Final Presentation - An Ending

This semester, I wanted to focus on making my project "Lantern", while also doing environment art. My original plan was to work on Lantern as an artist, and have a proper coder come on board and take care of that side. This did not happen, as all of the programmers were taken up with other projects. So, rather than close down Lantern, I decided to focus on it, and withdraw from "Islands", the other project I was working on.

At the start, Delia and I were advised to try joining our ideas together. She had a game that employed a light mechanic, and we attempted to combine them. Sadly, it didn't work out well,
and the first prototype was, in a few ways, a failure. Artistically, it was good, but in terms of the mechanic...well, there was none. I wasn't happy that we had worked on something that I pushed, and it had not worked. So, rather than dump it, I took it back to the drawing board and re-jigged it. I went back to the original formula that I wanted, which is fairly simple light mechanics, and built on that. The finished product that I have is really only in Alpha stage, but it shows enough to suggest it could work. I got a full time job in the last 3 weeks of work, so my progress on Lantern was significantly slowed. Thus, some of the newer artwork did not make it into the game.

My personal work ended up being more Art Director/Concept Artist in nature. I helped James Cunningham on Blockets - Cameron Schilling and his team on Islands -


Henrik Pettersson on his projects -

as well as the majority of the art for Lantern -

With all these projects, I effectively established the game's style, creating concepts that gave each game a unique feel. I think I did rather well with this.

Things that went right -

I was able to do a lot of good artwork over the semester. I helped in a few projects, and can say that I am actually happy with how Lantern progressed. Is it the best game ever? Probably not, but I am happy with it's progress.

Things that went wrong -

The first prototype was a bit of a mong. It didn't have a solid concept behind it at all, and this was obvious in the final build. Also, my lack of programming skill made my work on Lantern very tiresome and harder than expected. Thankfully, I was able to get a lot of help from Matt, and James also. One thing I wasn't happy with was the fact that I worked alone for most of the semester. This was my call, and one I would do differently. Working alone means you don't need to rely on anyone, but also means you become narrow-minded, and can miss a lot. I would definitely do that differently next time.

Conclusion -

I worked on this game solo for most of the semester, and from that, I am reasonably happy with what transpired. There is a lot missing, a bit broken, and no discernable gameplay, but the core is there. My Unity Project is freely available here, so please, go through it and do whatever. With full-time work taking up my efforts these days, I do not think I will be back at Uni for some time. So, thankyou all for the great times, memories, and being able to work on games with such a cool bunch of people. I really have enjoyed it!!

Here is the link to the files, zipped -

Unity Project

Standalone EXE

Regards,
Greenlig