Okay so recently I started unity and right as I was doing that, I also decided to joined a game jam as well.
To be more specific this jam -> https://itch.io/jam/jame-gam-48
The following blog post will share with you all about my experience working on my first ever game jam. For anyone that wishes to try my game out before anything, here's the link. -> https://mungymug.itch.io/goblin-scoops
Initially I had my doubts, I was barely like 2-3 days into learning how to use the unity engine and here I was joining a Game Jam already. But to be honest, I am glad I did, because this sky rocketed my Unity Learning Journey.
The idea for the Jam was simple, to make a 2D game that just runs. That was my goal, I didn't had high expectations for it and I was really just planning to get something just up and running. But as the theme for the game jam dropped, and I booted up Unity to start a 2D project, I blanked out.
Firstly - Even though I had experience in making games, my mind blanked out as soon as I started it. (Even though I literally just completed a module that requires me to make a 2D game). But hey to be fair, Unity UI's were just to overwhelming and feature pack that in the few days I had to mess with it, I was just completely lost.
Secondly - I lacked a plan. I find this step one of the most crucial and important one that I just overlooked. When the theme dropped, and it was about roads. I just thought about ideas and things that I think would be fun to play with, but I never actually dive deep into brainstorming how to actually go around implementing it. Until... I did.
So why did I settled on a 3D game then, even though I had 0 experience making one. Well... the reason was actually because I just happen to be watching a tutorial on how to make a 3D game, so I decided why not? And that's how I started the Game Jam.
Initially I decided to make a game where it was like crossy road, but the twist is that you have to chase after a mob and catch it. So, it's not really an "Endless" game but a game with an objective.
I know coding so initally it was easy, everything was smooth and I really just created scripts back to back to back. When I stumbled into a problem, I just sat and thought about it however, as the game slowly came to life, I realise that, the idea that i had was so damn boring... and yes a little complciated.
Physics in game was not really my strong suit, because I didn't really messed around with it much, so I literally disabled all gravity. Honestly, I wished I didn't but yeah it turn out alright. Why? Mainly because there was just so much going on in my game that, it did not really matter much.
Oh another problem that i faced and really reflected on was Prefabs. I was glad my laptop did not crash because I really wasn't a prefab guy, until I wanted to expand my game and realise it was impossible without it. So note to self is - always prefab anything and everything I guess. Another thing about prefabs was actually the way i created it. When I first made a prefab, I started out with the object, and then just creating an empty parent to drag the object into it. BUT HUGE MISTAKE.
Here's some image to once again remind myself to take note of this mistake that I made.
As you can see, my parent coordinates were at (0, 0) but my child was at (700, 462)-ish. So when i proceed to drag the child into the parent node...
What happen then? The child will be under the parent, but, its offset that it has will remain. But I did not know that, so what my prefabs that I created was a total nightmare, all with different coordinates. I thought it was a bug so I spend the 1 full day trying to debug it just to realise it was... just my own careless mistake.
(Note to self, either reset the child coordinate, or create a parent one first and then start from there to create a child node.)
Next smart thing that I decided to do was to mess with the UI, to be mroe specific, changing my canvas to Screen Space - Camera.
I thought whatever you see on the screen is how you game will look like, and I was so wrong. When I finished the game and decided to make the .exe and all. On my first play test, I was like ??? Where is my UI, I scour the internet to find what's wrong, just to find out that it was because I messed with the Screen Space. I had less than a day to fix that, instead of reverting, I literally just move and download and test, and over and over till it was right... When it looked right on my screen I was so happy. I sent it over to my friends to test it... just to be hit with another nightmare, the UI was missing on their screens but it is fine on mine... At this point I was desperate to finish it. so I literally place the UI in a spot where I knew it would work for almost all screen resolution and size, which is smack in the middle top and sent it.
(Note to self, just use Screen Space - Overlay, until you decide to deepdive into Screen Space - Camera)
Lastly was, the lack of planning, this caused me huge, and I mean like massive time lost. Because I was just doing things here and there, jumping from one place to another, before realising wait, this is too hard and complicated to implement and ditching it. And then there was the creativity part, where ideas just keep changing because it wasn't feasible, or it was too boring.
But in all honesty, I was glad that I went through all these, because it was exactly times like these, where you try and then you realise and then you learn from it that helps build the skills. I am sure in my future games, I will be throwing away features, changing things because its too hard etc. But coming up with a genral direction or map out a plan and scope of the project will definetly help make the process of making games way faster and with better quality.
To anyone that read it this far, thank you. But yes... I don't expect you to. I am just writing all this here, so that I can keep myself accountable and keep documenting my learning journey.