Monday, January 10, 2011

Polishing Interface and Writing Code

I have been working these last few days on tweaking the game interface and writing the code the will provide game functionality. I'm happy to report that the code for managing the points and health in the game are all finished, as seen in this screenshot:




Every minute, the code will deduct one health point and play a small audio file (a "ping"); players will be able to get health points by purchasing something to eat or picking up a first aid kit. When players gain health points, another sound file is played. The game points work on the same logic. Once I get the money interface finished (what you see in the screenshot is just a place holder), I will get to work on developing the interactive objects that the player needs to pick up and recycle (or throw away).

I'm also happy to say that coding the game is going much more smoothly than I thought. Progress in this area was helped on tremendously by code I grabbed from the AlmostLogical blog. Once I got my mind wrapped around the code, tweaking it for the game was very straight-forward. Here's a screenshot of the code:




I've been really impressed with the Unity code libraries. Some game functionality, which I thought would take lines of code to write, are accomplished with one-line function calls. Hats off to you, Unity.

On a side note, an interesting report on the NPR website detailing how video games increase brain power and multitasking skills. Apparently, computer gamers perform better than non-gamers on certain tests of attention, speed, accuracy, vision and multitasking. Who would have thought?



6 comments:

  1. WoW. I must say, your game looks absolutely amazing. And, I'm sure you're not in the habit of playing LEGO games, but here's one that was made in Unity:

    http://starwars.lego.com/en-US/FunAndGames/CloneWars-Quest-For-R2D2.aspx


    You use that, right? Just want to show you that your game looks alot better than this one. If only LEGO had used Unity for niceness, instead of evil. <- "Get Smart" refferance.

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  2. Thanks, Natron1, for the kind words. Although I'd be the first to admit that the StarWars game does have a really cool level of character interactivity; I wouldn't even know where to begin with coding 3D character movement. Something to learn, I suppose. And "Get Smart" was a great show; loved watching it as a kid.

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  3. I forgot. Did I comment on your blog when I had an image of Seigfried from "Get Smart" as my profile picture? He's, like the awesomest character. (Plus, he's German, so you must like him.)

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  4. Yes, I think you did. The whole series was great and truly innovative. Too bad TV today isn't like it.

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  5. Wow.... that is such a very interesting Game... i must play this...:)
    thanks for the sharing:)

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  6. There was a Get Smart movie done i n1985, you know. And a sixth season of the original TV show done in 1995. And, of course, the re-make done in 2008, with Steve Carrel and Anne Hathaway, which featured Bernie Kopell (Siegfried) for a couple seconds.

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