Prototype Studio Week 1 Reflection

For my 1st prototype, something that I thought would be able to “represent me” well was a prototype of something similar to one of the games I had been playing a lot of recently. As a result, I wanted to do some sort of creature battler prototype since I have been playing a lot of pokemon recently, and pokemon games are some of my favorite and most played games of all time. However, when trying to turn a turn based creature battler, I found even making a prototype to be difficult as I spent a while trying to figure out how I could create a functional turn based battle system. I wanted to use Processing for this project as well, which I think in hindsight made this more difficult to accomplish. I wanted to use Processing due to the fact that while I was already familiar with it, I did not, and still don’t consider the engine I’m the most familiar with/use the most. I believe I am the most comfortable with Unity, and thus wanted to save it for a later project, using other engines like Processing or ones that are new to me like Godot. Furthermore, I tried to utilize an Observer pattern in my attempt, and eventually even attempted doing a regular battle system after I couldn’t create a turn based battle system. I thought using an observer pattern could work as it was something we were taught by JD last semester, and I could have the player and creatures be subjects with a UI system as an observer. Despite my struggles I couldn’t quite get much together and decided it would be best to pivot to something else as a result. I thought whatever I pivoted to could work as I could keep the creature idea I had and use that. Since I like creature collectors and such like pokemon, I could argue that anything involving creatures would therefore “represent me” as a person. Moreover, I came up with the idea to do a basic clicker and just include a creature of some sort, maybe with various different features. As I was making the basic mechanics I decided the creature could change in some way the more you did or didn’t interact with it by clicking or using the mouse. In the end, making a basic clicker with Processing wasn’t very difficult as the tools processing provides while restricted include various basic mouse functions. I think had I maybe tried Unity, I would have potentially been able to get farther due to its different structure, however I realized that making a turn based system is just a difficult task overall.