Pot-hole Pete: post-development analysis

What I’m happy with:

• Overall feel of the game
• Clear premise and easy to pick up
• Steadily increasing difficulty
• Variation in scenery and lighting
• Traffic light mechanic
• Simple, effective design of the car
• Implementing feedback to improve the game

What could be improved:

• Simplified main menu
• Varied objectives
• SFX
• Refined camera shake
• Gameplay becomes stagnant very quickly
• Different materials and textures – design is bland!
• Minor bug – high-score setting before the Endless mode has been played
• Minor bug – diagonal movement is faster than vertical / horizontal movement
• Code efficiency – car blueprint is heavily bloated and takes responsibility for things outside its scope

Challenges I overcame:

• This is my first completed, released game – a huge milestone!
• I created all art, game design, and coding
• The car movement was initially frame rate dependant – I revised and fixed old code
• Actors spawning in on each other – I designed two different methods to minimise this issue
• Incorrect rotation on cars spawned on the right side of the road
• Adding traffic-light mechanic on one level caused all levels to become traffic-light dependant

What I would do differently:

• Plan the scope – I didn’t immediately know when I was finished
• Plan mechanics – adding in traffic light nearly broke the whole game
• Balance workload – some days I worked 10 hours, others <1 hour
• Code maintenance – good discipline with housekeeping to begin with, less so towards the end