(last edited on February 15, 2023 at 12:26 pm)
Wednesday and Thursday were Video Game Days, which directly relates to Project 1401, my Javascript video game project. On Wednesday, I attended the Southern New Hampshire GameDev Group and got inspired by all the projects I saw, so on Thursday I worked on adding shooting bullets to the game. It was the first major addition I’ve made to the Javascript engine in quite a while. I recorded a six-minute summary of what I did, which is much more focused than the raw late night coding binge that I captured.
Now that I have a bit of momentum on this, I may try adding collision detection next. It’s amazing how fast one can work today by leveraging (1) The Internet and (2) other people’s code libraries to produce tangible results.
GHDR Lessons Learned and Points Earned
It’s been a while since I’ve summarized any points because I’ve been lazy, and the points hadn’t been motivating me that much recently as I’ve been feeling good about progress. I think the addition to livestreaming to my repertoire of tools has helped me a lot; sharing my frustrations, progress, and resolutions in real-time is a tremendous motivator because I’m putting the signal out there. I need the extra motivation when I am feeling more isolated at home.
Anyway, let’s see how many points scored:
| PTS | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| 10 | Sharing stuff I Love! Video game spaceship! |
| 10 | Sharing stuff I know! Programming stuff via livestream! |
| 50 | Github commit of working code! |
| 10 | Result that fulfills a wish/future result: Bullets! |
| 5 | I left the house to see what people are doing (new point) |
| 3 | Talked about goals with someone at gamedev meeting |
| 3 | Tried stuff I wasn’t sure would work (physics engine stuff) |
| 3 | Overcame resistance to do tedious work! |
| 2 | Reduced scope! |
| 2 | Posted words on this website! |
| 1 | Talk about the work with live streaming! |
| 1 | Researched various sundry things to make game stuff possible! |
Whew, that is 100 points over two days, thanks to the major deliverable which caused additional ripple productivity effects. When everything is hitting, productivity is high!
About this Article Series
For my 2016 Groundhog Day Resolutions, I'm challenging myself to make something goal-related every day from February 2nd through December 12. All the related posts (and more!) are gathered on the Challenge Page.
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2 Comments
Regarding game design, I’ve been lately toying around with this program: http://tululoo.com/
I don’t know if you heard of it. Its graphical interface takes part of a lot of boring stuff, but it also has room for a lot of customization via code, so having previous Javascript knowledge helps. I find it pretty nifty.
Another great one (but less graphical) that I can recommend is Phaser. Both are free as in free beer.
Nacho: That looks pretty nifty, Tululoo. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at Phaser, but I just looked at it and I think I’ll also check that out. I’m interested in architecting a really neat and expressive game engine for my own uses, and so I’m actually starting to enjoy the fiddly boring bits now that I’m much more up-to-speed on Javascript than I was before. I probably could appreciate Phaser now, if mostly to see how they handle different ideas than I am!