Jay's "Creating little games while learning to Code" Thread
polycounter lvl 18
With the awesome help from awesome people from both the polycount community and twitter, I was able to somewhat bring a playable / tweaked version of Pong to life and put it up on some great sites to let others give it a playthrough. I've received some really great feedback (that I'm currently working on) and also learned so so much since starting.
I'm incredibly pumped to start working on whatever silly project I can come up with next. I have SO SO SO much to learn and I hope your feedback / critiques / discussions will help get other artists (anyone!) interested in messing around with their own ideas as well.
I'll keep this thread updated as I continue on and I would LOVE to hear any feedback you have, or any questions etc.
Also... let me know if I should remove some of the gifs... they kinda all look the same after awhile :poly142:
Replies
Check out some of my older progress at - http://jasonlavoie3d.tumblr.com/
I wouldn't recommend learning to program with C# because it also hides some complexity that you can learn to get the basics(and not only basics but complex stuff that is a must for every serious programmer). If you learn C++ you can learn everything you want, can take you up to 1 or 2 weeks to move to another language without any issues. Good luck!
Edit: http://www.cplusplus.com/ is a good site to learn and http://uva.onlinejudge.org/ is a good way to find challenges but may be a little more advanced(still there are tasks for all the levels).
Check out some of my older progress at - http://jasonlavoie3d.tumblr.com/
Check out some of my older progress at - http://jasonlavoie3d.tumblr.com/
I've bookmarked the links you posted, I'll check them out! Thanks again!
DKK - Thanks, there is a third power up called Hardshot... it's basically just a one time use power that increases the speed of the Ball. It's kinda buggy and a little confusing to the players (from the feedback I've received) so I may mess around with either updating that power... or making a new one
I'm excited to see what I'll be learning / starting next. I have a couple of basic ideas that I think would be a good next step, maybe prototype that dumb Dirty Dishes game haha!
They have to be like, double the size so players can quickly read it and then switch focus back to the game.
My critiques:
- There's not enough control of the angle you can reflect the ball at. Hitting the top/bottom of the paddle could modify the angle by up to ~45 degrees either way and hitting the centre just reflects it using the regular reflection equation. More control would make the gameplay more dynamic and give a little more control to the player.
- You need a count down when losing a ball, since often you lose a ball as a close call and it ends up costing you two or three points if the ball gets shot in your direction multiple times.
Edit: never mind didnt notice you had a link to play the game.
i've been doing some gameplay stuff in blueprints in UE4 recently and it's so nice to be getting my hands dirty with the backend stuff and not just making things look good.
Kurt Russell - I've adjusted both the angle of direction when the ball hits your paddle, and added a delay to when the play spawns after scoring, I'd love to hear if it feels a bit better now, thanks for your feedback!
KassEscoe - Thanks Kass, I've actually removed the gifs because the thread already felt so damn bloated. If you like to check out early and future progress, check out - http://jasonlavoie3d.tumblr.com/
finalhart - I generally do most personal projects for fun, but now-a-days I need to make sure I'm learning something as I progress. Coding has been one of those mountains I've wanted to climb for a while now... I'd love to start working on broader aspects of game dev besides art, and having these opportunities to start making playable prototypes is re-igniting that flame... feels gewddd maann!
tharle - Ohh thanks for sharing that talk, I'll be sure to check it out. I'd love to see your progress in blueprints
Here is what I have so far -
The basic idea is to just keep jumping off boxes to gain points (highscore based). As the score grows I want to add in some obstacles that will make it a bit harder, such as spikes on the blocks (I already have this in there, just not coded up yet).
This game is all based off of collision, which at this point is broken, so the game is kinda broken. I'll be looking into going about collision detection differently, which I think may have to do with Unity's default physics. I've heard about how kinda poopy it is and even with something as simple as this idea, I'm already hitting some nasty glitches.
Here is the initial idea I had that I mocked up in max... I tested it out in Unity and it wasn't very fun, but I'm sure there is a cool idea swimming somewhere in this... maybe :poly142:
Anywhoooo, that is it for now, more updates coming
Looking good! Have you looked into using raycasting to detect your collisions for the next frame? Might be the case if you're dealing with too much tunneling in such a tight fast moving game.
So for unity you'd use update (or fixed update) and late update.
Howl and Vailias - Any chance is there some documentation on how to go about doing thing? I semi know what you're talking about, but not too sure how to implement that in code yet. I'll look up the raycasting way and see what I can find.