, he will be teleported to the platform he left last time. This is a common practice in many platform jumping games. In the design of the code, I tried to store the position of the player when jumping in a variable, and then teleport the player to this stored position when injured to achieve the effect I want. But as the debug text says, I can't store the player's coordinates in a variable.

#development #reflection

According to the playtests conducted by my acquaintances, they think that the feedback when receiving damage is too small. At the same time, after receiving damage, you will not receive the same type of damage again. For example, if you step on a floor of different colors, you will lose your health, but then you will be invincible and don't need to care about the different colors.

I think this phenomenon will seriously affect the gaming experience, so we will immediately try to fix it.

#development #gametest #reflection

I had upgraded the health code for the game to make it fit better. This is before I put in the health code:

This is after:

#development #reflection

This is health bar, follow the design of the paint, I made it as paint cans. on the other hand, it is the cans on the waist of the character.

#art #character design

those left out of my game also can be available for this game

#development

Core Mechanism and Visual Design Concept In my game design, "color conversion" is the core gameplay mechanism. Players need to interact with different environments or enemies by switching the color of the character. This is not only the key to solving puzzles and surviving, but also the starting point of my entire art style and special effects design.

When thinking about how to visualize colors, the first thing that comes to my mind is the painting-related images of paint, brushes, and painters. Therefore, I decided to build my protagonist image around the theme of "painter".

The character wears a painter's hat on his head, symbolizing the ability to create and change.

There are several paint cans hanging around his waist, each of which represents a color that can be switched, corresponding to different abilities or attributes.

The design style of the entire character is slightly cartoon-like, with the purpose of emphasizing "creation" rather than "battle", and strengthening the artistic attributes of color.

I hope this setting allows players to understand the concept of "color switching" at a glance