I was casually watching a CaptainSparklez Subreddit video, where he reviews the top 19 reddit posts, this month, from the CaptainSparklez Subreddit, where he came across this post.
Immediately, my mind went to, “I could easily create something in Unity real fast that tells me how many there are to confirm this.” Thus, I did exactly that!
I can confirm that there are NOT 69 L’s in the TryHardNinja/CaptainSparklez song, Revenge. I did test Fallen Kingdom, however, where there are 69 S’s. The fun part is that I did all this in under 100 lines of code, with a few comments thrown in! That wasn’t necessarily a challenge I was trying, but a neat detail nonetheless!
As for the video, be sure to give it some love with an extra view! Also, no, he is not dead, but there is a great reason it has that as the title!
This is a longer post, as I am writing on multiple topics, please enjoy.
Over the past 20 months I have spent most of my attention focused on being a full-time student at Full Sail University, working toward a Bachelor of Science in Game Development. I am proud to say I am only 5 weeks from graduation at this point, and I am excited as can be! Full Sail is an incredibly difficult school to keep up with, due to their quick deadlines and difficult homework requiring a strong work ethic to keep yourself motivated to succeed! With only a month per class, many months being two classes, most classes have multiple full assignments per week that you have to work on as you attempt to absorb all the information quickly. On top of all that, they have a 90% attendance policy! With each class only being 8-12 days, many classes you can only miss 1 excused day, being that excused allows you to miss slightly more, without failing. 1 unexcused absence in many classes means failing for attendance.
I am excited to be ending with a 3.94 GPA and perfect attendance!
I still have this month and next month’s class to change that GPA, but the only change would be up, as I should be getting 100% in both of these months, due to the nature of these classes. These final months are dedicated to what they call “Open Portfolio,” which is when the student works on their Capstone Project. This gives the student two full months to work on whatever they are wanting to create, whether that be solo or in a team.
My idea was already created for my Capstone Project, but first I felt the need to finally release the game I had been working on in private, Spokes! You can see it in My Portfolio Page, where I officially released it on ItchIO and Google Play. I plan on releasing on Apple and Steam as well, when I have the time. Now to discuss my Capstone Project plans.
For my Capstone Project, I decided to work on something that is a mix between a game and a tool. I have a board game, named Zombicide, that is a large box with many tiles of many sizes. If I want to plan ahead, I have to pull the tiles out, set up a map, take a picture, and prepare any balancing that may be needed for the friends I am playing with. However, this requires a lot of time for setup and cleanup, for when I want to plan ahead. Due to this, I set out in my own free time to create a tool that allows me to take the tiles I own, and place them on the screen, thus eliminating the need to open the box up, setup, and cleanup. I very quickly realized I would need assets, and went on a search for official Zombicide assets. In this search I learned they released official zip folder, and found it was due to someone else who created a similar tool! Great, this means I don’t have to make mine! However, I immediately found flaws with their version and decided I still wanted to create a better version. This is where we get to Open Portfolio, and my Capstone Project. I figured when better to work on this, than two months where my full time job is to create something I am passionate about? Once I began creating, I came up with the idea of adding a way for users to create their own packs, officially, through my tool, which is the feature I’m working on as I type this post! Not only will the user be able to import packs to design a layout for the game they want to play, but for users who create their own board games, this tool will give them a way to simply create a zip folder fully ready for other users to download and import on their own!
This week I’ve been hard at work on accessibility features. Specifically, in this case, I’m referring to color options. When creating Spokes, I added an option to show when a circle has the correct number of active lines or too many active lines based on the coloring, but my teacher reminded me of an important detail. I was using Green as Correct and Red as Too Many, as green is commonly “good” and red is commonly “bad.” The detail I was reminded of was the commonality of red-green colorblindness, meaning some people would struggle to see the difference between these two. Thus, I began working on an options menu where the player can change the colors. While I was at it, I figured I would simply add options for all other colors, as well, giving the user the ability to change any color excluding the menu itself.
As well, I added the ability for the board to zoom in and out. I implemented two versions of zooming for this. One where the player scrolls, for PC, and one for when the player pinches or spreads, for mobile.
My next planned task was to work on the win event, for when a player completes a puzzle. However, given the new color options menu becomes increasingly small depending on the screen, I am planning on editing the current zoom function. My plan is to make it so when the player pinches and spreads, or scrolls the mouse-wheel, the entire game zooms in and out, not only the puzzle. This way the player can zoom into the menu as well as the puzzle, making the smaller buttons in the options menu much easier to use.
I’ve been hard at work, but in my free time I’ve been hard at work recreating Spokes in Unity, as mentioned in my last post! I am nearly at the point where this version will actually surpass the Unreal version!
The logic has been created, and was much easier in this version thanks to the concept of the GameManager, to check for win scenarios. With this, my next step it to add extra options, such as a color system to tell the player hoe close to winning they are, and to decide what I want “you win” message to be changed to. Overall, I’m happy to have tried remaking this in Unity, as I’ve been enjoying it more than when I created it in Unreal.
Maverick Learns 