•  How does this game reflect you as a game designer?

I purposely chose to design a fighting game to challenge myself more than I ever have before. Art has always come easy to me, as I’ve been doing it my entire life, and in the past, the games I’ve solo developed have always basically been walking simulators. They usually were horror games consisting of an environment for the player to explore, with several collectibles to help lead the player through the space. And while that kind of game is great for showing off my art/modeling skills, it’s kept me in my comfort zone when it comes to programming. Before this class, I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to try to challenge myself in that way. So while this game doesn’t reflect my art skills as I would have liked it to, I think it’s still a useful piece to eventually put into my portfolio to show that I have the ability to program more complex mechanics into a game, as well as create visuals that help immerse the player in the game environment.

• What did you learn about your design practice from the process of developing this game? 

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be able to create this game on my own. In the past, I’ve sometimes had to hire a tutor to help me with programming mechanics that were less complex than what I have in this game. Through creating Battle of the Sisters, I learned that I need to trust my programming skills more. If I put my mind to it, I’m probably more capable than I think I am when it comes to programming. Obviously the actual programmers in this class are a lot more skilled than I am since that’s their focus, but I’m realizing I should give myself more credit. However, if I do plan on making another game like this (or really anything more complex than a walking simulator), I have to take into account that it will take me significantly longer to produce and I really have to be careful of my scope, as half of my time is now spent on programming and debugging and I don’t have as much time for details and perfecting everything when it comes to my modeling/drawing/animations.

• Your design process, including what you did and why you made the design decisions you did.

My design process started with, as you guessed it, gathering references. In the beginning stages, it was mostly references for the entire game look and feel rather than specific characters. I like to look for other games I’ve heard of or played that capture the same feeling or emotion or look that I want to convey. Once I made a list, I opened about 15 tabs on my computer with videos from each of those games to keep my inspiration nearby during the whole development process. Once I had an idea of what the game was going to be (genre, mechanics, aesthetics, etc.), I knew I had to choose two League of Legends characters to use, as I didn’t want to spend too much of my time creating my own unique characters if I already knew the amount of programming I had to do. I looked for characters that I knew had connected backstories and eventually landed upon the two sisters, Kayle and Morgana, which then began the process of looking up more references for just those two. Looking at photos of the in-game models, splash arts, researching their lore and abilities, making any modifications that were needed to make them fit the style of my game. When it eventually was time to create the game in Unreal Engine, I, of course, went to YouTube to find tutorials to get myself started with the mechanics I was less comfortable with programming myself. Once I had the main core loop implemented, I went back to my references to start sketching out the character animations, even looking at videos from in-game at .7 speed to analyze the movements and what I needed to capture in my character animations for each ability/movement. After I had a basic animation for both characters (even if it was just a sketch), I decided to add audio and menus to round out the experience and help try to make the game actually feel like a game. I started to create linework for some of my character animations, and was planning on then blocking out the colors, but I never was able to since I ran out of time. I’m glad I made the decision not to, as the rest of my game would have had quite a lot of bugs. When I realized I wouldn’t have enough time to complete all of the character animations, I decided that it would be more important to spend time creating the ability animations instead, to at least indicate to the player what abilities are being used (instead of having to read the console, which was what had to be done previously). After that, it was just little additions to the menus to make them more legible and polished, as well as more debugging (which was being done throughout the entire process).

• What are you particularly proud of in this game?

While I admit this didn’t turn out as I had expected, I’m still really proud of what I was able to accomplish in terms of programming. Again, I really wanted to challenge myself and I wasn’t even sure if I’d succeed, but I did in that aspect.

• What did not turn out as expected?

However, I am not content with the character animations, as I’ve mentioned, but I plan to continue working on this game in my free time until I’ve made them to my liking. And then, and only then, will I consider this game finished.

• And what you would do differently next time? Link this to the previous questions.

Next time I decide to solo develop a game with more complex mechanics that require more intensive programming, I’m really going to keep scope in mind. I can’t expect myself to be able to create the same quality of art as I would normally when I have about half the time, as I have to spend more time on programming. I will also admit that I found myself procrastinating on the animations because they are tedious to create. So in the future, I would either choose not to do 2D, or I’d set additional milestones for myself so I don’t have to cram at the end of the development process.