top of page
MONTH 4: POLISH, PLAYTESTING & POSTMORTEM
This month was primarily focused on polishing the game’s aesthetics with art assets, sound effects, music or visual effects. We were also tasked with creating a postmortem video (see above). I happily took responsibility for creating this video. We wanted to create a lot of energy and excitement so editing the videos and creating custom transition segments helped build the overall representation of the game.
As the art team worked on some of the assets of the game, my team did some extensive playthroughs to make sure that there were no lingering game-breaking bugs. I did find a few that were not as severe, but I still addressed them. The background music kept cutting off at a certain point or would not loop. All our guns were clipping through walls, so I added colliders to all of them in order to fix it. There was also another issue that the hitmaker sound prefab was not being instantiated with the spawning enemies. I then realized that the source itself was not within the prefab so I added it and dropped it in the inspector, and it was fixed.
As I continued to do some QA on the game, I realized that a few more SFX were missing. The player really didn't know when there was an enemy nearby or around the corner, so I added some spatial sound so the player would hear the enemies based on proximity. I also added a shooting SFX to the SkeleBot when they shot their weapon, and added an attacking sound besides the visuals that were initially added.
Once the animations were ready, I blended all of them from walking to shooting to playing the death anim for the Hero and all the enemies in the game. Some major adjustments had to be made to the transitions so that the hero or the enemies would not have a delay when the shooting animation began. Besides the animations, I added the lighting to all the levels in the game. We decided to go with a lighter tone for Level 1, and for it to get darker and darker as the player progressed through the remaining levels of the game. Also, adding fog and increasing its thickness added a lot to the mood/tone od the game.
Finally, outside all the bug fixing and playtesting, I set dressed the entire level 2 and helped with the environment in all the other levels. I also created a postmortem video that has been presented by my fellow groupmate and myself. This postmortem video was played during a live stream on campus for other students and faculty to see.
​
Outside of this postmortem video, I can add that I personally learned a lot about myself throughout this capstone process. Not only technical skills but also learning about what my drive and passion can accomplish. I have logged hundreds of hours over the course of 4 months working on this project. And while I know that this game is not complete by any industry-standard; it is arguably one of the most fleshed-out and complete capstone projects that may have come out of Full Sail’s game design degree program in some time. And by that recognition, I couldn’t be happier with the outcome of the project.
While my time studying at Full Sail University may be ending, it is just the beginning of the work I aspire to accomplish. This is merely the first step toward what I am hoping will be a long and rewarding career in the video games industry. I look forward to one day applying my passion and dedication in a professional game studio, helping create the AAA titles I have always long admired.
KEY THINGS I WORKED ON:
Edited all the sound effects and music audio volume to be set a specific decibel level so that no sound is louder or overpowering another. Music is balanced and doesn’t drown out sound effects.
Created and added sound effects to the hero and enemies
Testing and debugging consistently throughout the month to ensure a game build was made
Ran performance testing on each scene and bake occlusion data to keep FPS in scope
Blended all the animations from walking to shooting for all the characters and props in the game
Designed lighting for all the levels
bottom of page