What are your thoughts about the Project?

The project was significantly moderately hard. It was not intensive but it was also not that easy to follow due to the outdated version of Unreal that was used in the tutorial as well as the pacing of each task. It's hard to follow along when you are watching while making your game at the same time since I am using a widescreen monitor (for some reason I still don't know how to make it into a cascade applications). I also think that the creator was way too fast when teaching some of the concepts and you really have to go back a couple of times to fully understand him. Either way, it was a nice learning experience since I am still starting with Unreal Engine and I would definitely recommend this to my friends if they want to start learning too.

Were you able to learn efficiently through the guided tutorial?

I was able to learn some concepts efficiently like the process of connecting nodes and which nodes to use at particular functions. However, there are just too many and sometimes it's hard to experiment if you don't know which to use. Blueprinting is still new to me but I guess I could use some of the learned lessons here for future games.

What have you learned during the experience?

I was able to know how to manipulate sound and understand how to make and manipulate variables, call existing functions across different blueprints and understand animation implementation. This experience also taught me on how to be more careful when it comes to coding standards and to follow rules as much as possible.

What were your most memorable part of the development process?

The most memorable part of the process was when I have destroyed my first game. I panicked and thought that everything was over but I was able to debug it. However, after debugging, it did impact on it's overall quality and became very bugger (compiler errors). I then restarted (redo) my twin stick project. Good thing is, I remember everything and was able to do everything from scratch in 2 days. I feel very proud.

What are the struggles you faced during the development process?

Debugging was very hard, specially the video could be really quick and I will most of the time miss nodes that were supposed to be connected. Most debugging takes 30 minutes or so, depending on which part of the blueprint it is. I also have an issue with unreal engine where once in a while, you will not be able to use the right mouse button or any of the menu as it automatically closes upon click and I have to restart Unreal every time this happens. I have not found any real solution to this sadly but it's just a hassle and can be annoying at times (specially when I am speed running the debug or creation of a blueprint).

What part of the project are you most proud of?

I am most proud of the circuit board map. I have done the design through scratch and was just really messing around with the board. I have no real design but I took inspiration from circuit boards. It was hard to put it together at times because the colors originally were glowing from white to some other color but it came out alright!

In what aspects do you think your game could be lacking and what can be done to improve?

There is a lot to be made and additions that could potentially make the game more fun and innovative. I was thinking of editing out the twinstickmode where it will pause the game after reaching a certain amount of score. After that, it will then show a HUD of thanking the players for testing out the prototype and their score as well as if they want to play again. I also thought of a change map mechanic introduced to the game after a certain amount of time or an upgrade system that can be achieved using the score earned (score variable can be changed into gold and exchanged for upgrades in game). There is so much to be done and I think this is a good foundation for more games to come.

More experience. More power!