Making Of Mayhem Squared

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Where it all started

"Game's great but I don't like the third level" 

"Wow you actually made that?"

"It's good though th..."

 Though were but a few of the reviews I got from close friends who played Mighty Maze since it's release. Mayhem Squared is the end result of a question "Where is the character?". 

 Having to explain why made the game that way also made me feel that I may not have challenged myself to make a really good game. So I knew my next challenge would be to make game with an actual character.

 Making a third person shooter was my next option. Which meant I'd have to deal with stuff like rigging, animation and modelling to make all this work. Or so I thought.

Do we have to go overboard with it.
 

 The learning process was surely hell I promise. I'd start one tutorial and later on get by the fourth tutorial. I restart so many times that I gave up trying anymore. This was happened in the middle of April. As if I wasn't frustrated enough I lost my phone too.

Someone give me an Axe so I plant some oak trees in my garden.

 I was in between a rock and a hard place. I wished I could be nothing than the Hulk you. Anyway no point wishing to explode so I decided to cool off by doing some photo editing and talk about it on YouTube (It's a horrible video, I ain't leaving a link here. You watch on your own, haha) 

 A New Perspective

 

 After the whole scandal. I took it upon myself to return much better. So I started learning much more about Video editing, YouTube, film industry both from a viewer's perspective and from those who work in that industry. 

The same on a much more intense scale about the gaming industry from developer's perspectives, gamer's perspectives and non-gamer's perspective.

 When I started the research I made it a goal that I won't check about how to stand make money, or how to finish the game or what should I do to about yada yada yada... Wanna know why? You make a game, release to the world, and you'll fully understand.

You'll feel small and insignificant amongst a ton of giants in the industry, you might even feel hardly noticed. You'll begin to see the mistakes you made with your first release from any direction available.

In short you'll feel inferior.

You probably quit. But don't cause this is the challenge you should realize. You need a long term goal.

  An Old Legend versus A Rising Legion.

 So one of the things I'd do apart from research, was watching gaming videos of Among us and Minecraft. I was intrigued watching a game made entirely out of cubes which you can play alone then to another game made of oval shapes and needed many guys to play.

I was excited realizing how my attention was fought for between two popular games.  As a result I decided to make the game using nothing but simple shapes as the objects of focus. But how was I going to bring out this idea?

 I didn't know until a the first week of June when I decided it would be top down shooter. One of the first game ideas I had years back was inspired by Alien Shooter 2. Plus it did feel like a new challenge different from picking a FPS or going Third person.

 Let the game Begin

 The first problem I had to deal with was making a prototype. Luckily I followed the tutorial from Sebastian League YouTube Channel.

All I had to do was make some adjustments. He used Unity 2017 and I have 2020.1 in the URP pipeline settings. Oh yeah you bet that was one hell of a week with the skills of someone like me.

 But I was determined to get this done. On other times when I take a break I'd think of how to intergrate the story to the theme

"An Old Legend vs a Rising Legion" But I was being patient with everything. The last thing I wanted was a disaster in the end.

 Not this time again

 With the game up and running I started making plans to replace the models in the game with things to match my story. But I had no story, so I opened up notepad and started scrapping the hell of a story.

 It's not necessary that I should really put a story but I like to. It's why I picked game Development in the first place. Not too long I had a story worth developing. Next was to start making stuff with Blender. I finally broke 8 year old streak. I mean it's kind of weird how there guys out there doing incredible stuff with blender and I'm there whining for years saying it's hard.

There had to be a reason why I thought in those lines. But it's all in the past. Now I can't get enough of it. Model after model I kept changing that cube into a weapon. If I didn't have the willpower to stop my self I would have burned out from making 50 weapons for the game. But I stopped at 20. It's a small game after all.

 But I wasn't done yet. Next was characters. They were easy though. Can't explain more on that.

 Turn up the volume

 Music has also been a difficult challenge. I've spent quite a couple of years with LMMS. Tutorials are really difficult to implement when your completely new to music like I am. The Second week of July was spent watching tutorials with no fruit coming forth. Until 1 day I just decided to make a beat from one of the many I learnt from, turned it into a fast paced beat pattern

Then created melodies following the beat pattern with different instruments. My difficulty on music is making melodies, it's difficult to make a melody that will suit perfectly with a beat, which is why I kept failing to make a complete song. But thank God I figured out where my problem lies. I finally got my first song into a game.

 Final Review

 The game is something I'm proud. It led me to breaking old habits and has a first of my creations riddled in it. However just because I made stuff with blender, doesn't make a pro. Even more so with the music. I never learn music or game development from school but I've teaching myself and learning from YouTube and Google.

 Learning from skilled people out there who are will teach their stuff on these platforms.

The game has much potential. I have a whole page of things I can do. But I'll try them on another game I'll start working on soon. Thanks for reading till the end. Click here to jump straight to the game's oage. Hope you have fun and I'll see see you next time.