3D Platformer

Modifications Made:

-Maze themed layout

-"Camera shake" effect and (slightly) modified jump particles

-Modified enemy death particles, and added a 'score' drop on death

Since the 2D Shooter project, I've tried to finish my Tutorial Project a week early, to give myself extra time for unexpected issues which inevitably appear when creating modifications.  On this particular project, I got stuck for several days when creating the Tutorial.  My subsequent experience with modifying this project has reaffirmed the importance of the 'extra week' - I've been crunching modifications for hours each day for the past week, and the final product is probably my weakest project (or at the very least, the one I'm the least satisfied with).  This is entirely my own fault; the tutorial project issue was caused by me not following one of the setup videos properly.   The camera shaking effect isn't integrated as well with the 'third person camera controller' script as well as I would have liked, making it much less smooth than I hoped.  I had planned on making an enemy death create a wild 'explosion' of score pickups, but I currently lack the experience to do this myself, and I failed to find any related tutorials which I could repurpose in time for this project's deadline.  Even my original maze layouts, which I had planned ahead in photoshop, had to be cut down significantly in order for me to complete the project in time.  Overall, I am very dissatisfied with my project.

However, my disdain for my project is the result of my own mistakes, and one of my favorite parts of game design is the usefulness of failure.  I still found this project to be an enormous learning experience, with some major takeaways that I plan on applying to future game designing.  The biggest of these takeaways, in my opinion, is the importance of 'buffer time' - in this case, submitting my Tutorial project early, so that I have extra time to make modifications.  I imagine that, even for experienced coders, unexpected errors and interactions will appear in scripts that demand more time than you expected.  Time mismanagement is the bane of a quality game.

As far as concepts of game design, I really love the concept of 'juice' within games, and since learning about it, I've found that it's present in all of my favorite games - that feeling of 'impact' when you click a button, or damage an enemy, or heal an ally.  Even though I failed to reproduce this crucial aspect of a quality game on this project, I am very excited to continue pursuing it in the future - it is definitely my favorite concept in game design, and I hope I will fully understand it one day.