AI Fighter was a good chance to work on a game in collaboration with an experienced programmer. The concept for this game was something I probably would have not been able to accomplish by myself in under ten weeks. What was most important though was that I was helping with a game that was trying to bring something new to gameplay rather than stick with an established genre of games.
What went well:
For the most part, delegating work had a good turn out. We could each stick with one aspect of game development rather than deciding back and forth about whether or not it was a good time to work on gameplay or improve the visuals or sound if we had worked on our own games independently. The AI ended up working as it should and didn’t need to rely on tweaking character statistics in a menu screen which is something that can make many people lose interest right away. The fighting system turned out balanced by the end. No attack turned out to be the best or the worst one, it was more dependent on the situation the player was currently in. It was also really satisfying to see two players’ AI characters battle after being trained because then it becomes more about who the best teacher was rather than who the best player is. I’m pretty happy with how the visuals turned out even though it took forever to make all of it. I think it turned out to be about 180 texture files I had to add to the game. Even so, it ended up looking pretty close to how I imagined it.
What went wrong:
I would have liked the game to go farther, but due to time constraints we had to settle for less. Of course, there’s always the possibility to go further with it after this quarter. Mainly, I was hoping for power-ups or other variations to how two players battle since it would give the players more strategical options. Also, I had underestimated how long it was going to take to do a lot of the art which resulted in many late nights of drawing in Flash and last minute graphics bugs, but overall the essential bits of art for the game got in.