Pumpkin: Game Dev Midterm

Pumpkin

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This is an autobiographical game about when my cat, Pumpkin, ran away for a few months in 2017. Use WASD to move, mouse to look and interact by pressing E. The goal is to put up all the lost cat posters in hopes of finding Pumpkin again.

This was my first time making a game in 3D and my first time using Maya, so that was definitely very challenging at first. There was definitely a learning curve to thinking and creating in 3D, but once I got the hang of it, it came pretty easily. Now, I even really enjoy modeling in 3D; I think it's simultaneously very therapeutic and challenging, and also extremely rewarding when it's completed. I'm satisfied with the models I managed to produce, but I wish I had allocated more time to building the game environment. The downstairs area is okay, but it's kinda just a grey box, and I wish I had done something just to make it look more like an actual outdoor area. 

Because I am more art-focused, I struggled with coding. I'm definitely getting a lot better at it, and have to google and ask for help less often, but it's still something I'm not super great at or interested in. It's great to see how much I've learned but some part of me also wishes I had picked a more complex mechanic to really push myself in terms of coding. I'm not sure if I would've been able to do it, realistically, but I still I wish I had just tried something more challenging. 

The thing I struggled with the most, however, is debugging. Small issues would always surface, and it seemed like the more I fixed, the more problems seemed to show up. Playtesting and asking lots of other people to playtest and give me feedback definitely helped a lot. It created a lot more work and things to fix, but it definitely helped me produce a better game overall. 

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how the game turned out, and hope you enjoy playing it, too! :)