Critical Evaluation Of The Aelinor Game Project

23 January 2025

This DevLog was started in December 2024 (here is the original post). Its purpose was to record my progress in creating "Aelinor" - a 3D, third-person puzzle game).

At each stage of the development of the game, I used a spreadsheet to record in writing the steps I had taken in the development of the game, and I used screenshots to document how those steps affected the look of the game. In the spreadsheet I also noted my thoughts and feelings about how the project was going:

In a separate sheet, I kept detailed notes of how I achieved each task. This is partly because I wanted to be able to replicate the steps again in other games if necessary. Another reason is that I hate watching video tutorials. I would much rather go through a written/illustrated tutorial, because then I can go at my own pace. If you skip through a video tutorial, you often miss crucial steps and instructions, so you have to watch the whole thing - and they are often up to an hour long. If I'm going to spend an hour watching a tutorial, I might as well spend a little extra time noting the step-by-step instructions so that in future I can just quickly refer to my notes, instead of having to watch the whole pigging video again:

All of these screenshots and spreadsheet notes allowed me to update this DevLog on Blogger, and these records also let me critically evaluate the work completed during this course.

Critical Evaluation of the Game Development Process

1) What I have learned

I hadn't even heard of Unreal Engine before I started this course, so everything was new to me:

Creating objects Moving objects Resizing objects Adding basic landscape shapes Adding basic landscape textures Applying textures/materials to objects How to spawn a character in a particular place Importing objects/textures/materials from Fab Changing colours of objects (including the sky!) Adding a collision box to an object Using sockets in the character's skeleton to allow it to be equipped with items (e.g. holding things in its hand) Using the blueprint event graph to select triggers and actions Giving an on-screen choice to the player Giving an on-screen message to the player Applying a texture/material to just one side of an object (e.g. an image of the front of Aelinor is applied to a wall-shaped object, and on the back of the wall is a plain wooden pattern (to indicate that the character is now inside) Using the CubeGrid functionality to knock holes in walls (e.g. the front door of Aelinor) For every new thing I learned, I discovered that I needed to learn two or three other skills

I also FINALLY seem to have picked up some time-management skills. I have always struggled through this aspect of academic work, so it has been an almost life-changing achievement to have finished a project on time, with the priorities achieved, extension tasks achieved, and to have fully documented it.

2) What went well:

• As mentioned above, my time-management was greatly improved
• Just being able to create simple objects was successful
• Altering shapes and textures was also successful
• I learned how to add functionality (e.g. collision boxes, creating events with the Event Graph)
• I learned how to 'equip' the character with object that they interacted with
• All of the 'Must Have' items from my checklist were achieved
• Many of the 'Should Have' items from my checklist were also achieved
• Some of the 'Could Have' items were achieved
• I gained troubleshooting skills, and learned to fix problems either by experimenting or by looking for relevant tutorials on YouTube, etc

3) What could be improved:

Put a ceiling/roof on the laboratory Give Aelinor a better door to take the character through from the front of the structure to the laboratory inside (the current door is very crude, and is open all the time) Add logic to the game so that the player must select the correct two coloured bottles and take them to the cauldron. (So the Yes/No on-screen choice can be removed) Add an animation to the game if the player puts the two correct coloured bottles in the cauldron (e.g. show the bottles pouring in and then creating a cure for Aelinor) (so the 'You Win' message can be removed) Add an explosion animation to the game if the user puts the wrong coloured bottles in the cauldron Add functionality so that the character is able to pick up and inspect/read the clue-note Give a more realistic look to the object and walls in the laboratory Give Aelinor a better texture/shape, rather than just applying it to a flat wall Add more trees to the landscape, to turn it into the forest that surrounds Aelinor Change the cauldron so that it's got a hole in the centre, rather than it just being a flat hemisphere Showing one bottle in each hand, rather than only the latest bottle appearing in the right hand

Overall 

I am really pleased with the skills I've picked up. However, they are still nowhere near coming to me naturally - I still even find it difficult to navigate through the landscape (possibly because my computer has a trackpad rather than a mouse).

There are LOTS of things I don't know how to do yet (especially with blueprints and event graphs), but I'm getting a bit better at guessing my way around the UE5 interface.

Overall the brief was to design a level (rather than to implement it), so I feel like I have definitely achieved that goal. The fact that I've added some logic/mechanics to the game is a bonus. Especially since I've never even heard of Unreal Engine until I started this course.