Composting Game Version 2

Composting Game was a project that I worked on a long time ago during my time in college. This project was a very swift 4-day project where a few others and I worked on creating a game for a Social Action Project. This project was massively important to my development as someone who worked on games, whether the perspective is as a programmer or a designer. This project gave me the freedom to design the layout of a very simple map, but also the freedom to grow through Game Instances. Composting Game is a lot smaller than some of my other creations; it’s a relatively quick game that doesn’t require any real skill at all, but at the core of the game is a dedication to educating about compost. That was the whole point of the project.

Creating the original after one of my other projects was, at first, a bit of a challenge; we had 4 days to deliver something for the whole class. By all means, we were back into Game Jam territory, but for me, this was a place to learn and once again grow. Originally, the project was as simple as just collecting the products to create compost, but with so much time on our hands, this wouldn’t cut it. This eventually turned into the project it is now, rebuilding an abandoned farm by creating compost to earn money. It was so fun putting this section together and really making an actual game out of the concept of compost.

I won’t be covering the creation of the original game here, since I already did this back in college, and it can be viewed in my second-year portfolio.

Before my return to University for my second year, I wanted to get back into the swing of Unreal Engine and working on a game as a whole. As much as I wish it had been a new project, I was actually really happy to delve back into a project from 2 years ago to really iron out some of the problems and bugs, but also bring some fresh and personal touches from what I’ve learned in that time. Something that had also been really bugging me was that every game I have ever packaged has always been released on my itch.io page, and not including a project I really enjoyed working on felt odd, prompting me to finally make an actual release version. It was going back to the project to make the package that I actually felt the need to do some bug fixes and enhancements to make it suitable for a release, but it was those fixes that made me push further into making some of the changes I did along the way.

My first big change was a complete texture overhaul that I originally did back in 2024 after we had returned back to college for our second year, however, these changes didn’t stay. By this point, I hadn’t really picked a speciality in games, so I was always playing around in different places, whether that be modelling, texturing, programming, or designing. I used this as an opportunity to get to grips with Substance Painter and some additional tools we hadn’t been taught in my other assignments, and I really enjoyed this experience at the time.

Additionally, I also removed every element that was something I got from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. At the point of making the original game, I hadn’t learned about changing the level lighting, creating landscape materials, or how to tackle foliage. 2 years later, I’ve developed all these skills. I completely removed the original lighting components from the level and used the Environment Light Mixer to create the new ones and give me control of the new lighting. I focused on getting the lighting at the right angle, as well as adding a very subtle fog effect to really enhance the overall scene. I had also done a landscape material in Trial of the Ember, so I now had the ability to create the perfect stone cliffs and grassy terrain with procedural grass, but also add a dedicated path layer to get rid of the spline I’d been using in the original. I had also learned software to create trees effortlessly, and I could make them look however I wanted. This, to me, felt like the perfect development to enhance the visuals further and give the game its own identity that it truly deserved.

Personally, I think it’s a matter of preference as to which textures look “better”. They both stand out in their own right and make the game in their own way. This was why I was prompted to make the ability to switch between the newer textures and the older ones, because as much as I had improved the overall game, this wasn’t necessarily an improvement; it was more of a personal choice. I prefer my newer textures, but that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, so giving the flexibility to change between them just felt right.