Day 14 with GameDevHQ
“The path from dreams to success does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get on to it, and the perseverance to follow it.” — Kalpana Chawla
Today, well to be honest yesterday, we had a meeting with Jonathan and some other members of GameDevHQ. A team of fellow interns, now turned game developers, worked together to create an incredible and fully functioning side scrolling space shooter. Within two weeks after completing the 2D development course, a small group of newfound game developers as a team created a great game. Together they proved the immediate capabilities all of us will have upon finishing the coursework. Their presentation gave me the push I needed to get over this hump and continue down my path to become a certified game developer.
Continuing into the C# Survival guide, I ventured into switch statements, loops and arrays. Switch statements provide us an option to neatly break down a bunch of “if” statements. We were able to assign a color to different keys. This is especially important for when doing some of the final phase coursework for 2D development. I’m going to have to create quite a few different enemy types, and using switch statements may come in handy for that.
For the loops, I found out how to quickly and easily overload a computer or program causing everything to crash! We are warned to be cautious when coding and be sure to not end up with something called an “infinite loop”. So its important to think about the logic of “where loops” and define a point for the “where loop” to end. For example, we can count to 100 every second. There were quite a few where loops utilized in 2D development. I was particularly confused when it came to where loops, but now I feel quite a bit better.
Arrays were another confusing aspect we covered in the 2D development course. Basically, we’re able to assign and create lists in the inspector and reference them in code. I’m going to need to continue down this section further tomorrow. My main focus is to understand the fundamentals of what each function does, and the logic behind it. It’s important to think of situations that we would use these functions in our videogames. Once again, I imagine this will come in handy when creating several different enemies with different mechanics behind them. Or when creating a complex inventory of weapons and characters in an RPG.
I’m looking through the coursework of the C# Survival guide and believe the path strays quite a bit from what I’ll be utilizing in completing my space shooter. The long list of material in C# could take some time, and I think I’ll be learning something I won’t be immediately using, and therefore may feel a bit irrelevant. Either way, my strategy was to complete the C# Survival Guide section completely, before going back through the 2D coursework to complete the game. I’ll likely have to continue this heavily into the new year with this strategy. I’m happy to do so, but still I ponder on the best, most effective course. Besides, who knows what I’ll learn between now and the end of the course. Perhaps, something that would be essential to success with a future team. I guess I just need to follow my gut, and persevere until the very end.
