Infiltration began as a project for a Graphics and Animation class. We were taught the basics and principles of animation and how to use Flash and then applied the lessons to a project of our choosing. I decided to use Flash to create a point and click style adventure, and the result was the original version. For this artifact, I decided to remake the entire project in the Unreal Engine to see how well I could replicate the features, functions, and experience.

-Adobe Flash: The original version of the project was created in the Flash program. That version was the basis for the Unreal version later on.

-Adobe Photoshop: This was used to help edit and create several graphics used in both the original Flash version as well as the Unreal version.

-Unreal Engine: This was used to create the remade version of the original project.

-Audacity: This was used to edit some audio and help create some foley sounds for the project.

-Designing from a plan. Taking the original project and remaking it entirely within a different engine shows the ability to translate gameplay, themes and mechanics across different platforms.

-2D animation: Much of the game's action is done via animations in Flash and Unreal, and takes advantage of Animation principles and techniques such as stretch and squash, slow in and out, and staging.

-Prototyping: The original version of the project required planning the sequence of events out and then rapidly producing them to ensure that they worked well together and functioned as desired.

Learning how to make the original artifact and then carrying out the execution of it was very interesting. I always consider myself a poor artist, and the original sketches of the storyboard was certainly bare bones. Thanks to some clip art and advice from the instructor, I was able to turn it into a much better game visually speaking, and the rest of the project's creation was straightforward and fun. Once the original project was done and it was time to move it to Unreal for the current artifact, I planned out all of the actions and occurrences that had to be represented within the project and created them one at a time by prototyping them in Unreal Blueprints.

The game was primarily built within Widgets in the Unreal Engine, so it was interesting to learn more about them in preparation for this project. I had just done a 2D game based on Widget-driven mechanics and gameplay, so I was well prepared to convert the original project into the current version as a result. I also gained lots of experience in trying to adapt mechanics and gameplay from one medium to another.

One of the biggest challenges in this artifact was creating the original artifact. Storyboarding was a brand new skill to for me to learn, and once I had finalized a story board the rest of the project came easily, with the exception of art. However, clip art and free to use art made the project presentable compared with the original sketches, and creating some foley sounds combined with other audio and animation principles breathed life into the project.

After the initial project was created, I selected it to be one of the four artifacts for my final course. The instructor liked the idea of remaking the artifact in the Unreal Engine, and after the midway milestone, offered me feedback about adding more animation principles. As a result, I considered places where I would be able to better represent what was happening in the artifact using these principles.

The feedback led to me making several additional changes in the animations of the project. I added different curves to the rock throw animation to make it more fluid and believable, as well as adjusted the size of the rock to make the appearance of it moving into the background as it moves. I also modified the animation for the vehicle to use slow start as the vehicle begins to leave the screen, to emulate the vehicle starting and getting up to speed. I also considered staging and changed some positions and sizes of things to better present the information to the player about what to do and where to look for progress.