Final Major Project Progress (Weeks 1 - 9)

Project Start Date > 24th January 2022

Project Due Date > 6th May 2022

This is the beginning of my weekly blog I aim to do showcasing the work I've completed for my final major project in my 3rd year of university. I'll be talking about what I completed that week and any thoughts I had during and the considerations I made to the process. This post covers week 1 through till week 9 as this week, number 10, will have it's own separate post on Sunday.

Week 1:

To begin the project, I brainstormed a few ideas for possible games I wanted to make, considering genre, narrative if they had one, mechanics, etc. I did this until I had a solid idea I was happy with and began working on my game design document in the same week. I had a Project Plan due on the 11th February for the project so I also began working on bits and pieces for that.

I also took some time this week in between the two documents I was working on to sketch up some of the artwork such as the main game UI layout, the title screen and settings screen. I also begun sketching some possible layout ideas for the cards as well as a possible design for the backs.

Week 2:

This week I continued to work on both my project plan for submission and my game design document. This was a week when I got some feedback from my lecturer on the progress of my project plan and discovered that even though this was a solo project I still needed to make a work breakdown structure and gantt chart for my tasks and add them as appendices.

By the end of this week, I managed to complete all of the sketches for my user interfaces and screens as well as completing 3 mock-ups of the witch cards with temporary text and images that would later be changed once the designs for the characters had been finalised. I also did the final versions of my custom buttons for my UI.

Week 3:

This was the week that my project plan was due on the Friday, so most of this week was spent finishing that and getting all of the appropriate appendices finished and added to it. I also needed to get my game design document finished by the same date so that it could be added to the project plan as an appendix. I managed to achieve this all and submit on time which I then received a grade of C2.

This was also the week which I began to sketch some designs for the witch characters and showcase the different types that they were in those designs. I wanted them to be distinct from each other but still of the same style to match the entire game.

Week 4:

I spent the majority of this week continuing to work on the witch designs and coming closer to versions I was happy with. Not much else was worked on this week except some brainstorm sketches for possible card art for some of the spell, location and item cards.

Week 5:

This week I refined the 3 witch designs I was most happy with and added the completed artwork of them to the mock-up cards and removed the placeholder images. This meant I had 3 out of 5 witch cards completed and could therefore use them for implementation and testing early on without having to pressure myself into finishing the other two super quickly and having them be poor quality.

I also took this opportunity to do some final art for the item cards, achieving 4/10 of them in just this singular week.

Week 6:

I wanted to get more of the location cards finished this week and make a start on some of the location cards. My thought process was that if I get all of the artwork finished in the first few weeks, I won't have to worry about swapping out placeholders and wasting time in engine later if I just already have them once I begin. I managed to get 3 more item cards completed and do 3 of the 5 location cards as well.

Week 7:

This week I took a break from the location cards to get the two variations of mana cards completed and out of the way and finish the remaining 3 item cards so that in total I had finished 18 cards including the 3 witch ones. For the amount of time it took to sketch and design the card layouts and settle on the text for them and do the final art, I thought 18 out of 30 cards was a good place to be sitting for now.

Week 8:

This week I didn't get much done due to being ill most of the week. I did some small brainstorm sketches of the game board and ideas for what the deck pile and discard pile could look like and I finally setup the unreal project and imported all of the cards and artwork I'd finished so far, also making the appropriate folders for future things like UI, blueprints, main menu, etc to keep it organised and ready for me to just start working on once ready.

Week 9:

I finally decided I wanted to begin some in engine work this week on the actual game. I wanted to ease myself in as I was still fairly new to Unreal and needed to learn how to do a lot of things in it. I took the time this week to create my main menu on my title screen with the buttons and background I'd already made previously. I also setup the credits screen and settings screen with their back buttons and starting credits, which would obviously be added to over time.

I also finished the remaining 2 location cards and got 7 of the 8 spell cards done as well, brining my total card count up to 27 out of 30, which is a nice sized jump considering the lack of work in the previous week.