As playtesting comes to an end and I read and learn from the feedback about lights out, me and my time begun to plan out next game, A deep game focused around the areas of trust, where we must draw inspiration from a different artist mediums and apply that to gain inspiration into constructing our new game that will in the end be publicly displayed.
Learning From Lights out
Lights out was a huge Game changer for me as a games developer, there was so many elements in this game that at first i never really considered, this is also a follow up from the previous weeks where concepts of fine arts and creation of games started become more entwined, and after putting this new knowledge to practice found that the art of emotioneering, mood creation and player experience creation are more complicated than I first thought.
Fine Art Development
The elements to create a mood and setting for lights out proved both a challenge and extremely fun and engaging, I love making games but it wasn't until Lights Out that I truly understood what it truly takes to create a engaging experience for players and lights out introduced me to to a whole list of new elements that I never really played a part in (Specifically being more art oriented i focused on the creation of assets) and from lights out i can take onboard a wide variety of new concepts, skills and focus on areas of games development that needs improving to better my development in creating rich and fulfilling games.
Environment Creation
Environment Creation
Creating Environments was never really my strong point in development, and after lights out is something I will be revisiting as its a area i definitely must improve on , paying attention to scales, mood and lighting among other area's is something I need to refine as taking from feedback players found the environments quite huge, but also they understood the overall theme which is something ill take onboard as well.
Character Creation and Player Controls
Character development was also an area that at first wasnt all to clear to me, but after my first attempts with lights out, the concept of creation has become a lot more clear to me, from feedback a lot of focus was down to how the character felt as players played along with how the character itself looked, two things that needed improvement but of course the overall concept was easily understood, But controls weren't very well defined interactions were hard, which goes along with needing more in depth feedback.
Mechanics and feedback and Controls
The 3 Areas I need to improve upon most, along with environment the implementation of systems is an area that i will be focusing a lot of my studies on, areas that are the core of games development. Lights out once again had a huge array of firsts for me, Ragdoll systems, physics application systems, proper mechanics breakdowns including scripting large scale boss fights, but due to the short amount of time and the large variations of areas that was working in lead to many bugs and scaling issues.
Henry gonna have some seriously defined calves after this
Teddy kinda gave up on the whole thing at this point.
Path Leading, a crucial part of a game and a harsh lesson learnt.
Clearly one bug check could have avoided this among other things that lead to the overall lights out experience very hard to get immersed in.
Taking it on board
In the Past, many games created were sorted left as is, taking on lessons learned and moving on, however this is not the case for lights out.
Lights out was extremely important game for me on a developer's point as taught me quite of few lessons and how structures of Game function and to me feels like a stepping point towards something grander, prior to lights out my idea of games creation followed along with a hero's tale, world of warcraft style games but after listening to jonava chen, playing journey and rehashing over older games it came to the realisation that there's a lot and I mean a lot more to it.
So working with feedback, learning from my mistakes and incorporating things I have realized and things I have studied, i will be working on polishing a lights out Prototype that will later be viewed public and shared to my friends and family to share.
Area's Already being Improved
Animation
Taking from what i've learnt in the past, studying fine art and animation on the side helped with redefining the main character, creating his persona threw the the use of animations, this also goes along the same lines of proper character control as a smooth player control is Vital for immersion
Character Design
As character movement, aesthetics and overall persona are important i spent some time refining henry, improving upon his pillow for example, making him less static, recreating his aesthetics to give him a more scared little kid look and of course eyebrows.
Gold Shire Effect
Scale of both the character and the environment were also areas that needed improvement, and taking a lesson both from lights out and World of warcraft i begun applying a "Goldshire Effect" that comes from Wow's early development where towns were created to actual scale, but due to time and budget constraints everything was shrunk drastically but not to much that it felt off putting.
Looking to the Future Part 3.
As stated I plan to refine lights out, using the game as a basis to better development core development structures instead of starting from scratch, this approach will help refine how I handle tasks in the future, understanding what is needed, dividing my time better as well creating more tantalizing games.