So, I started my journey into coding with the purest of intentions within my youth; I wanted to make video games. Ever since I was a kid playing with my first video game console the Nintendo 64 I wanted to make amazing worlds of my own with programming. As, I have gotten older and have forgotten my dream within the relentless pursuit of a degree and job. Within college, as well, majoring in programming of computer science required one to have a mathematics and philosophy minors in order to complete all while still having to finish within four years so i did what any student would do in the situation pick another major. However, when my degree plans went due to the cost of college making a video game got me back into the pursuit and the amazement of programming again. I started coding for what I wanted to code for not anyone else and I started learning programming more due to it. Nowadays, game development is more of a side hobby as I constantly learn new things about programming from the Flatiron school. I love the fact that game development and the flatiron program lends themselves to each-other in particular portions. Like how I learn pseudo code from coding in GameSalad
or I used C# for the Tic Tac Toe Game for the pre-entry into Flatiron because I used the language to make games in Unity 3D. I can’t wait to see what Flatiron yield for my passion in making video games for me in the future as I finally learn how to program with such an amazing group.
Here is a Game I have been working on (it barrows a lot of it’s art inspiration and themes from the indie game Limbo) and here is a bit of the creative process on making a level.
So I start out by drawing out a simple draft of the level I’d like to create on a sketch pad and note some of the themes I’d like to introduce within the level.
Then with some photo editing magic I turn that concept into a level :
However this is still just a backdrop until I put some colide objects for the player to interact with.
In order to make the game work I stretch-out collision objects and place them where the floors and walls should be:
After I take the color opacity of these collision objects to 0 which make them invisible:
now after some coding within the player we can try out the level see what works and what doesn’t
Like testing out level puzzles, jumps, and many other parts of the game.
I am really excited to gain a better understand of coding to make even better games as I continue with the world of Web Development.