The Journey Day 7… Hitting Stride
“I gotta say it was a good day…”
I remember hearing that song for the first time… #moods. I’ve gotta say that today truly was a good day. I started the day with a good idea of where I wanted to go today. Fix my power up.. get the speed boost done. Sounds simple enough. I wasn’t feeling simplicity today however, I was feeling test myself today. So, I vowed to undertake the tasks today minus instruction videos.
Now if this sounds like a crazy undertaking… I may very well be but given the code we have been taught already combined with the logic I learned for making javascript applications run I surmised that I might just be up for the task. What’s the worst that could happen I figured as I settled into my chair for a long day of code.
Turns out not much. I managed to get the code for the speed booster by utilizing the same framework syntax as our other power up, the triple shot. I built the new prefab, assigned it the cool looking speed boost sprite and even got the animation working by using the same techniques that I used for the triple shot. Instead of simply activating the power up and instantiating the new prefab however I needed to adjust player speed. On grabbing the power up, or triggering the boolean value of SpeedBoostOn to true, I set player speed to 140% and gave it a ten second duration.
With both boosters now coded, and animated I am now able to clearly visualize the other power ups of the game and I know that I can accomplish these things easily enough. The GameDevHQ experience has been quick but effective. Given my experience in web development I came into the program equipped with many of the basic skills that would suit me well for the program. It’s allowed me to not only be quick and efficient, but to understand and execute my own work while quickly help fellow cohorts when they are trying to understand concepts such as functions, scope, closure, and Unity utilization.
I am hoping to have all of the basic game elements complete by the weekend leaving me early next week to score my own soundtrack and audio effects. This has been a great journey so far. It’s been a journey of awareness, trial and error, as well as self testing. With each challenge passed, I gain increasing amounts of confidence, not just in myself but in myself as a developer.
Having an eye for detail in code is huge. Being able to debug quickly and efficiently is a highly valuable time and stress saving skill. In the last week my ability in this area has gone through the roof. I remember sitting for days in the beginning looking for basic mistakes. Now, if the code doesn’t work properly, I’m able to rapidly discern whether it’s coding errors, syntax errors, or just plain old malformed logic.
Today was all about hitting stride. It was clean, straight, and to the point. I got in. Accomplished my own set daily goals and got out. Clean cut, straight and dry. Whether it was game development in the morning or web development in the late afternoon it was good fun.
In utilizing agile workflow method sprints feel like sprints. As we run so too do we sprint. Eventually you start to feel like a marathon runner… like you could just run forever. That’s the true gift of this journey. Getting to sprint and t the end of the day feeling stronger for it… feeling wiser for it.
I’m grateful for this experience and the learnings that I’ve had to far in GameDevHQ. This is beyond “wildest dreams” while at the same time bound to those dreams. I now visualize some really cool game play add-ons and special features that I can implement eventually. It’s got the creativity flowing! Gaining skills in an area, such as this, checks of quite a few boxes for the natural gamer in me. Now that I am firmly on the path and finding my stride I can’t wait to see where this Journey takes me.
