The Initial

Upon discovering the My First Game Jam : Summer 2022, I had about a day or two of thinking about what I wanted to make. I settled on an ARPG as it was a game type I wanted to try making since a long time ago; Having attempted such an endeavor around a year ago, but having failed due to being unable to make a functioning good inventory system. This devlog will function as reminder of what went right and wrong, whilst also allowing me to look back and analyze the game with a critical eye.

The First Stage (First week)

To start I had succeeded in swiftly implementing features, and most importantly was able to implement a slightly altered version of a inventory system originally devised by Greg Dev Stuff (https://www.youtube.com/c/GregDevStuff) who I must say provides good free tutorials on interesting replications of popular mechanics. But, with hindsight I realize I made the mistake of not properly testing this feature before delving deeper into development. Namely, the fact that that inventory system functioned through the pixel perfect canvas, which meant no resizing the screen without making the UI look odd or out of place.

This might've been caused by the strict deadline system I had given myself for the first week. The game needed a significant amount of features, though some were simply feature-creep; Scripts with good mechanics implemented but no elements actually coded to utilize them, in this case I had made a status effect system that I didn't have time to actually implement into the game even though I had coded it. I should have better streamlined my design idea and how I wanted the game to be played, something that the lack of time didn't help. The original plan was to leave the first week as gameplay programming and then during the second week produce art and item assets.

The Second Stage

Upon entering the second week I had accomplished a good majority of the original goals that I made for the first week, though also had hit a wall with a few important issues. First, I had decided I wouldn't use collider2D detection for hit detection, as such I learned and used dot product instead but unfortunately something wasn't calculating properly and frequently enemies in your view radius won't be considered seen and as such will not take damage when you attack. This issue persisted and I wasn't able to find a proper solution, regardless I made a small adjustments to improve the gameplay experience. This took a substantial time away from producing items whilst exhausting me mentally. 

The art for the abilities and items was made successfully in the second week, with some art being not utilized due to certain programming constraints that I couldn't solve in time. The game certainly could have a mass increase in items that just increase a stat or multiply it but instead of making them I attempted to fix some niche problems. That can be considered a mistake. One such issue are "consumable" items, that merely expire if certain conditions are met; One such condition being if your health drops below 20 percent, the item breaks. Unfortunately I found this issue rather late in the week and couldn't find a way to make it work, probably would have to alter the item system slightly to have better references in the scriptable objects, but I digress.

There were various small issues that persisted along development in spite of my efforts to fix them, some less or more important than others. In spite of that, a large number of things I previously struggled with did indeed get solved, namely issues with scriptable object data control. At the end I had minor issues with building the game for it to work in WebGL, but was successful after I had unity not compress the game in player settings. But I succeeded in the end.

Lessons

Firstly I had taken on a project with a large amount of work required and managed to succeed in a lot of aspects, so I can say that the workflow was quite swift with a lot done in the first week. But, there were issues of burnout after the first five or so days and I probably should have granted myself a bit more required break time than I did, or have split it better.

Secondly I hadn't prepared very well for having to create large amounts of items and art. Most of my previous work ignored art as a item secondary to gameplay programming, though I must admit that the visual aspect of a game is crucial to it's success and to the enjoyment of the player. It's something that I'll have to improve my workflow on, though this project is an improvement.

Thirdly working on a good UI was a significantly harder job than I anticipated. Creating a good layout for the player inventory and everything else was really difficult but I did succeed in making a functional form. Though, the difficulty in finding space for the inventory might've been caused by the pixel perfect size and thus no resizing, but that is something I'll learn in the future.

Afterword

With the game released, I can look back and say I thoroughly enjoyed the process of making it. It was quite intensive and I was working with things I had never worked before, and I really got to push my programming skills further beyond where I started. I should address the fact that whilst I have no intentions of updating this game further beyond it's current form, I might add some items if I find the motivation to do that, because first I will need to give myself a break from all of the work I did the past two weeks.

Apart from that, I thank you for reading this and maybe even trying the game! I had a great time making it and will look back on this project fondly.