The Making of Mighty Maze

 Review of the Making of Mighty Maze

 After 6 and a half months of remaking a game 3 times, from planning 5 levels to only 3 levels. And especially extra days spent building the project, I finally have a working Mighty Maze game. But in reality this should have in actual sense been done in 2 months because everything you see was done in a roughly a month and 2 weeks of building a stack of cards.

You wanna find out how? Let start with the origins of Mighty Maze

ORIGINS

 It all started in June 2020. I had just finished a C# beginner series from Brackeys and I had known that Quaternion was going to come back to haunt me someday. Well I only spent 3 months learning, actually 2 months learning Unity, Blender and trying to install Visual studio in such a way that I won't have to go online every single time I open it and don't have to update the thing every new day because I got tired of...

Sorry. I was whining wasn't I? Okay, on a serious start.

 I had been learning for three months and I figured I learn what I was capable of doing. So I decided that I spend June game jam myself by making four games in a month. One game for each week. Then the best one would be a game I would focus on in the months to come.

 So I picked a racing game, puzzle game, a fighting game and a casual game. I started with a maze game which I called Mighty Maze. Finished successfully. Then the casual game which I also finished, called it House Arrest and I burned out hard. Spent the remaining 2 weeks resting. 

 More on the Mighty Maze

 It's first inspiration came because I had seen a lot of indie developers making maze games but not one had I seen in 3D. So I thought why not make 3D maze game since I had a better fighting chance with it? 

 Second inspiration came from my poor art skills. Not saying I'm a horrible artist but I can't  keep drawing. I'm better at sculpting.

 And so Monday I made the 4 levels for Mighty Maze. Tuesday I colored. Wednesday I coded and Thursday I beautified. But I had one issue. How were people going to find the exit? I liked how angry bird has simple mechanics and the goal so easy to understand.

 And how they can designing literally any environment and still keep the same mechanics and goal. I couldn't find a hook like that.

 Then Friday came.

 I was putting sound. in fact, I was actually learning about sound in Unity for the first time. Then when I saw the Audio source setting of "2D to 3D", the hook I was searching for was found. Sound! They can follow the music by  following the sound! I knew this would be an ultimate game changer.  And thus my game was complete for everyone play.

 And at the end of the month I asked people what I should pick between Mighty Maze or House Arrest. Everyone picked Mighty Maze because House Arrest literally sucked. And that's how I began the journey of remaking this game 3 times.

 The 1st remake (July)

 I fixed the problems the first prototype. the song playing in each level only played once and I so I looped it. I also added some lights in the first and second level. Also at this time I decided to add a 5th level which would be a bonus and huge level.

So most of the month was spent designing the 5th level. Towards the end of the month I also decided I upgrade my software because I didn't like what I was seeing. 

 

 The 2nd remake(August - November)

 In August I upgraded my Unity from 2018 to 2019.4.5 which I am currently using, I also got some new essentials and I learnt a little more tricks with Unity. I So I remade the levels and started giving them a little more life and more... weirdness.

 However the sad part was that I drifting away from what the game was about. I started thinking of so many crazy ideas which I still was sure about a lot of things and I wanted to add a lot of things to the game. Game Dev Diaries S1 Ep4 should will tell you more about this. 

 With college going on and me getting over ambitious with the game it eventually lead into a massive explosion of confusion, depression and a bad burnout. It triggered when I tried to upgrade the project pipeline from the Standard to Universal. which lead to a very unfortunate turn of events. All my work of 4 months, massacred in 9 minutes. 

 You can imagine how depressed I was

 The 3rd Remake (December to January 2021)

 

 So most of November I never touched anything to do with Unity. Not because of giving up even though I felt like it. I was frustrated and I never wanted to make any more stupid mistakes like I did with the before. The bonus level which was a city level was in truth never going to be complete.

 It was way too big and I failed to complete  because I kept adding things. I neglected the other 4 levels that were simpler and more fun than some big level that was literally going nowhere.

 So I decided that in December when I close from college for the holidays I will spend that month to do everything I was supposed to do in July, August, September, October and December. Everything I was supposed to do in all those months I said would do in December.

 So I started afresh. I started a new project under the URP template which I wanted and began making the game to my liking. And the rest I did for the game were as follows:

- I dropped the idea of a 5th level. I also threw away the 4th level because in truth, both level 4 and 2 were duplicates of 1 and 3. And with my personal deadline clocking and reasonably being realistic. I decided to give more focus on 3 levels for the game to achieve the goal I wanted.

- I gave the 3 levels real themes to follow. Level 1 and 2 looking like actual mazes I gave them different feels and changed the routes of both levels just a little bit to avoid them feeling repetitive. Level 3 is bit more experimental but and it was going to look exactly the way I was going to remake until I watched some tutorials where I watched people in ways that humbled me so I started remaking them too.

- Changed the UI. 

- Found better songs credit to :  Bensound

  I changed the game to become what it was meant to be. By investing in that little knowledge and experience I gained from learning throughout not just the first 3 months but throughout the whole journey. Even though it's not what I really wanted it to come out like. But I'm happy I was close.

 Cutting down on the number of levels in Mighty Maze saved me stress and more time to figure other things I could do to become better and more productive. Like trying to make money online for example.

 Or even building this website you're reading from. Truth be told I tried practicing WordPress using the Bitnami version but to this day I still can't build one website while blogger took one night and poof here we are.

 Doesn't mean that WordPress is hard or anything like that. But I've got Unity, C#, Blender and school and so it gets very hard to concentrate on what to pick to learn sometimes. Ever tried learning about WordPress plugins for the first time? You'll know what I went through.

 All in all the 3rd time was the charm. And it's thanks to restarting the project that it gave me time work out on my strengths and weaknesses.

 The Future of Mighty Maze?

 I'll end with where the Mighty Maze is for now. It was a lot of fun and I've learnt so much about following through to end. I hoped for it to be my million dollar project when I just started out in the beginning. I won't lie that I never got burned out because I kept judging the game's quality once in a while. You know, like

"Like this Mighty Maze game will make any money in the end?"
"What I'm I even doing here making Mighty Maze?"
"I should just quit Mighty Maze and take school even more seriously."

 I can go on and the list of complaints will too. Ultimately I enjoy seeing the smile on the faces from something that I created. Maybe someday, Mighty Maze will be. a Million dollar project.

 My only problem is with it is that Unity won't allow the game to build. Don't know why and I'm not in the mood to start finding out why. Well not anymore right now, I've broken way too many nights searching through Unity and why things aren't going ABC or XYZ but between you and I. I'm tired. But I'll give it one more try when I can. Hopefully I might find a solution. 

 If not, I'll search later.

 I have many other projects to deal with and this was just a stepping stone. I want to focus more on the blender so that I  can leave the Unity Asset store and all its free groceries. My next game project will be a FPS as well as getting a better inventory in my arsenal.