This project was developed in the less aptly named Project and Portfolio III class. The general concept we were learning was design documentation using Trello. We were all invited to a premade Trello group that had all the sections we were learning about. Mainly a part for design ideas, then a part to say that we were working on an idea, then a part to say we finished it. The project itself was premade and our task was to design, and document via Trello, a new mechanic. We would then take a mechanic from a fellow student and follow their Trello card and explanatory video to create and implement it with our own mechanic.
Unfortunately, like with the prior two projects I lost all the gameplay files. Unlike the other two, I only had one image saved of the project, as well. I do have two videos, however. One detailing my personal mechanic, and another detailing how I implemented a fellow student’s mechanic. Additionally, I have a pdf of my mechanics documentation sheet.
Here are the videos detailing my personal mechanic and detailing my fellow student’s mechanic.
To be frank, I didn’t particularly enjoy this class. If only because I wasn’t able to fully understand how the tile system worked. I easily learned how to make use of it, but I would not be able to build the underlying system. Of course, with the prior two projects, I also did not know how to create the climbing mechanic, but the professors straight up told us it was hard to do. For this project, they told us it wasn’t too complex, but even after looking over all the code I still got lost. It may just be that data driven systems like this one just aren’t my forte. I can make use of them, and add new mechanics, but building it? Not so much. And that bothers me.
Ultimately, it was an enjoyable process to make the new mechanic function. It was enlightening to deal with date driven entering and exiting mechanics. But I also had to look into how changing color would work. Since I wanted to make it more customizable in the editor, and more open in it’s uses, I had to dig into how changing materiel parameters really worked. Granted, I still get lost at times with that, too, but I think that’s because materials and textures have a lot more to them than I used to believe. After this project, I also dug into landscaping and texturing which gave me even more insight into how materials work. In the grand scheme of things, this was a valuable experience, but also a bit disappointing since I was forced to see more about how little I still know.
I admit, all I’ve written so far is a bit melodramatic. But that is truly how I feel about it all. It may also be due to how I’ve rather grown away from tile based puzzlers. I’d much rather design in 3D environments, or at least in environments that allow more player freedom.
