Day 16: An Introduction to Phase II
I’ve made it to Phase II, the last section in the 2D Game Development course! It’s honestly mind blowing to think about where I was two weeks ago, having no experience with Unity, Visual Studio, or C# coding, and where I am now. I’m grateful to have this blog as a time capsule to look back on and read in the future, wherever it may take me career-wise.
Lately I’ve been reading more about augmented reality and following designers that mesh AR with graphic design, a field I’m particularly interested in. Going through their portfolios and seeing them mix traditional design elements such as typography with AR is so inspiring and pushing me to think out of the box in terms of creative possibilities. It’s amazing to see all of my interests come together this way and I’m excited to watch the future of design unfold.
Today we had a company-wide meeting where we discussed the future after our internships, the different fields coding can lead you to, and where to get started in terms of looking for careers. I took some time to look up different augmented reality, virtual reality, and game development studios on LinkedIn just to get a sense of the job market and what skills companies are looking for. Although I’m not quite ready to jump into a developer position yet, researching prospective careers is serving as major motivation to refine my skills in coding with GameDevHQ and on my own time with graphic design.
On my own project, today I worked on programming a new enemy movement and spawning waves of enemies in sequences. Using Mathf.PingPong, a unique bit of code that propels an object in — you may have guessed — a ping pong motion, the enemy ships now travel downward in a zig-zag pattern. Previously, they would spawn at a random point on the y-axis and travel downward in a straight line.
I wasn’t able to fully nail the sequencing action and will have to continue working on that section in the morning. It seems that programming object motion and using physics isn’t my strong point, and I’ll be focusing on better understanding those concepts this week.
