Just a Minute: https://studio-noble.itch.io/just-a-minute
Themes Horror Game Jam #20: https://itch.io/jam/themed-horror-game-jam-20
#Finished First Game/Game Jam - Looking for Feedback & Advice
graceful ermine
Hi everyone!
I'll try and keep this straight to the point. As a solo dev I just finished completing my first ever game for my first ever Game Jam. I learned so much, but most importantly, I realized how much I enjoyed the process, and I want to become better and build a following. Links for the Game Jam and the game are at the bottom of the post.
Some Context First: For the Themed Horror Game Jam #20, I tried to create a game that incorporated a lot of the skills I have picked up through Udemy courses and YouTube. This led me to create Just a Minute, which is a game where you complete class assignments on a tablet with an antagonistic-like character jumping in to deliver some creepy lines until the game finishes its 10-20 minute playthrough. It's more of an interactive, one-shot story than a traditional video game.
Feedback: I would absolutely love any sort of constructive feedback you could provide for my game. I put a lot of energy into learning Unity, and I want to keep moving forward. I have a lot of ideas I am excited to bring to life!
Advice: I found myself struggling several times throughout development, and I wanted to list some of them below. If you have any helpful insight to any of these struggles, I am all ears. I am also looking for general game development advice as well, not just about the struggles I had below.
Struggles
**Lighting **- This was unexpected! I saved lighting for last, thinking that it would be quick and easy. I realized that some of my characters did not have shadows, and some had faces that were not quite bright enough. I ended up using point lights and placing them in front of characters to brighten their faces. Is this common, or is there a better practice or workflow that someone may know of when setting up Lighting in a game? Maybe a workflow based on the type "mood" one's game is going for?
Post Processing - I also saved this for last while working on the Lighting. I felt like most of this was just trial & error until things looked "right." For a horror game, are there are "must-have" Post Processing tips anyone has? My game uses many Cinemachine Cameras, and I noticed that while I was able to have each camera use their own Post Processing profile, there were other "global" options I never quite figured out how to move into their own Post Processing profile without impacting every single Cinemachine camera in the process. For example, the only way I figured out how to add Screen Space Ambient Occlusion was to enable it on the PC_Renderer asset. This made it so that it was applied to all of my Cinemachine cameras instead of just the ones I wanted the Screen Space Ambient Occlusion applied to. I did not find a solution for this in time.
Multiple Cinemachine Cameras - There are many cameras I used for creating changes between "scenes" in the game. I found it much easier to just switch between many different Cinemachine cameras instead of updating a single Cinemachine camera's position over and over. I know this can't be the best way to do this and must have impacted performance, but I had issues with getting the camera to smoothly move within code. Is there a "best practice" for how to update a Cinemachine camera through code and keep it smooth and consistent?
Animating Characters - This was the most difficult experience I had in development. I was thinking it would be the most fun and easiest part, but I was so wrong. I used Unity's Animator system, but I found myself constantly having to place my Character game objects in empty parents as "holders" so that the animations would stop teleporting the character around the map. I felt like I was crossing my fingers every single time for the animations to just work! I've seen a lot of people recommend using Animancer. Is this worth it to solve frustrations like this? There are also some clipping between character animations. I think I know why this happened, but I'm open to any suggestions.