Postmortem

Postmortem:

Success:

We have successfully created all five levels of the game. The tasks were split between each member and we used some feedback from the last class to organize the game better. We created all the sprites, backgrounds, and textures. Our game consists of features like player attacking, collecting items, moving through portals, enemy character, and more. 

1. All of the mechanics of our levels work out well

2. The player is able to climb up vines

3. The player is able to collect and use items

4. The player is able to shoot fire balls at enemies using its wand

5. The player is able to dash with boots on

6. The music and sound effects matched the vibe of the game

7. The score decreases when the player gets attacked

8. We created two different enemy AI's; one for the spider and one for the bat

9. Each level world is big so the player can explore around

10. We included a checkpoint so that the player can respawn rather than restarting from the beginning

Challenges:

Some challenges we faced were that we had various ideas we wanted to incorporate but not enough time. We felt some components required too big of a scale so had to reduce the skim of things. Finding time for everyone to gather and discuss was a challenge because not everyone was in the same time zone. Also, debugging some errors like the player getting stuck in tilemap and making the portal gun was a challenge.

1. Had some trouble with scaling the tilemaps because some were of different sizes

2. Portal guns had some troubles and bugs at the beginning

3. Music was too creepy compared to the sunset background we had in the beginning

4. The player got stuck on the tilemaps when moving left and right.

5. The player could go through the platform tilemaps when using the vines

6.  The player would die after going below a certain height even though they were not suppose to

7. During beta testing, we found out that since our world was so big, it's difficult for players to know where to go

8. Due to time zone differences, it was hard for all the members of the team to communicate at the same time

9. Since there were a lot of elements we wanted to incorporate but our time wasn't planned out the best, we weren't able to make them

10. There were some elements in the game that doesn't feel right because it doesn't have a sprite for it (the red and the green in level1)

Lessons Learned:

Through the process, we learned that we should be making the sprites facing right. We had to add -1 to a lot of our code because the sprites were facing left instead. We also learned to watch out for merge conflicts when using git. And if there is, we found out we can send each other the original scene file and replace it in the folder to resolve the issue. Also, planning our time accordingly is an important lesson learned.

1. We should plan out our time better

2. Should have more group meetings to discuss our ideas and plan out when to do what

3. Sprites should be made facing the right rather than the left

4. If there is a merge conflict on git, a member can send a copy of their scene to the other person

5. Should make sure the tilemaps are of the same size so there wouldn't be scaling conflicts

6. Should make the lowest score 0 instead of negative 

7. We should make sure all the sprites, background, and music match the same concept

8. Should decide a color palette for the whole game 

9. Should make more animations/sound effects to show enemies taking damage/player doing different actions

10. There tends to be more issues with merging when more than one person is working at the same scene so refraining from doing that and making sure to push/pull frequently would help

Future Iterations:

In the future, we would like to add hidden doors and shops where the player can obtain extra items. We wanted to create minigames inside the hidden doors but did not have enough time to implement it. We also want to create more types of tilemaps, add in slope tilemaps, and rotate our cannons to increase difficulty. In addition, the magical gems collected could possibly be used to purchase items in a shop.

1. Include a shop so that players can use their collected magical gems to buy items

2. Include hidden doors where players can solve puzzles (minigame to collect extra items)

3. Perhaps the player can obtain new items or bonus points

4. Create a bigger variety of tilemaps to make everything look more polished

5. Make sprites for the green and red game objects in game

6. Add rotation to the cannons to increase the difficulty

7. Extend out the background so player doesn't see grayed out pixels

8. Add more animations for the player and the monsters

9. Turn up the sound effects and down the background music

10. Adding more levels for players to go through