Palette of Dreams Postmortem

Tyler Torrella:

• The goal of this project was to make a game prototype under a limited amount of time using what was taught in class, which was mostly achieved. The overworld layout is simplistic but good, and the combat system works as a good proof in concept. The main thing that changed between the project's conception till the end was the scope: We initially planned on having potentially ten overworld rooms but cut it down to four, and combat abilities were initially more ambitious in design.
• Overall, we're really happy with the aesthetic of the game. It hits that old retro look of games while having a stylistic look inspired by the Persona series. Combat also functions well and has been complimented by playtesters as a solid foundation for what could be a strong and deep combat system. The paint system is fun to play around with and functions well in practice.
• Near the end of development, we had less time than expected which didn't give enough time to bugfix or implement polish. The combat system can be unintuitive at times and has some bugs — additionally, some abilities seem to not work correctly.
• If we were to restart this project from the ground up, focusing on the combat earlier on and trying to figure out its kinks would've been good. Having more focus on the combat earlier on would've made it easier to find bugs later in development as well.
• With one more week of development, we could've added more game juice with particle effects and animations from enemies. Abilities could've been creased out to ensure they work correctly. Potentially, enemies could've also had a more complex attack AI, or the overworld could've been expanded upon to have more areas to explore.

Jason Rangel-Martinez

• I'm very proud of what we've done, and I see the same potential that our playtesters saw when we gave them a chance to experience our joint creation. However, we are often our own greatest critics, and this is no exception. Looking at this with hindsight, despite planning our initial scope to be small, I realize now that our scope was still a bit too big. While we were able to shorten our scope and implement most of what said scope entailed, I feel that having just a bit more time to work everything out, from bug fixes to last-minute polish, would've taken our prototype to the next level. 
• What I'm personally taking away from my time with this project is that the player's experience should be placed at the forefront of development, and that ideas can be placed on the back burner until the core gameplay feels as fun as possible, even if those ideas seem initially integral.

Logan Shehane

• I have worked on many unity projects in the past. Most of them prototypes, and a handful that make it to "release" as much as a n aspiring student dev with little time can call release. This is now part of them! I don't think that this is a full game. I dont think that it nearly matches the vision. There is so much more to be done to meet what was discussed when we first planned. I love the result though. I think that we really pulled through and that the release has some really cool features.
• I think that the late night bug fixing was pretty neat. Certainly not enjoyable, but definitely a powerful experience to feel like a full team working together to push this thing across the finish line.
• What I am most proud of (in my work) is the UI. I wrote some cool UI renderers including a curve renderer, polygon renderer, and torus/circle renderer. I don't think these are more efficient than premade sprites, but they are effectively native unity vector graphics, so I think that is pretty cool. I love writing tools for making games, so if you are interested in those they can be found on my Github. I am also a huge fan of how the UI is dynamic and moves to the music. I dont think I got the tempo just right, but I guess that is room for improvement. I also would add animations for the UI if I had time. You can tell I am just too much of a Persona fan!
• If I were to do this project again, I would have focused on getting some sort of dialouge in the game so that there was a bit of story. without story or prompts, the world just felt empty.