Hello!! Welcome back to the development blog of Morphy. This is the final blog post towards this project and here I am going to go over everything I have done after my last post. So sit back and enjoy!
Level Design
I'm going to start off by saying that I completed the set goal of 10 levels for the game and sent it out to over 20 people for playtesting. The feedback I received from each and every single friend of mine was overwhelmingly positive and I couldn't be happier with the feedback I received.
Obviously everything wasn't perfect and a lot of things needed to be fixed, but the overall response towards the levels, its progression and difficulty where great. Everyone seemed to receive the game very well and provided feedback on small things that could be made better and I immediately acted upon them. Most of the feedback came in terms of collision bugs and were all fixed.
Here are the paper level designs for levels 6, 7, 9 & 10:
All of these designs were carefully thought out taking the difficulty curve theory into consideration at all times. I had learnt a lot about this theory when I was working on my Mario Level Design project and it has paid off really well in every project I have worked on after that.
User Interface
Upon fixing all the issues and bugs in the game based on the feedback received, I quickly moved on to the UI of the game. I needed to build the Main Menu, Level Select, Credits Scene and the How to Play scene. All of these took me a couple of days. After these were made, I opened up my UI Flow chart to take a look at what needs to be placed where. You can have a look at this chart below:
After taking a glance at this, I realized that I hadn't yet made a Save function for the game. So I quickly got onto first setting up everything else based on the flow like the Main Menu, Credits Scene, Level Select and the How to Play Scene and moved onto building the Save function.
Save Function
To make the save function, I used the best method for this purpose. I made the game make a Binary file that stores all the values of the game in binary format, i.e. 0s and 1s. This prevents the player from being able to open the save file and making edits to it manually.
The save function basically executes every time the player dies because I wanted the number of deaths to be saved along with the number of levels the player has completed. This was done so that the player, when he comes back to play the game after taking a break, he knows the number of times he has failed.
To load the game when the player restarts the game, the player has to hit the Load Game button on the Main Menu and simply select the level he wants to start playing from out of all the levels he has already completed.
Music
After completing the Save function, one of my playtesters got back to me and asked "What about the music?" and that is when it hit me, "I DO NOT HAVE MUSIC IN MY GAME!!! AAAAAHHHHHH". I quickly got onto Google and looked for free music that would suit Morphy and I found this really good track by Codemanu that I ended up using for the game.
Polishing
After everything was done, I went on to playtesting the game myself a lot of times to bring out the smallest of bugs and trying to fix them because I believe in perfection and I wanted Morphy to be as close to perfection as possible. A polished game always attracts players and keeps the players immersed into the game.
Special Thanks
Finally, I added a Special Thanks section to the Credits Scene thanking all the people who have given their inputs in various ways towards my project and help me make what it is today. I am very grateful each and every single one of them and am sure this project would not have turned out the way it did without their help.
Gameplay Video
I have recorded a Gameplay video of Morphy which showcases the solutions to each and every level. If you do happen to play Morphy and are not able to get past a certain level, take a look at this video.
Portfolio
After the game was completed, I went onto my portfolio to upload my latest and greatest game, Morphy. Along with making a dedicated page for Morphy, I revamped my entire Portfolio based on the feedback I had received from Mr. Philip Meredith at the EGX Rezzed event.
I have put up a playable demo of the game for anyone to try out on this page. I also have a gameplay video and a short description of the game on the same page. There are also screenshots from the game and other small details mentioned on it. Lastly, the Game Design Document for the game is also available on the bottom of the page for download. Feel free to read it.
Report
After completing my portfolio update, I wrote the final report for the project explaining everything I have done to get the project to this point. I have explained my whole process, how everything began, how personal development of skills helped raise the standard of the project and also how everything fell together in place.
So that's it from this project guys! I've thoroughly enjoyed making this game and posting regular updates here. I hope you guys enjoyed this journey as much as I did. Please do go and try out Morphy over here and let me know your thoughts.
Finally, a HUGE thank you to every single one of these people mentioned below for their feedback and insights into Morphy as this game would not have been possible without them:
Jarek Francik, Hope Caton, Abhimanyu Chattopadhyay, Abhinav Singh, Anand Kumar, Arunachalam Ayyappan, Bhuvanesh Tekavade, Devendra Agarwal, Iman Syed, Krishangi Agarwal, Kritika Anita, Matthias Lund-Andersen, Philip Meredith, Prateek Kumar, Pulkit Singh, Raul Ravi, Shreegovind Patwari, Shubham Bengale, Shujon Poddar, Siddarth Chari, Theodore Menezes, Viraj Kelkar, Vladimir Ravichandran, Yash Juthani
Thanks a lot for reading and being a part of my journey through this project!! I am going to be starting a new project soon and do expect a blog for that project as well. :D
Until then, adios.