Challenges:

Architecture and scope:
Keeping Dino’s architecture lean for hobby projects while supporting a robust graphics pipeline, avoiding the bloat common in larger engines has been a challenge. However it has also meant that itteration on general architecture and systems is fast and forgiving.

Simplified Pipeline:
Designing an accessible graphics pipeline using Odin’s DirectX11 bindings that balances learning and functionality. Dino's rendermakes it easy to customise how a game is rendered, making it easy to stylize rendering.

Tooling Without Bloat:
Creating friendly editor tools while maintaining a lightweight reusable framework where it makes sense.

Challenges:

Creating a custom asset editor:
Engine source was the primary source of how to do create a custom editor. I am verry familiar with how the Paper2D plugin works and used that as a base.

Edge cases:
Skeletons can be vastly different case by case. Ensuring that the tools created work well was quite a challenge.

Memory & Performance:
Avoiding using multiple skeltons and or spawning in gib Actors was hard. The standard way that Physics, Animation, and Geometry skinning works in Unreal Engine 5 is quite limiting. It was necessary to ensure that memory was kept to a minimum and that there would only be 1 skeleton animated per character at a time. this made it really easy for Artists and Designers to configure some properties and then test it immedtiatly with out needing to go through a big pipeline.

Challenges:

Texture Analysis for Mess Generation:
Converting arbitrary designer-provided textures into usable voxel mess data introduced edge cases, especially with semi-transparent pixels.

Level Dependency Management:
Ensuring MAD data was tightly coupled to the correct level while still being reusable or re-bakable when needed was a persistent challenge.

Asset Manager Integration:
Hooking MAD into Unreal’s Asset Manager system involved non-trivial setup to ensure caching, referencing, and level-specific data were handled cleanly. In the end I opted for a single asset per level.

Challenges:

Game Maker Studio scripting:
Game Maker Studio 2 had only got struct support just before this project. Although it was challenging to program, it meant finding creative ways to make things work. If i was to revisit this, I would use Dino for it.

Isometric perspective in 2D:
This was my first time creating an isometric game in 2D. this meant i needed to learn new formulas for handling positions.

UI:
Game Maker Studio 2 does not have any build in UI tools out of the box, just sprites and collision, the building blocks for UI.

Challenges:

Velocity tuning:
In future i would prefer to use a velocity curve which would make it much more easy to design level elements and tweak the feel for the player.