This week’s tutorial has been interesting. We learned some
features that made our game more game-like. I realized how more comfortable I
was when working through the tutorials, especially with the scripts, I was able
to recall some code we used in previous tutorials.
The lessons focused on creating a fast-paced runner game
where the player needs to press the spacebar to jump in order to avoid
obstacles which fly towards the player.
I got a bit insight on a different way to make game objects
do different things. So far, only the
Translate () method was used to bring objects into our scene. However, to make
the game seem a little more realistic I got a little more insight about Unity’s
own physics engine which calculates the objects mass, external forces acting on
that object and gravity which simulates real-life physics in the game.
In this tutorial, I had to use the AddForce method instead,
which uses Unity’s physics engine to make the character’ jump force realistic.
Screenshot of my Unity tutorial.
The Sprite Render component is a new feature I was
introduced which essentially rendrs images into the game and can be used to
create the 2D background just the like the forest background used for this
game. We were able to make it appear like the player was moving by applying a
written move script to the background (kind of like looking out the window of
fast driving car).
Another useful skill was to call other methods to target
different game components. Before, we only used gameObject and Transform.
To control the character’s movement, gravity and other
characteristics we used new method to be able to access other components which
aren’t found on every game object such as the Rigidbody. To do that we used
GetComponent method.
Finally, the more part was learning to do our first
animations. Animation Controller with an unusual interface that looks similar
to a mind-map diagram. When viewing the
game on play-mode, the diagrams will indicate what animation state the
character is in. The parameters section allows use to control the length and
speed of an animation. We also managed animation transitions in our scripts
using if-statements to control when the character enters different animations
states depending of what the player does e.g if player accidently hits the
obstacle the character transitions from a running state to an animation where
he is knocked unconscious.
This was a fun unit overall. Hopefully I’ll be able to remembers
most of what I learned when it comes to making my own game.
