Project information
- Category: Software
- Client: Personal
- Project date: 2018
Project Objective
Learn to code for the first time in anengaging way by recreating a classic game
Overview
In order to learn code for the first time, I needed something that would make it way more engaging than dry onine tutorials. I came across a course which introduced you to C# using the Unity Game Engine. They started with a few 2D games, with a clone of the classic Brick Breaker game being one of them. Up to the point of making Block Breaker, I've completed a few sections of the course already, and was starting to be able to add my own features to these games without any guidance. This is my best and proudest project from that course and stage in my coding education. In Block Breaker, the player must destroy the bricks by hitting them with the ball, while only having control of the paddle. There are a few different types of bricks that take a different number of hits to break, as well as powerup bricks! If the ball manages to fall past the players paddle, a game over is triggered.
Final Product
While the base structure of the game was taught in the course, this version expanded on it by an extra 3 levels, bringing the toal up to 5! Additionally, the 3 hit bricks and powerup bricks were added outside of the course. The powerup bricks can drop either positive or negative effects like shrinking or expanding the paddle, or speeding up and slowing down the ball! Unfortunately the code for the game no longer exists, but the full build is available here!
Conclusion
The coding course, and this game, was instrumental in my coding education. Not only did I learn to code from this, but I was proud of it and it inspired me to continue to learn more! Looking at the game now, it definetely has a few flaws. The worst of which being that occasionally there is a bug where the ball will get stuck bouncing between the walls and never fall down to the paddles. The other obvious thing are the lack of a creative textures and animations for the powerups. Then as a whole the game needs more variety. But as a learning project it accomplished everything it was supposed to.