Devtober '21 - Post mortem

I have never written Post Mortem I don't know where to start... 

Hi, I'm Paweł, and i always want to make games! It was the first time I took up the Devtober challenge. I didn't post my progress on social media every day, but I worked on the project every day. Little by little, I gained new skills and improved the design. I also have three sleepless nights behind me, which I consider to be an important indicator of a strong motivation to complete the challenge :) Writing this text I can not wait to restart Unity and try something new.

State of the project:

The assumptions of the game being created were as follows: the player takes on the role of Santa Claus who has to recover stolen gifts and sweets before Christmas. During the game, he has to watch out for opponents, avoid obstacles, and the last stage is to defeat the Thief and regain control of the toy factory on the North Pole. The player-controlled Santa has abilities that deal damage. It can also destroy selected terrain obstacles.

The first two weeks are to follow the tutorials on YouTube. I am a beginner in Unity and creating computer games in general. I did not mindlessly copy the code, but I tried to modify it to see what would happen ... Then I implemented the acquired knowledge into the created project - a simple scene with all prototypes placed on it: enemies, traps, systems for dealing damage, collecting gifts, etc. After a few days I was modifying my own previous scripts, I added one to another creating new functionalities. At the end of the challenge, while reviewing my code, I noticed obvious bugs (hey, but the code still works!) And I know that today I would write it differently, better.

What went wrong?

I am very weak at graphics. I used the free sprites available, not necessarily matching each other. I only managed to create three levels. Development and testing is time consuming, especially when something is not working. Thoughtful creation of game levels is more difficult! Placing obstacles, traps, gifts, enemies, creating terrain so that the wrong movement causes the extension of the route ... I tried to make going through the level was a real challenge and not just pressing the spacebar and walking to the right.

What went right?

Systems! Everything works almost as I wanted. After a month of learning C # programming and working in Unity, I didn't expect much. Today I am surprised when browsing scripts or watching YouTube tutorials how many of them I understand (how and why they work). I have never programmed object-oriented. Now I slowly understand object-oriented programming and get around Unity fairly well. For me, it is a huge success and I consider Devtober challenge 2021 to be completed!

What’s next?

Anyone would like to play my game? If I get any feedback (on tweeter posts or here under Post Mortem) I will spend the next month on refining the project. I dream about releasing my first game, about creating a complete game with several locations ready to download and play in the upcoming holidays.

In case you want to be up-to-date about the "Santa: Regain North Pole" game project you can follow me on twitter @AGRYstudio