In this post, I am going to weigh up the progress I made during Sprint 2 against the two SMART goals that I have established for myself for the entire project. I will assess the work I did during this sprint to see how far I met each of these goals.
To develop proficiency in Unreal Engine by designing and building a working prototype of a game over a period of three months.
I have certainly gained a lot of confidence in Unreal Engine over this sprint and the previous. I have gained a lot of confidence with using the blueprints to program my game. Although most of what I have made using Blueprints I would not be able to memorise, I have already been able to do some troubleshooting and I have used what I have picked up to resolve issues I have encountered such as at one point when I created an additional player character for melee combat, his health and SE stats were not displaying in the UI. At least as far as 3D game development its concerned, I feel a lot more confident with Unreal Engine than I did with Unity. Although I still have a long way to go, I have built some really strong foundations for an RPG that I can tweak to accomodate my game.
To improve my 3D art skills within Blender by using the application to model, rig, texture and animate assets for a game over a period of three months.
Blender has not had a look-in, as I have not yet got to the stage of concept art, let alone modelling. However, I have explored several areas of 3D already within Unreal, such as applying Particle Effects and setting up Animation Blueprints. I am hoping that I will have time during this unit to apply these to my own character models.