Postmortem devlog

Successes (What went right)

• We were successful in creating the right atmosphere by adding rich details to the environment, with models, sound, particles and lighting. We definitely achieve what we want in terms of making it scary and creepy.
• We created a large amount of contents and a clearly-told story. 
• We collaborated very well on creating the moving dead zone (cult sign), whose visibility is toggled by the flashlight. The mechanics is simple, smart and provides fun strategy elements to the game.
• By adding input notes on UI and interactive halos, we make the game easy to navigate.

Failures (What went wrong)

• We didn’t figure out how to collaborate properly using Sourcetree so we had to stick with unity collaborate, which is convenient but limited. There are only three seats available so we had to switch between different group members to be able to work on it. There’s also a storage limitation so that we ended up with having to purchase for extra storage.
• We used an outline script which adds a custom-styled lighting outline around the object model, which is very flexible and performs perfectly. However, when we tested the game loop close to the end of our development, unfortunately the outline script created a major error that forces the application to quit. So we have to remove all the outline scripts and use the Unity built-in Halo.
• We use an animated furniture package and we planned to hide more objects in the furniture or room decors. However, the animation trigger from the package isn’t fully functional, and for some reason the player cannot click on the target objects anymore once it is placed inside a drawer. 

Lessons Learned 

(What did you learn from your failures or how did you overcome them)

• We were able to build the scenes and add interactions to achieve the desired atmosphere, but it was not easy incorporating the narrative and the interaction. For example, it was designed in the script that a character is obsessed with drawing and it requests UI presenting images, but because of technical issues and time limit, we are finally not able to implement images in the game. We learned from this project that one of the core mechanics and the story concept has to be clarified at the very beginning, and the other is created referring to the settled one, so that we could have the story and the mechanics work together maximise the use of both.

Future Development

(If you were to continue working on this game how would you improve it)

If we continue working on this, we will probably add more scenes and more interactions to it:

• Add more interactive (openable) furniture and objects;
• Make objects trigger each other, for example, collect a key to open a safe;
• Polish the UI: solve the problem of panels overlapping each other.
• Probably, make several endings or branching storylines.
• Making the game more interesting by incorporating more of the story behind it.
• Assign a timer for each room to collect objects in limited time.