What would you do if you had more time?

I wish we had more time to be able to implement our initial concept. A lot of key items such as character abilities & our respawn mechanic had to be cut due to time constraints and technical issues. With some extra time to fix key bugs & give some more polish, I feel like our final product could have been more entertaining.

What would you do differently next time?

This was the first time anyone in our group had attempted multiplayer development. We ran into a lot of technical issues when it came to this feature. I had to do a lot of research into replication in order to get our mechanics working properly on both the client and server sides. We also ran into problems between using Mac & Windows machines as well as being unable to test multiplayer features on the university’s WiFi. Since we didn’t allocate enough time to creating the multiplayer infrastructure & fixing issues, we ended up having to cut a lot of core features & still had some problems in our final build. We were able to learn a lot about making multiplayer games in Unreal, but in the future if I ever want to attempt something technical I’ve never done before I’ll make sure to plan around that & come up with a more simple project to allow more time for fixing problems.

What did you learn?

I learned a lot with this studio project. I learned a lot more about developing games in Unreal & using the blueprint editor. I also learned a lot about replication & the technical issues behind multiplayer development. I tasked myself with setting up our Perforce server so I learned how to work with AWS to create a functional Perforce server as well as how to push updates to it. I was also able to learn more about working in a team & how to organize management tools to be effective & efficient in a studio setting.